How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy - Part Five

Votes: 0

Score: 0

By Jane Daffy - Client Services on Wednesday, 7 February 2018

How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy - Part Five

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?

Social Media Analytics can provide data and reporting on how well social media activities are performing. This includes content posts and advertising. Analytics can also provide key insights into target audiences, who is viewing and engaging with content.

The data you choose to measure and track shouldl be based on your SMM goals.

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.