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Welcome to the iASP Central series How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy.

If you've been following the series, we have now reached Part Five of our Six step journey to developing a Social Media Marketing (SMM) Strategy. 

In case you've missed the previous articles, you can catch up here: 

Part One - How to Perform a Social Media Audit

Part Two - How to Set Goals and Objectives

Part Three - How to Identify Key Target Audiences

Part Four - How to Plan Social Media Marketing Tactics

Next we focus on how to successfully execute a SMM strategy. 

Let's dive in… 

Part Five -  How to Execute a SMM Strategy 

Once a SMM strategy has been researched, planned and developed.. it's time to put the plan into action!

Execution is the process of delivering a SMM strategy and bringing it to life. 

Have you ever heard of the phrase 'Execution is Everything?'

Well, the execution phase of a SMM strategy is considered very important. 

The delivery process can be critical to the overall success of the campaign. 

Even the most highly crafted, well thought out strategies can fail, if a plan is not executed effectively. 

The execution phase of a SMM strategy can be a challenging process. It can require a significant amount of organisation, project management, leadership skills and team communication. 

When there are multiple marketing activities coordinated at the same time, there can also be more room for error.

If possible, formulating a team to take on various roles and responsibilities can help with the delivery process.

So how can you help ensure a smooth-sailing and well executed strategy?

Follow iASP Central's 3 step process: 

Step 1. Update Social Media Accounts 

The first step is to update all social media accounts. 

All business information and branding should be current and consistent across all social media platforms. 

It's important that social media branding reflects business values, goals and marketing messages. 

Ensure all images and written content is engaging and appeals to your primary target audiences. 

iASP Central Example: If your Facebook Business page features a high-quality business logo for the profile image, make sure this is visually consistent across Instagram, Google+ and LinkedIn. Or if your business has a marketing tag-line, be sure to include it in the description on all social profiles. 

Part 1 - How to Perform a Social Media Audit, provides steps on how to analyse key competitors social media accounts including their strengths, weaknesses and potential opportunities.  

A social media audit can help identify outdated information, improve visual branding and establish potential branding opportunities. Identifying branding opportunities can help set you aside from competitors social media.

When updating social media profiles, consider the following: 

• Logos, Profile and Cover Images - Use high quality, professional, visually appealing images or video
• Page Content - Update Profile Descriptions or 'About Us' sections to include current contact details, keywords, links and tag-lines that reflect strategy goals
• Call-to-action - Include a CTA that strategically encourages customers to act. This could be 'Call Now' 'Message Now' or 'Visit Website'. A CTA can help with conversion rate and achieve sales goals. 
• Update Profile Settings - Ensure your profile is fully optimised, that your Profile is visible to the Public and that your account is Verified. 
• Consistent Branding - Make sure branding is visually appealing and consistent across all platforms. Use the same colour palette or filter for all images. Try using images that are bold, eye catching and effective.
• Research and compare competitors social media profiles, what's working and not working for your competitors. Also research and find inspiration from other outside sources on social media. 

iASP Central Example: You have conducted a social media audit and analysed your three top competitors social media profiles. From the analysis, you can see that all of your competitors are using still-format images for their Facebook cover image. 

After researching video content, you understand that video is the highest engaging form of content on Facebook. 

You perceive a potential opportunity and decide to use a short-video feature for the Facebook cover image. This creates a point of difference from your competitors SM profiles and helps grab the attention of your fans when viewing your Page. 

Step 2. Execute SMM Activities

Running multiple integrated SMM activities requires high-level organisation and management skills. 

Organisation is the key to executing a solid strategy.

Part Four - How to Plan Social Media Marketing Tactics, can help you plan and develop a SMM strategy further, including: 

• The SMM Activities to be carried out, including a template to help monitor activities throughout the process
• A projected budget and template to help monitor spend during the execution stage  
• A plan of the content to be released on social media, including an Editorial Content Calendar 
• Delegated roles and responsibilities

Prior to the execution phase commencing, it' important to have a clear plan of the activities carried out and who is responsible. 

If you have a team helping to execute the strategy,  ensure they understand their individual roles and responsibilities during the process.

This will help keep SMM activities on track and running smoothly.

Nominating a project manager can also help to lead a team, monitor marketing activities and meet set goals.    

Good communication is vital when executing a strategy. 

Effective communication can help a team understand the challenges of the project, what's working well and how to best provide support if required. 

If you've selected a project manager, they can track and report on performance, help deliver completion of SMM tasks and  identify any potential problems.

When executing SMM activities, it's important to:

• Refer to the strategy and goals to stay on target 
• Analyse SMM activities and report on them weekly. If necessary, adjust SMM activities that are not performing
• Monitor budget and marketing spend throughout execution
• Stay active on social media - Post regular content, engage with audience and be timely in your responses 
• Use templates and worksheet to help stay organised - Editorial Content Calendars,  Budget Spreadsheets, Runsheets etc. 
• Monitor and report on KPIs
• Communicate effectively with team members

iASP Central Tip:  Using an Editorial Content Calendar can help keep you organised during the execution stage. We have provided some example templates in the resources section of this article below. 

Step 3. Measure and Report on Performance

Analysing SMM activity performance throughout the execution process can help save efforts, costs and time. 

Examining data can allow you to make educated changes to SMM activities.

It's important to know which activities are generating return on investment (ROI) and which aren't. 

