Globally, 3.6 billion people use social media and that number is expected to increase to 4.41 billion by 2025.
Meanwhile, the average user spends 3 hours per day on social networks and messaging platforms.
On top of that, 54% of social browsers use social media to research products.
And, 71% of consumers that had some sort of positive interaction with a brand on social media are likely to recommend that brand to friends and family.
Social media is the best method available today for reaching and engaging with your audience.
That’s why today, we’re going to share with you our proven process on how to create successful social media campaigns.
Let’s get started!
As we’re sure you can tell by the statistics we just mentioned, social media needs to be included in your marketing toolbox for your business.
There are many reasons for this though.
For starters, your audience is already there.
As we mentioned, 3.6 billion people are active social media users. That’s about half of the world’s population.
Your audience is already active on different top social media platforms and they are just waiting to run into you there.
Also, social media has somewhat changed the concept of marketing.
In the past with traditional marketing methods, marketing was a very one-sided approach.
The business threw everything they had at the consumer and hoped that they would make a purchase.
Now, with the help of social media, consumers have been given a voice.
This two-way communication has proven helpful to brands because now they can actually have meaningful conversations with their audience.
And this helps build brand awareness as well as brand loyalty.
Step 1: Set SMART Goals
The first step in our process on how to create successful social media campaigns for your business is to set SMART goals.
When we say SMART goals, we don’t just mean intelligent goals.
SMART is actually an acronym that stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Timely
You want to make sure that you’re setting smart goals on social media to appeal to each of these five factors in order to get the best results.
Make sure your goals are specific by answering who, what, where, when, why, and how.
Your goals need to be measurable so that you can track progress and optimize when needed.
It’s essential to set attainable goals.
This doesn’t mean setting easy goals, rather, they need to be realistic.
For example, if you are just creating an Instagram account and you are looking to build a following, your goal shouldn’t be to have one million followers by the end of that year.
While possible, that’s simply not a realistic, attainable goal.
Instead, set a goal that you’ll have to work hard to achieve but isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
To set relevant goals, make sure your goals are set up so that they measure outcomes, not activities.
Lastly, your goals need to be timely.
You need to set a deadline for when you want your goals to be completed.
This is so that you can create that sense of urgency to achieve your goal by the desired date that you set.
Without a deadline, it will be much harder to stay motivated and committed to achieving your goal.
This is because you would have all the time in the world to complete it.
But by creating smart goals, you are ensuring that you have a way to measure your success as well as your ROI.
If you’re just starting out on social media, building your following is important so that you can establish your brand with your audience.
But, it is also important to not get too caught up in your following.
Followers are something we would consider a vanity metric.
A vanity metric is a metric that makes you look good to others but doesn’t actually help you understand your performance.
And, it is not used to put together future strategies and campaigns.
So let’s go back to followers now.
Followers are easy to track but how can you prove their true value?
That’s a tough question to answer for some business owners which is why we suggest focusing on things like:
- conversion rate,
- engagement, and
- click-through rate
…to really help you determine how effective your campaigns are.
When you think about it, followers are simply an effect of great engagement.
Focus on creating engaging content and the followers will come.
We actually did the same thing for Hilton.
Hilton came to LYFE Marketing looking to increase their social media engagement and followers.
As you can see, we were able to increase their Instagram and Facebook engagement by 10.002%
And subsequently, we increased their number of Instagram and Facebook followers by a whopping 30.740%.
Step 2: Identify Who Your Audience Is & Learn Everything You Can About Them
You might be asking, why do we need to understand our audience before we even know what social media platform we’re going to post and advertise on?
Well, different social networks attract different audiences for different purposes.
So in order to create successful social media campaigns and make an informed decision on what social networks to use…
…we need to first understand our audience.
Also, knowing who your audience is will be critical to your success.
When you know what your audience likes and wants to see, you can create more engaging content for them that they will be more likely to:
- like,
- comment, and
- share.
Knowing your audience is also how you’ll be able to turn followers into customers.
