Startup Guides > 5-Prong Approach To Creating An Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy:

Creating a social media strategy is essential for every social media marketing professional in order to have an effective social media campaign. Social media marketing should be merged with your traditional marketing plan.

The following five-pronged approach will help you create an effective social media marketing strategy:

1) Create Short-term & Long-term Goals

Many companies want to dive into social media just because it's what everyone else is doing; and because of that me-too attitude many companies end up drowning in social media and no one notices them.

First of all, create specific goals by asking yourself the following question: "What does my business want to get out of social media?"


Short-term goals are goals that you want to achieve in 30-60 days; long-term goals are goals you want to achieve within 6 months to a year. Creating short-term and long-term goals help you determine what type of content needs to be created in order to meet those goals.

2) Make Sure Everyone Is On Board & On The Same Page

When creating a social media marketing strategy bring everyone from the CEO, the marketing & advertising team, and all upper and middle management on board in the decision-making process that will result in a company's social media marketing strategy. Make them all a part of it, as they can provide valuable inputs in making your social media strategy more efficient. This strategy will set clear guidelines and a roadmap for the social media director, consultant or team that is responsible for utilizing and monitoring all social media networks in your company.

Once the social media strategy is finalized, all company employees and the clients or vendors of your company should be made aware of all social media campaigns and encouraged to participate and solicit participation from others outside of the company.

3) Choose Platforms Wisely & Keep It Simple

There are hundreds of social media networks; your business does not have to use all of them. You only want to pick the ones that will be the most effective for your business. The more social networks you are participating in, the more work you have to do creating content for each specific network. Content should be created based on the type of social network you choose to participate in.

Always keep in mind that people will not visit all of your social media sites if you are advertising the same information on all of them; give them specific reasons to visit all your social media networks. Social media networks need to be advertised just as much as your business or products.

To make it easier to promote your content across multiple social networks, try social media marketing services like 40Billion.com - the fastest-growing network of entrepreneurs and business crowdfunders. They specialize in promotion for small businesses by broadcasting your content and links to its large network of several million users across the most popular social networking sites for small businesses - including Twitter, LinkedIn, 40Billion, Google, and Facebook. Innovative services such as promoted posts and promoted company listings were created for entrepreneurs and marketers to tap into a growing, active network online in an automated way that saves money and time.

4) Create Influential Content

Posting simple status updates is not enough to get people to "like" or "follow" your business. You must create content that will influence online users to want to follow your business; as well as content that keeps them coming back for more. Your social media networks should do more than just advertise your business and sell your products; they should engage your audience.

5) Measure Your Social Media Efforts

Once you begin posting content, you then want to monitor and measure your efforts. There are many free online tools to help you do this. Google Analytics is probably one of the most popular and most used tools for measuring not only social media traffic, but also website traffic. However, social networks like Facebook have their own analytics, so you can view stats every time you log in as an admin/owner of your company's Facebook page.

Learn what your most viewed posts are and what posts are getting more comments and being shared with others.

Last, but not least, social media trends change quickly, and businesses need to be aware of the latest trends and social networks, as well as keep an eye on their competitors' social media efforts. An effective social media marketing plan can help businesses document all of their social media efforts: short-term and long-term goals, content strategies, content guidelines, as well as how they will measure their social media efforts.


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