From here, non-performing activities can be changed or replaced by better performing SMM activities. 

So what types of analytics are available and relevant to SMM performance? 

• Facebook Analytics
• Instagram Insights
• Twitter Analytics 
• Google Analytics 
• LinkedIn Analytics 
• Buffer Analytics / Hootsuite Analytics / Sprout Social Analytics 

iASP Central Example: 'Skin Beauty' is an online e-store specialising in skin care products. The marketing team are planning to run a Facebook Ad to help increase sales for their skin care product. They decide to create an image ad aimed at a broad audience of women from 15 - 55 years old with interests in skin care. They set the ad budget to a maximum of $50 per day to help improve the visibility of the Ad.  

Two weeks into the ad campaign, the team review Facebook Insights and the ad performance. Upon reviewing Insights, they can see that the majority of clicks and interactions with the Ad are from women aged 18-25yrs old. While they are reaching the max budget spend every day, they are unsure if these clicks are converting into sales. 

Therefore the team decide to adjust the Ad target audience age group to 18-25yrs old and lower the daily spend to $25per day. 

This will increase the likelihood of Ads being displayed to a more narrow and defined target audience. They then focus on using the extra $25 to set up a Facebook Re-marking Campaign for visitors who visit the website and view this product. 

Using Google Analytics they can then track and monitor the conversion rate of customers who purchase directly rom the Facebook Ad. 

Facebook Insights and Google Analytics have helped the team monitor their SMM performance and generate the best ROI.

Team KPIs 

Holding a weekly catch up with your SMM team can help keep your team and SMM activities on track. 

It provides an opportunity to review and report on SMM activity performance, team contributions and concerns. 

Using a Social Media Report can help track performance and important data. We have provided a SMM Report Template in the References section of this article. 

When meeting with your team for a Work in Progress (WIP) update, report on the following: 

• SMM Activity performance and analytics 
• Goal and Objective tracking 
• Team KPIs
• Potential obstacles and ETAs

Collect Important Customer Data 

When reviewing social media analytics and reporting weekly,  it's important to collect information about your customers. 

Collecting and analysing data about your target audience will help future campaign success. 

Collect information from your customers including Email Address, Location, Interests etc.  

Using a Facebook Lead Form or Facebook Poll can help you gain insight into your customers and your services. 

Compile customer data to form data bases. Segment your lists into new customers and existing customers. This information can be utilised to create email marketing campaigns in the future. 

Report on the customer data collected during your team catch ups. 

Now it's time to put your plan into action…

Deliver your strategy with precision and accuracy. 

Remember the key components of a strong execution are: 

• Organisation
• Team communication
• Detailed plan of SMM activities 
• Understanding team roles and responsibilities 
• Measuring and reporting on performance  
• Adjust and make changes where relevant 

Analyse and make changes to your plan and activities as you go, to ensure the best ROI. 

Have you executed a SMM strategy before? How did you execute your plan effectively?

Let us know on the iASP Central Facebook Page or Get in Touch.

References:

How to Create an Extraordinary Social Media Strategy for 2018

Implement a Marketing Plan

6 Steps to Successfully Execute a Strategy 

6 Essential Steps for Executing Your Social Media Strategy

7 Steps in Creating a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy in 2018

Templates: 

Social Media Analytics Report Template 

Create a Social Media Content Calendar 

Welcome to the fourth edition of the iASP Central series How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy.

If you've just joined in, you can catch up on previous articles:

• Part One - How to Perform a Social Media Audit
• Part Two - How to Set Goals and Objectives
• Part Three - How to Identify Key Target Audiences

Join us as we continue with Part Four - How to Plan Social Media Marketing (SMM) Tactics.

Part Four - How to Plan Social Media Marketing Tactics

When planning a SMM strategy, it's important to develop and implement effective marketing communication tactics.

SMM tactics are the action steps carried out to achieve set goals and objectives. These steps help to execute a strategy.

Marketing tactics are often referred to as marketing activities, strategic methods or promotional tactics. 

Marketing activities can help communicate important messages to specific target audiences.

For example, if you wanted to sell a product to a target audience on Facebook, sending a strategic marketing message about the product's features and benefits could help increase sales. In order to effectively communicate this message, the following SMM activities could be used:

• Facebook Content Posts
• Facebook Boosted Posts or Adverts
• Facebook Event Invites
• Facebook Re-marketing

With a large volume of social media marketing platforms and media available, it can be tricky to know which will marketing activities will drive the best return on investment (ROI).

If you've completed Part Two - How to Set Goals and Objectives and Part Three - How to Identify Key Target Audiences, you may have a better understanding of the goals and the target audience you want to reach.

The next step is to start planning the SMM activities that will support this strategy.

When choosing marketing activities, it's important to select activities that are relevant to your audience and business values.

Follow iASP Central's 7 key steps to help formulate marketing activities that drive results:

Step 1. Set up a SMM Activity Template

The first step is to set up a marketing activitiy template or spreadsheet.

This template can be used to plan and record the marketing activities that will be carried out.

Running multiple activities over a period of time is often an effective way to get marketing messages out there. It's important to stay organised when running different activities, so an activity spreadsheet will come in handy.