You’ll want to know factors like their age, location, interests, income, and any other information that is helpful for your business to know.
The best way to use this information when creating content is to create buyer personas.
A buyer persona is a detailed description of someone who represents your target audience.
It is not a real person but it embodies all of the characteristics of your best, real customers in your target audience.
This persona will include all of the audience details we just mentioned like age, location, and income.
You will also want to list out behavioral traits in your buyer persona to help understand your audience’s purchasing habits.
One buyer persona might not be enough for your business either.
You may find that you have different groups of people that purchase your products for different reasons.
If this is the case, you should be creating a buyer persona for each different group to help your marketing efforts.
Knowing your audience can make all the difference and we have proof dating all the way back to 2014.
Nearly 7 years ago, we worked with Ali Baba’s Bar & Cafe who was new to the Georgia State University Campus.
Because of this, they had a very unique audience, being students, and wanted students to learn about their cafe before school started.
This meant that we had to draw as much attention as possible from a niche audience in a very short period of time.
Based on what we knew, students were very engaged on Twitter at the time so Twitter is where we started our efforts.
By following the steps we’re sharing with you today, even back then we were able to grow Ali Baba’s Twitter following by 1,298 followers.
And then, drastically increased their number of cafe visits.
Step 3: Conduct Competitor Analysis
If you want to create successful social media campaigns, we can learn a lot from our competitors and what they’re doing on social media.
Competitive analysis is how you’ll find out what is working and what isn’t working for your competitors.
This is important to know. Because you are in the same industry and likely share similar audiences, there’s a good chance that what works for your competitors will work for you too.
By going over everything your competitors are doing, you also might be able to spot opportunities that your competitors have missed.
As well as capitalize on them for your own gain.
What types of posts are working the best? What types of captions are working the best?
You’ll want to do this across all platforms.
You might find that your competition is connected and engaged with their audience on Instagram but not so much on Facebook.
That’s another great opportunity for you and your business to swoop in and engage your audience where they might not be getting much attention from your competitors.
The fourth step is to select the best social media networks for your advertising campaign.
To select the right channel for your business, you must first decide if the channel aligns with your business.
Ask yourself the following questions to help you decide:
1. Are my products or services conducive to visual marketing? If so, Facebook or Instagram might be a good platform for you.
2. Is my company B2C or B2B? If B2B, LinkedIn might be a good place to connect with other business owners.
The next step in choosing the right platform for your business is to decide if the channel aligns with your capabilities.
Ask yourself the following questions to help you decide:
1. Do I have enough time to create content for multiple channels?
2. Do I have the budget to support multiple channels?
3. Do I have the expertise to create the content needed? If not, can I hire someone to do so?
Once you answer the questions mentioned, you will know the right platforms that align with your business and your capability.
Now is the time where we take all the information you’ve gathered thus far and create a game plan for how you’re going to create content.
One of the first things you should do is create a list of content topics.
Content topics are the things that you can talk about that will bring your audience value.
The easiest way to come up with themes is to create a list of your expertise broken into three categories:
- The What
- The Why
- The How
What your audience should be doing to reach their goals or solve their pain points.
Why your audience should be doing or thinking a certain way to reach their goals or solve their pain points.
How to do the things needed to reach their goals or solve their pain points.
Once you have your list, turn your content themes into actual content by choosing a content type.
The most popular content types are quotes, tips, and tutorials.
Step 6: Create Engaging Content
Unfortunately, many businesses jump right to this step as soon as they create their social media accounts.
However, as you can clearly see, there is a lot that must be done first in order to be successful in this step.
Before we create any content, it would be a good idea to check out each platform’s guidelines for image and video sizing.
This is so you can create super high-quality content that is perfectly optimized for each platform you’re going to post on.
Next, before you actually start your content creation, you’ll want to keep your audience in mind at all times.
Remember the second step in this process when we identified who your audience was and learned as much as we could about them?
This step is where we’ll use all of that information.
You want to make sure that any content you create provides value to your audience.
