Social media marketing is a form of marketing that involves creating and sharing content on social media networks to gain followers and potential clients. Social media marketing includes activities like posting blogs, videos, or pictures to promote your brand to a targeted user base. Paid social media advertising is another large part of social media marketing. With all business ventures, it’s important to have a goal. Especially when it comes to social media marketing. Here are a few tips on creating a successful social media marketing campaign.

1. Set Attainable Goals

Figuring out what your goals are when it comes to social media marketing is key. Social media planning takes a while. Setting a goal that is too ambitious will only set you up for failure. Wanting to gain 1M followers in a few months would be incredible, but it’s unrealistic. Setting attainable goals and benchmarks to measure your victories is a great way to stay motivated.A common goal-setting technique is the “SMART” theory. The “SMART” acronym stands for:

• Specific: Goals need to be clear and defined
• Measurable: Analytics plays a big role here. You want a goal that you can measure over time. Seeing your progress and making changes when necessary.
• Achievable: Is it achievable over the long term plan? Do you have enough resources to complete said goals?
• Realistic: With current resources of time and money, is it possible to achieve your goals?
• Time Sensitive: Every goal needs a time frame whether it’s one year or several months.

Starting with broad goals that you want to achieve over the course of a year is a good place to begin when defining your SMART goals. A few common goals that are associated with social media are the following:

• Increase brand awareness
• Improve ROI
• Create a loyal fanbase
• Increase in-person sales

Later, identify the metric you’d like to use for each goal. For example, In reaching “increase brand awareness” on Facebook, you’ll want to pay attention to:

• Fan count
• Page and post impressions
• Post reach
• Link clicks (linking to blogs)
• Web analytics and FB referrals

After figuring out your metrics, go back to your SMART technique and figure out your timeline to plan accordingly.

2. Research Audience & Competitors

It’s a no brainer that you should be where your audience is. Before you seek out your audience, you must identify them first.

• What age groups?
• Average income?
• What do they value?
• What are their interests?

After figuring out the answer to these questions, it will give you a better understanding of your ideal customer. Once you figure out your ideal target audience, it is important to find which channels they spend the most amount of time on. That way you are able to target those channels specifically and ultimately reach your target market.Secondly, you want to research your competitors. Keeping track of and understanding your competitors can help you differentiate your business and stay ahead of trends that could impact your business. There are plenty of business benefits from conducting competitive research such as:

• Understanding your market
• Better targeting customers
• Forecasting market potential
• Understanding what your competitors are offering
• Comparing pricing
• Finding new potential customers

Gathering research on your customers will help you identify your target market and will help cater your marketing efforts towards them specifically. Furthermore, competitive research will help you create an actionable strategy that will benefit your business in the future.

3. Create Compelling Content (In the Right Context)

As a marketer, you have to create engaging content. Great content will keep your followers coming back for more. Building a social media marketing plan is crucial. Having consistency is key. Make sure to post regularly and offer truly valuable information that your ideal customers will find valuable and interesting. Asking your followers questions in your posts will engage them and bring in more comments to your posts. Posting questions about what content your followers to see if a great way to provide better service to them.The content that you share through social media can be images, videos, infographics, how-to guides and more. All of them in line with your brand and around similar interests your target audience has. Sharing the content you’ve created (blogs, videos, etc.) on your website through social media is encouraged. It helps increase your brand’s website traffic by linking it back to your website’s blog page. Also, great blog content will help you build more followers, benefitting your business overall.

4. Improve Constantly

Being agile and adaptable to changes in social media strategy is important for companies in 2019. Without constantly analyzing your effort, you’ll never know how one campaign did over the other. Tracking the amount of likes week after week, as well as the number of shares will help you get an idea of which posts are working and which ones are not.

What Can Viamark Delaware Do For You?

The Delaware office of Viamark Advertising delivers award-winning advertising campaigns with a strong marketing backbone. Our vast national resources and unique business model allows local and regional businesses in Delaware to utilize the same quality advertising services that a national advertiser would expect from an ad agency.With our years of experience in digital, video and traditional marketing, we can help you create an excellent social media campaign for optimal user engagement. Contact Us today and one of your experienced campaign coordinators will speak to you about our services.