Here are some suggestions to include on your spreadsheet:

• Marketing activities undertaken e.g. Targeted Facebook content posts
• Platforms used e.g. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+
• Target audience
• Person responsible e.g. Team member, team or department
• Expected completion date
• Success indicator e.g. How will you tell if the activity is successful? What metric or goal must be met?
• Cost of marketing activity

A spreadsheet can help to monitor activities and performance throughout a campaign. It can help a team understand their individual roles, as well as a place to contribute information.

iASP Central Tip: If you don't have time to create a template from scratch, there are a number of free templates available for download. We have provided some links in the Resources list at the end of the article.

Step 2. Plan SMM Activities and Channels

Start planning the SMM activities you will carry out and list them on the spreadsheet created in Step 1.

This step relates directly to your goals set out in Part Two and the identified target audiences outlined in Part Three.

When planning SMM activities, remember to consider the following:

• What message are you trying to communicate?
• Who is your audience on social media?
• What is the best platform to use?
• What is the key time to reach your audience?
• What is your end goal?
• What date do you want to achieve your goal by?

On your spreadsheet, write down the marketing activities that will be performed and the relevant social media channels to be used.

Remember to list the expected time arrival (ETA) for the completion of each activity.

iASP Central Tip: There many ways to send marketing messages via social media platforms. Here are some suggestions:

• Targeted Content Posts
• Advertising or boosted posts
• Lead Forms
• Social Groups or Communities
• Re-marketing
• Event Invites
• Cross promotional posts

When planning activities, it's important that the activities undertaken are relevant to your target market, strategy and business values.

Step 3. Assign Team Roles

Assigning team roles and responsibilities is an important part of planning SMM activities.

A team's contribution and efforts can impact on the overall success of a campaign.

Assign roles to team members that reflect their strengths, build confidence and motivate.

Ensure that you provide your team with clear and detailed information about their specific role and responsibilities.

When running multiple marketing activities, it's vital that team members understand:

• Their individual role and expectations
• Team roles and how team members are contributing
• Overall goals the team is planning to achieve as a collective

There are many SMM roles that can be undertaken when running activities, here are some just to name a few:

• Content Development
• Community Manager or overseer
• Social Media Advertising
• Analytics and Reporting
• Campaign Strategy

Once you have organised individual and team roles, write them down on the Spreadsheet created in Step 1.

Step 4. Set a Budget

Developing a budget is a vital part of SMM planning.

A marketing budget can help track spend, funds allocation and generated revenue.

It also helps to keep a team on target, and avoid over spending.

Before starting any SMM activities, try to estimate the projected costs of each activity. If your goal is to make sales, calculate how many sales are required in order to cover the cost of the marketing activities undertaken.

Tracking spend while running activities can help work out the ROI or where funds could potentially be better spent.

iASP Central Tip:There are lots of marketing budget templates available online. We have included some below in the resources section of this article.

Step 5. Plan SMM Content

The final step is to research and plan the content that will be released on social media.

Content is the foundation of any SMM strategy. It's a powerful tool that can help engage target markets, drive messages and create demand.

Content is the information or media distributed via marketing platforms. Content can include images, text, video, e-books, downloadable documents etc.

Content Marketing is the practice of developing strategic content to communicate marketing messages to an audience.

When developing a content plan, it's important to create content that is relevant, educational and engaging.

So how can you create high-quality, effective content?

Follow iASP Centrals Key Tips:

Research Competitor's Content!

Knowing and understanding what content is working, and not working, for your competitors can give you a head start!

As suggested in Part 1 of our series, completing a social media audit can help you reflect and evaluate on your current position in the social media landscape. It also allows you to analysepotential opportunities for content development.

Find Content Inspiration!

Conduct research within your industry to find content that inspires you!

Finding content ideas can help to create fresh, interesting and trending content that will allow you to engage your audience more effectively.

We suggest using BuzzSumo, an online keyword tool that allows you to find popular relative content on the web.

Hashtag research can also help you discover new content to draw inspiration from. We recommend using toolsKeyhole and RiteTag to conduct hashtag research.

Use an Editorial Content Calendar!

An Editorial Content Calendaris a schedule of the content you plan to release on social media.

It helps keep content organised and provides a clear outline of the date and time content will be released.

When running a SMM campaign, a content calendar can help keep content on track and ensure it's consistent and timely.

Plan and list content on the calendar including:

• Type of Content Post - E.g.Video, Blog Post, Live Video, Image Post
• Social Media Platform -E.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn
• Target Audience - E.g. You may have more than one Target Market you're trying to reach on social media, so list which specific audience your post intends to reach
• Marketing Message E.g. What is the marketing message conveyed? Does the post promote a specific product or service?
• Release Date and Time
• Scheduled Post Information E.g. Is this post scheduled for release? What platform is is scheduled on? Buffer, Hootsuite, Facebook Scheduled Posts?
• Engagement Levels E.g. How many likes, shares or interactions did the post receive

iASP Central Tip: There are many Editorial Content Calendars available online for download, we have provided some links in our resources section at the end of this article.

Create Unique Content!

Content is everywhere online!

Therefore, creating unique 'standout' content is the trick to getting a message across.

Content Creation can be time consuming and costly, especially if it involves design or a team collaboration.

However there are a number of online tools available to help assist with writing and designing content.

We suggest using Canva,a free design tool to createeye-catching visual content or branded images. Canva is an easy-to-use online program that allows you to design content posts and images specifically for social media. You can also post directly from the platform to a social media profile or page.