If your content doesn’t provide value to your audience, they’re not going to engage with it and they won’t make that much-needed connection with your brand.
Typically, for social posts, you’ll include either an image or a video in your post.
But what can your post be about?
There are many strategies you can take for content creation.
You may have already developed some in the previous step when you created your social media content themes.
One strategy is to share positive news and statistics.
Not only do users enjoy seeing this content but by including a positive statistic about your business, your audience will begin to trust you even more.
If your business has strong values that relate to social causes, you can campaign for those social causes.
At the same time, it will still highlight your brand using your social media posts.
A great example of this is 4Ocean. 4Ocean creates bracelets and jewelry out of recycled materials.
They have used their social media accounts to showcase them cleaning up the ocean.
This resonates strongly with their audience and helps their audience feel more connected to their brand and their mission.
You can also post how-to or instructional content.
This is very effective for engaging your audience as long as you are creating content for topics that they actually want to learn more about.
An example of this would be a travel agency creating a how-to guide for how to travel the world on a specific budget.
Or, a business in the beauty industry creating a makeup tutorial showcasing the products that they sell.
Another great content idea, depending on the age of your audience, would be to appeal to your audience’s memories and create posts that inspire nostalgia.
Who doesn’t love to reminisce about their favorite childhood memories?
We know you do.
By creating content like this, you’ll notice a lot of engagement and the start of some very meaningful conversations down in the comment section.
This is all because you’ll be appealing to your audience’s emotions.
To further build your social proof, create posts for testimonials or reviews you’ve received.
Lastly, if you have something to offer, creating a post for a contest or giveaway is a great way to build your following in addition to engaging with your audience.
When you think about it, who doesn’t want free stuff?
All of these are great ideas for your content.
But remember, you need to create content that aligns with your mission statement and provides value to your audience. If it doesn’t, then you shouldn’t post it.
Step 7: Monitor Analytics & Adjust Your Strategy
We’ve already spent a lot of time up to this last step in the process of developing an effective social media marketing strategy.
And the fact of the matter is, it’s not going to be 100% perfect the first time around and will need to be adjusted over time.
That’s why this last step is to monitor your analytics and adjust your strategy as needed.
You can’t just stick to your strategy without making any changes if it isn’t yielding optimal results for your business.
So how do you find areas to improve?
Start by taking a look at your performance metrics.
When you look at your analytics, try to determine why some posts are outperforming others.
Look to see if different strategies are performing better or worse than you expected.
If you’re using multiple social media platforms, look at your analytics to see if one platform is outperforming all of the others.
If you’re doing the best on Facebook, consider doubling down and putting a lot of attention and focus into your Facebook marketing strategy.
After making these changes, continue to create and post content according to your newly adjusted strategy and then go back again and repeat this step.
Social media is fast-paced with trends coming and going each and every day.
By letting data drive your decisions and constantly optimizing your strategy, you’ll be able to see great success and outperform your competition.
Even the best social media strategies aren’t set in stone.
That’s why you need to create high-quality, engaging content, monitor your analytics, and make adjustments to your strategy as needed.
This is to ensure that your business can grow and see optimal results.
By the way, speaking of trends on social media, we have a post that tackles the latest social media marketing trends that you can read next.
That’s How You Create Successful Social Media Campaigns!
So that’s everything you need to know on how to create successful social media campaigns.
Let’s end with a quick recap of what we covered in today’s post.
We started by going over why you need social media which, in short, is because your audience is already there.
And also, because social media provides your audience with a voice so that they can communicate and forge relationships with your brand.
We then went over our proven process of building successful social media campaigns which looks like this:
- Set S.M.A.R.T goals
- Identify who your audience is and learn everything you can about them
- Conduct competitor analysis
- Conduct a social media audit
- Select the right social media channels
- Create engaging content
- Monitor analytics and optimize your results
If you follow these steps closely, you’ll be sure to see success in your next social media marketing campaign.
But if you want to see guaranteed results faster without draining your budget, book a consultation to learn more about our affordable social media marketing solutions.
We’d be happy to help!