When creating written content, establish a unique voice and tone that correlates with your target audience.

For example, if your target audience age group is between 50-75years old, it would not be appropriate to use modern slang or catch phrases in your language and written content. Adopting a more mature tone could help relate to this audience.

To write catchy headlines or subjects for your content, we recommend using Hubspot's Blog Idea's Generator or Coschedule's Headline Analyser.

Hemmingway Editor is a free grammar tool that highlights grammar errors and makes suggestions to simply sentences. We use this tool regularly at iASP Central when creating content, as it helps to keep sentences clear and succinct.

Use a Social Media Scheduling Tool!

Social media scheduling tools allow you to manage and organise social media posts from one place.

We suggest Buffer or Hootsuite as our top social media scheduling tools. These platforms allow you to streamline posts and schedule for release ahead of time.

Using an editorial content calendar along with a social media scheduling tool will keep your content and team organised.

To Sum it Up....

Plan, develop and implement SMM tactics that support your strategy.

When planning marketing activities, budget and content,use the available marketing templates to help assist you and keep organised.

Ensure the activities carried out relate directly to your target audience, goals and business values.

Join us next time for Part 5, as we focus on the execution of SMM tactics and how to review and report on key analytics throughout the process.

Have you developed social media marketing tactics before? How did you implement them?

What marketing activities did you use?

Let us know on the iASP Central Facebook Page or Get in Touch.

References:

• How to Build an All-Star Social Media Team in 5 Steps
• The 25 Top Social Media Management Tools for Businesses of All Sizes
• 26 Tips to Create a Strong Social Media Content Strategy

Marketing Activity Templates:

• How To Plan Your Marketing Budget With Six Free Templates
• Marketing Plan Template and Guide
• 7 Social Media Templates to Save You Hours of Work
• 
  

Budget Template:

• How to Manage Your Entire Marketing Budget [Free Budget Planner Templates]
• 8 Marketing Budget Templates

Editorial Content Calendar:

• Free Editorial Calendar Templates
• How To Make 2017 Super Organized With An Easy Content Calendar Template
• How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar: Tips and Templates

Welcome to the third edition of the iASP Central series How to Create a Social Media Strategy.

Effective Social Media Marketing often starts with a detailed plan.

Creating a strategy can help drive goals, marketing activities and measure success.

If you've just joined in, here is a quick recap of iASP Central's six steps to creating a Social Media Marketing (SMM) Strategy:

1. Auditing
2. Goals
3. Target Audiences
4. Planning
5. Execution
6. Reviewing

In Part One - How to Perform a Social Media Audit, we reviewed social media profiles to determine which are generating the best return on investment (ROI).

Part Two - How to Set Goals and Objectives addressed the importance of creating detailed, specific goals using the S.M.A.R.T formula.

Next we focus how to identify target audiences, in order to develop effective marketing communication tactics.

Part Three - How to Identify Key Target Audiences

Engaging the right target audience is vital to SMM success.

Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter use the term Audience to refer to fans, followers or a broader social community.

Companies target specific audiences via marketing messages, through traditional media channels like television or radio, or online media channels like Facebook or e-Mail.

A target audience is a group of people who are likely to be interested in your product, service or offer, and who will be the target or focus of your campaign.

For example, you might target single men for a Valentine's Day promotion, or you might target working mums for a new product you are launching.

A target audience is often also referred to as a Target Market, a Target Group, or Focus Group.

Getting your marketing messages to the right people can be a tricky task! It can be the difference between marketing failure or success.

Marketing messages aim to influence, engage, educate or persuade consumers to react in a specific way. For example - to buy a product or to provide an email address.

But even the most creative SMM campaigns can fail if messages are not communicated to the right target audience.

To get the most out of a SMM initiative, it's important to understand an audience's demographics and underlying motivations.

Identifying key target audiences can help develop effective marketing messages and maximise ROI.

So what method can you use to help identify target audience?

We've put together a 8 step process to guide you:

Step 1. Define a Target Audience

The more you know about customers, the easier it will be to engage with them.

Ask yourself who are you targeting?

Brainstorm the following:

• Who is your ideal customer? Who would benefit or enjoy your new product / service / offer the most? How would you describe them?
  
• List their demographics including: Age Group, Gender, Occupation, Interests, Geographic Location, Income, Education, Values.
  
• What products or services are they interested in? Why?
  
• What social media platforms do they use?
  
• Are they desktop or mobile users?
  
• What patterns or similarities can you conclude?
  

Brainstorming practices can help create and identify different market groups. And you may end up targeting different groups with different SMM campaigns.

The practice of grouping customers who exhibit similar traits or interests is called Customer Segmentation.

By segmenting customers into groups, unique buying personas can be developed to engage them.

If you're having trouble identifying a market group, try these iASP Central Tips:

• Review your Social Media Analytics
  
  Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn all feature analytics tools with detailed audience information.
  
  The Facebook Insights People tab features information on Fans, Followers and People Reached including age, gender and location.
  
  Twitter Analytics - Audience Insights provides key metrics in age, interests, language, lifestyle and gender.
  
  Twitter Analytics' Add a Comparison Audience tool compares audience demographics and interests to a broad Twitter audience.
  
  
• Conduct a Survey or Pole
  
  Surveys are a great way to learn more about an audience on social media.
  
  Create a survey or poll to gain information about your audience, their likes, dislikes and thoughts on products and services.
  
  Twitter Pole is a tool to create voting poll posts. Poll answers can be viewed publicly or privately.
  
  Facebook apps My Polls and Simple Surveys are great tools to create unique surveys on Facebook.
  
  Survey Monkey is an online survey platform that can be integrated with social media and email marketing.

Step 2 - Understand Audience Motivations

Understanding an audience's motivations is an integral part of developing and identifying target groups.

Customer motivations are desires or needs that can drive a customer to purchase.

By identifying the motivations of an audience, it can be easier to establish how you can help them.

Creating a Buying Persona is a great way to predict the needs of your customer.

A Buying Persona is creative description or characterisation of your ideal customer, their behaviours and emotions.

To create a Buying Persona, it's helpful to think from the customer's perspective.

Ask yourself:

• What help does the customer need? What problem do they need solved?
• How do they feel? What behaviours do they exhibit?
• What drives or motivates them to use social media?
• What motivates them to buy?

Creating a buying persona can help develop a deeper understanding of a customer, their buying behaviour and how you can address their needs.

iASP Central Tip:Product Knowledge is key!

Product knowledge is very important.

Once audience motivations are established, you can best match a product or service to suit their needs.

Make sure you know the features and benefits of the products your marketing or selling.

iASP Central Example:

Fictional Scenario: An online e-store Beauty4Us sells all organic beauty products in Australia. They want to promote a new skin product via a SMM campaign.

Target Audience: After brainstorming they have identified their key target market as young women, aged between 15-35years old, with interests in beauty care and health.

Buying Persona: Young women who are looking to buy quality organic skin products, who value eco-friendly products at an affordable price. This audience is interested in understanding ingredients used in the product and how it can benefit their skin.

Motivation: This target audience is driven to find an affordable, organic skin solution online.

By pre-determining customer motivations and behaviours, effective marketing messages can be developed to appeal to their needs.

Step 3 - Create a Value Proposition

This step relates closely to your overall goals and objectives that were set out in Part Two.

Once the motivations and buying behaviours of a target market have been established, focus on why you want to reach this group.

What is your main motivation?

• To sell a product
• To build brand recognition / reputation
• To promote a service or product
• To create a lead or establish a relationship with a customer
• Build social media engagement

Always keep goals in mind when developing target groups. It's important that objectives align with your customer's needs.

A Value Proposition is a statement that explains why a customer would want to buy a product or service. It's a unique statement that sets you aside from competitors, and explains the value a customer receives from your services.

Creating a unique Value Proposition is a great way to help your team better understand a target audience.

Step 4 - Research Competitor's Audiences

Conduct research to establish who competitors are targeting on social media.

In Part One - How to Perform a Social Media Audit we identify the social media platforms your competitors are utilising.

Using the audit results, review your competitor's profiles and report on the following:

• Who is engaging with your competitiors content?
  
  e.g. Are people in certain demographics appearing more than others, such as a specific gender group, or age group, or people within or around a particular location?
  
  
• How is their audience engaging with content?
  
  e.g. Are they liking, commenting, disliking or sharing the content?
  
  
• What type of content are your competitors using?
  
  e.g. Is your competitor using image posts or video posts? What content is gaining the most attention? What language and tone are they using for their social media posts? What content is least effective?
  
  
• What conclusions can you draw from reviewing competitors profiles?
  
  e.g. What content is most effective? What key demographics and interests do their audiences share? What motivates their audience to respond to content?
  
  
• Who are your competitors tagging and engaging with?
  
  e.g. Are your competitors using cross posting or tagging social influencers? Do they post in social Groups or on specific Pages? Do they tag partnerships, sponsors or charities in posts?

By reviewing your competitor's social media activity, you can gain valuable audience information. Formulate different target groups based on your competitors audiences.

This will help you to find if you will be targeting the same audience groups as your competitor, or identify new audience groups that your competitor isn't targetting.

iASP Central Tip:

SemRush is a great social media tool for analysing competitor's Audience Insights . It provides detailed metrics on competitor's audience growth and key demographics.

Step 5 - Determine Audience's SM Platform(s)

Establish where your audience is 'hanging out' on social media.

Research the following:

• Review social media analytics and locate where your chosen target audience spends the most time E.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest or Snapchat. It may not always be the Big 4 social media platforms.
  
  
• Do your social media followers visit the company website?
  
  
• Do they read the company blog or email marketing?
  
  
• What other websites do they spend time on?

By understanding where an audience is spending time online, strategic marketing activities can be developed to reach them.

iASP Central Tip:Review Google Analytics!

Google Analytics is a free tool that can track and measure website and social network performance analytics. It allows you to track traffic to specific website pages and social media.

iASP Central Example:

Fictional Scenario: e-Store Beauty4Us research shows that their target audience of women aged 15-35yrs old are spending the a lot of their time on Instagram.

After reviewing Google Analytics they can tell this target group are also spending time on a beauty blog website, and are often viewing their video content.

Therefore creating video content and sharing it via Instagram could be an effective method to attract and engage this target audience.

Step 6 - Establish the Best Time to Target

What is the best time to reach your audience?

When are they on social media? Day, night, lunch or a specific time?

Publish your content and posts on social media at optimal times when most of your target audience is active on a social media platform.

iASP Central Tip:

Review social media analytics and find out when your audience is most active online.

Facebook Insights: The Local tab allows you to view the peak times a local audience is using and engaging on Facebook.

Buffer: Buffer is a social media scheduling tool which has a paid analytics option, to track audience insights from social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google+. Buffer can provide metrics on the peak times to post content.

Step 7 - How to Reach an Audience

Determine the methods you will use to reach an audience.

How will you reach your audience? What methods will you use to contact them?

There are many ways to reach audiences via social media including:

• Facebook Lead Ads - create a Lead Ads form that directs customers to a sign-up Form or direct webpage contact form.
  
  
• Facebook Advertising and Instagram Advertising - create content targeted adverts that can be delivered to specific target audiences. Import customer's email addresses and create Custom Target Audiences and Look-a-like Audiences to directly target your market group.
  
  
• Facebook Preferred Audience Tool - Create targeted posts to reach an organic audience using this tool.
  
  
• Twitter Advertising - Create geo-targeted posts using details such as location, language, interests and country.
  
  
• LinkedIn Advertising - create persona groups on LinkedIn and advertise directly to them.
  
  
• Facebook Pixel - Installing Facebook Pixel allows you to re-market and track conversions. Display an ad who have recently visited your website or Facebook page. This is a great way to remind customers to take action after engaging with your brand.

Step 8 - Build a Relationship with Audience

The final step focuses on building a relationship with your audience and establishing trust.

Creating good content and reaching your audience via advertising is a great way to gain an audience's attention. However it's important to consider how you will get your audience to take the next step and convert them into a lead.

Establishing a personal connection with your audience is key. To do this, try to provide an offer or something of benefit to your audience. This is often referred to in marketing as a 'hook'. Showcase your customer service skills by offering value and assistance.

Think about the following:

• How can you build trust with your audience?
  
  Respond to your audiences comments and queries in a timely, professional and personable manner. This can help establish trust and build rapport with individuals. Remember to respond as a 'real person,' be genuine in your approach and use language that is casual yet professional.
  
  
• What can you offer your audience? What could you offer of benefit?
  
  Think about what you could offer your audience to establish a personal connection. Here are some examples:
  • Free one-on-one consultation to expand further on your services
  • Downloadable ebook with tips on your industry and how you can best help your customer
  • Tip sheet or downloadable PDF document
  • Discount or limited offer on services
  • Giveaway or competition
  
  
  
• How will you turn a lead into a prospect? How will you follow up?
  
  Once you have established an offer, consider how you will follow up with your audience once you provide the offer.
  
  How do you plan to contact your audience?
  • Phone Call
  • Email
  • Newsletter
  • Printed letter or pamphlet
  • Text
  
  
  Organise your follow up method before you create the offer.
  
  In order to follow up, it's important to collect customer contact details. Incorporate this in your offer.
  
  e.g. If you are creating an offer on Facebook, we suggest linking the offer to a website Contact Form. A contact form will collect important contact details such as name, address, contact number and email. Once a form has been completed, the offer can be claimed. This provides you an opportunity to follow up in a more personal way and grow your relationship.

To conclude...

A well defined Target Audience can help ensure SMM messages are being sent to the right people.

By identifying the key demographics, behaviours and motivations of an audience, marking messages can be tailored to reach them.

This 8 Step process will help provide the main framework for a SMM strategy.

Join us next time as we focus on 'How to Plan and Execute Marketing Activities.'

Have you created target groups or audiences for SMM before?

What methods did you use?

Let us know on the iASP Central Facebook Page or Get in Touch.

Resources:

• Your Guide to Social Media Targeting Via Sprout
• The Complete Guide To Building Your Personal Brand
• 6 Steps To Decoding Your Target Audience
• How to Find Your Target Audience on Social Media

Welcome to the second edition of the iASP Central series How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy.

Our journey began with 'Part One - How to Perform a Social Media Audit'

Part One provided an overview on how to perform a social media audit, in order to establish which social media profiles are generating return on investment (ROI) for your business. 

This time we're exploring setting goals and objectives for a Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategy. 

Part Two - How to Set Goals and Objectives 

SMM can be an effective way to build brand awareness and engage new leads for a business.

To get the most out of any SMM initiative, we suggest creating a plan with clearly defined goals and objectives.

Why set goals and objectives?

Goals are desired outcomes that you want to achieve with your efforts.

Goals provide a framework for a strategy and outline what you aim to accomplish.

Objectives are closely aligned with goals. Objectives are the detailed steps taken in order to achieve the goal.

Setting goals and objectives can be considered an important part of any SMM strategy.

Setting goals and objectives can help:

• provide structure and direction for a strategy

• improve SMM efforts

• challenge and motivate team members

• measure performance and results

So how can you create strong, realistic and challenging goals for you SMM strategy?

The answer: Create S.M.A.R.T Goals!

S.M.A.R.T stands for:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time Based

The S.M.A.R.T formula can be applied when creating goals.

S.M.A.R.T goals have a greater chance of being accomplished. 

Why? 

The aim of the goal is clear, specific and easy to understand. 

When goals are clear, it can be easier to apply the efforts required to accomplish the goal.

Broad and undefined goals can leave a SMM strategy lacking direction and clarity.

Let's dive a little deeper into the meaning of S.M.A.R.T...

Specific - Be specific!

When writing your goal, provide as much detail as possible about what you aim to achieve.

Always consider the following:

• Who is involved in achieving the goal?

• Who are you targeting?

• What do you specifically want to achieve?

• How will you achieve this goal?

iASP Central Tip: When creating a specific goal for your social media strategy, consider the following:

• What social media platforms you will use? e.g Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn

• Who will help to achieve this goal? e.g. a team or specific team member

• Who is your target audience? e.g. age group, gender, interests, location

Measurable - include a metric in your goal!

Track and measure your performance by including key metrics in your goal. This will allow you to analyse the results.

iASP Central Tip: When adding a metric to a goal, consider the social media platform you are using and the type of metric you want aim for. 

Keep in mind:

• Do you want to increase page likes, engagement, follows or comments?

• What specific metric are you aiming for? e.g. 25 Likes, or 25% percentage increase

• Which analytics tools will you use to measure the results?

We recommend using a social media analytics tool such as Buffer or Hootsuite to measure progress and results. These tools allow you to schedule posts and track important metrics. 

Achievable - Ask yourself is your goal achievable?

A goal can be challenging, but mostly importantly it should be realistic and attainable.

While it is great to have ambitious goals, if a goal is set too high, it can become counter-productive.

Realistic goals can help motivate a team and create a strong work ethic. Realistic goals can create a vision that with hard work, the desired outcome can be achieved.

Setting goals that are 'out of reach' can deter others from working towards the goal. It can also create a notion of failure from the beginning.

iASP Central Tip: When first setting goals for your SMM strategy, we suggest starting out small and try not to overextend the goal.

Goals can be adjusted throughout a SMM campaign.

For example, instead of aiming for a large number of Facebook Likes, such as 1000 New Page Likes in one month, start small with a goal that is in reach.

Review your results from the Social Media Audit performed in Step 1 and create a realistic goal based on this social media performance.

Depending on your Facebook engagement results, you may find that aiming for 60-100 Page Likes in one month is more realistic and achievable.

It may also help to break down the desired outcome into a shorter time-frame. E.g. Aim for 15 likes per week, an approx total of 60 likes per month.

Relevant - Create goals that are relevant!

Ensure goals are relevant to:

• the project or campaign 

• business values 

• target market

• employee skill level and team members

We recommend you steer away from goals that are not relevant to your business or your customer.

iASP Central Example Goal:

• Broad Goal - To create open communication and engagement with our customers via our social media community.

• S.M.A.R.T Goal - To increase customer engagement on Twitter, by aiming for 5 x Mentions per week over the course of 16 weeks. A total of 80 x mentions.

In order to understand the relevance of this goal, let's assume a large majority of your Twitter followers are customers. Therefore the potential to reach your key target audience via Twitter is very high.

The customers who follow your Twitter page are far more likely to engage with your brand, as it is familiar to them. So the goal is relevant to the business and key target audience. 

Now consider this alternative scenario... Your business has a LinkedIn Page that is not maintained regularly. It has a small amount of Followers, which consist mainly of employees.

Therefore reaching customers through the LinkedIn platform would prove to be far more challenging. As the page is not monitored, replying to comments would also be difficult. In this situation, including a LinkedIn goal is not as relevant.

Time-based - Set a deadline for the goal to be accomplished!

A time-based goal can motivate others, as it creates a sense urgency to meet the deadline. Time based goals also help manage team expectations, workloads and prioritising tasks.

After you have created the key goals, list the objectives under each goal. Objectives are the detailed steps you plan to take in order to achieve that goal. See our example below.

iASP Central Goal and Objectives Example:

Broad Goal: To increase brand awareness and build authority through the iASP Central blog

S.M.A.R.T Goal: To gain 100 blog subscribers from 1st August to 30th October 2017, to increase brand awareness and build authority in our social community. An average of 8-9 subscribers per week.

Objectives: 

 In order to achieve this goal, we plan to action the following steps:

• To release regular blog articles. This will provide fresh, interesting and engaging content that may potentially attract new subscribers.

• To run paid Facebook Ads to promote the blog, targeting key demographic groups

• To review Facebook Insights daily to track and analyse campaign results

• To review and report on blog metrics weekly, in order to track new subscribers   

  
  

  That's a Wrap!

  We hope the S.M.A.R.T formula will help you to create clear, realistic and achievable goals for your SMM strategy. 
  
  
  S.M.A.R.T goals can help you get the most out of your efforts and help to motivate a team.      
  
  
  Have you set goals and objectives for a SMM strategy before? What method did you use?

  Let us know on the iASP Central Facebook Page or Get in Touch.

  
  

  Join us next time when we return for Part 3 of the series 'Identifying Key Target Audiences' 

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Resources:

  
  

  How to Create Achievable Social Media Goals

  9 Social Media Goals You Can Set for Your Business (and How to Track Them)

  4 Social Media Goals Every Business Should Measure

  7 Popular Goal-Setting Strategies That Will Help You Achieve Great Things on Social Media

  
  

  Don't Just Create Social Media Goals - Reach Them

  
  
  
  

Welcome to the iASP Central blog series that will teach you How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy.

Social Media can be an effective tool for communicating and sharing information online with current and potential stakeholders in your enterprise.

When businesses promote or advertise through these platforms, it's called Social Media Marketing or SMM.

Social media marketing (SMM) is a great way to reach new and existing customers. It can also provide an opportunity to send important messages about your products and services.

Being active on social media and posting regular content isn't a guarantee that you will capture the attention of customers (unfortunately!)

There is a vast amount of content available on social media. It can be tricky to stand out. So it's essential your marketing efforts are generating the best results.

One of the best ways to make sure you're on the right path is to create a strategy!

A well structured strategic plan could be considered a vital starting point of any SMM initiative.

Developing a strategy can be a short exercise or a detailed and lengthy process, depending on what you aim to achieve with your social efforts. In either case, the exercise may prove to be invaluable. A strategy can provide direction, help examine customer behaviours and measure performance.

We will cover all six steps in this weekly series, to provide you with guidance and tools to help create a killer SMM strategy!

Not sure where to start? Read on as we begin with part one, a Social Media Audit.

Part One - How to Perform a Social Media Audit 

Our first step in creating a SMM Strategy is to perform a Social Media Audit.

Why?

An audit is an opportunity to review, reflect and evaluate your current position in the social media landscape.

It can reveal which social media platforms and practices are working for your business and which are not.

Auditing can also get your social media efforts back on track and help establish a plan based on your required outcomes.

After all there is no point creating an action plan, unless you have reviewed your current performance!

The aim of this audit is to find out which profiles generate the best return on investment (ROI).

Some businesses make the mistake of having too many social media profiles. This can end up becoming time-consuming, costly to maintain or forgotten all together. This is not always the best practice and can impact the return on investment (ROI) that media engagement delivers.

Instead we recommend researching social media platforms most relevant to your industry and your customers. Invest time into the ones that work for your business.

If you are starting in social media, you may want to begin with one or two platforms. Facebook or Google + are commonly used for enterprises.

Then once you are happy with their performance, you can look for opportunities on other platforms.

To further help, we have compiled a list of online analytics tools and templates to get started.

Follow these steps and you could be auditing in no time!

Step 1 - Set up a Social Media Audit Template

The first step of this audit is to set up an audit template or spreadsheet.

Use an audit template to record the data in one place, which will make it easier to review later on.

You can download a template or even create your own simple spreadsheet.

Record, organise and compare data collected throughout the audit process on the spreadsheet.

A spreadsheet is also easy for team mates to access and contribute to.

iASP Central Tip: If you don't have time to create one from scratch, there are a number of free templates available for download. We have provided some links in the Resources list at the end of the article.

Step 2 - Identify Social Media Profiles

List them on the audit template or spreadsheet you set up in Step 1.

Remember that Pinterest account you may have created a few years ago but never used? Can't remember exactly? Could a past employee or family member may have set up a profile without your knowledge? Well let's find out.

How?

Perform a Google Search to locate the social media profiles associated with your business.

It's important to know which profiles exist, even if they haven't been maintained or updated recently.

This can help determine which profiles are beneficial and worth maintaining, versus those that aren't.

List the accounts on the spreadsheet, including the URLs and passwords.

Step 3 - Review Social Media Analytics

Reviewing analytics is an important step of this audit.

Analytics measure overall patterns, behaviours and performance.They convey how well a social profile is performing.

Analytics can include various metrics such as Reach & Frequency: The size and demographics of your audience and how often they were exposed to your campaign and Engagement: The actions users took such as new Facebook Likes or new Twitter Followers, sharing your content with others or visiting your corporate webpage

Where can you find analytics for social media?

Sometimes there is so much data available, it can be difficult to know what is the most valuable.

To figure this out, ask yourself what you're aiming to achieve through each social media profile?

At iASP Central, we focus most efforts on Facebook and Twitter.

Our primary target audience consists of current and potential customers for the iASP Technology Platform, which facilitates publication of corporate websites, e-stores and enterprise software applications.

Our current strategy is to engage our social media community, by building a hub of informational resources valuable to our clients.

Therefore the primary metrics we measure audience and engagement, number of followers and the amount of mentions the content we publish generates.

This is some of the data we find most useful to record at iASP Central:

iASP Central Tip: Facebook Insights feature a data export tool, that allows you to export a summery of analytics to a spreadsheet. It features a date range and data type export option, that provides data specific information on engagement, reach, impressions and more.

Links to these tools are included in the Resources at the bottom of the article.

Step 4 - Review Branding

Review branding across all social media profiles. Is the branding current and consistent?

Write down your findings on the audit spreadsheet.

Step 5 - Monitor Mentions

Find out when and where the business is being 'mentioned' online.

What are mentions?

Mentions are when your business name or relevant keywords are cited on the web. They can appear in social media, search pages, videos and more.

iASP Central Tip: We recommend Mention.com. This free tool provides real-time alerts when your business name is mentioned on social media, websites, blogs and more.

Record top mentions on your spreadsheet.

Step 6 - Research Competitors

Now let's talk benchmarking!

It's time to compare your social media to industry competitors. By reviewing your competitors, you may discover potential strengths, weaknesses and other opportunities in the social media market.

Tools:

Step 7-Compare and Analyse

The final step of the audit is to analyse your findings! Let's take a closer look at your audit spreadsheet.

Audit Complete!

Continue to use your audit spreadsheet to track future data and examine the audit results.

Stay tuned for the next release in the series: How to set S.M.A.R.T Goals - Part Two

Have you completed a social media audit before? Were you surprised by the results?
Let us know on the iASP Central Facebook Page or Get in Touch.