Social Media Strategy 2020: The Ultimate Guide With Easy to Follow Steps

This social media strategy 2022 guidebook will help you drive more traffic to your website or social media pages. The idea is to plan, create, and execute your social media marketing campaigns using this guidebook anytime. Whether you are a business owner who has just started out or an organization who is looking for some new ideas to improve their current social media strategy. We have got you covered!

Just follow these simple tips and tricks, step by step and see the change for yourself!

Below is a list of topics that we will cover in this guide. Go ahead and click on any of these links, and you’ll be taken to that specific section.

Table Of Contents

Step 1: Know Your Audience
Step 2: Know Your Competitors
Step 3: Content Creation
Step 4: Profile Set-up
Step 5: Social Media Calendar
Step 6: Grow Your Audience
Step 7: Engage Your Audience
Step 8: Lead Magnets and Call Of Action
Step 9: Analytics
Step 10: Customer Satisfaction and Retention

Step 1: Know Your Audience

The first and most important step of all is to know your audience. And it’s not just about social media but even before you start your business, you should have a clear idea about your target audience. After all, they are the ones because of whom you started your business in the first place. It would help if you can know specifically the range of their age, location, occupation, income, and even likes, and dislikes of your target audience. You could communicate well and better offer your product and services. You can also know your audience with help of research and analytics. (Learn more about how to use Analytics for the growth of your business in Step 9)

Here’re some points to keep in mind while doing your research about your target audience:

Who are they?
Where are they from?
What are their interests?
What are their spending pattern?
When are they active on social media? What’s their usual schedule like?
(Very important to know to draft your social media strategy)
The similar (the ones related to your business, competitors to be specific) pages, groups or sites, they follow.
Do they even want the product or services you are selling or planning to sell in future?
If yes, then why would they buy your product and service and not your competitor’s?
If no, then how are you planning to create the need of your product or service in their lives?

Step 2: Know Your Competitors

Competitor Analysis would be the next essential step before your finalize your social media strategy. In fact, your social media strategy or upcoming marketing campaigns depends a lot upon your research of what your competitors are offering and the way they execute their marketing and sales activities. You can learn a lot more about your own product and services too, when you dive deep into the strength and weakness of your competitor’s marketing style. To know is not to copy here. To know, is to be better and do better than any of your competitors have ever done before.

Having said that, let’s go straight away to the checklist, you need to keep in mind for your research:

Make a list of your direct and indirect competitors
Look at their websites.
What product and services are they offering? And the unique selling point (USP) of their product/services.
What are their prices? And the locations they target?
Their social media presence. How often do they post? When do they post? And what are they posting?
Research on their blogs, and social networks.
Study your competitor’s promotional activities, i.e., their marketing campaigns on social media.
What free services do they giveaway to their target audience (special offers, e-books, webinars, demo classes, sample product, etc.)
What kind of service or support package do the customers receive after the product and service is delivered to them.

Step 3: Content Creation

Your content is your lead magnet (Learn more about lead magnets in Step 8). It’s where you define your brand or expertise. Different types of content you could create for your target audience would be:

Graphics
Video marketing or YouTube Videos
Blogs
E-books
Podcasts
Templates
Quizzes,
Infographics,
Reports,
Case Studies,
Guidebooks, etc.

Make sure that you create a engaging content that deliver helpful and relevant information to your target audience or prospects. Irrelevant or repetitive content is the result of fewer numbers of clicks and reach on your posts and videos.

You can get a lot of content ideas when you are researching about your competitors. But you can collect a lot more through simple google searchers using the search results to find out what’s trending in your industry.

Example: If you want to create blogs or YouTube videos about different ice cream recipes, then run a simple google search to find out what’s trending or what is it that people are looking for. And then make a list of these keywords for content creation.

Or use tools like BuzzSumo or Ubersugges t to create content on target keywords.

Content creation and planning the distribution of your content with the help of a social media calendar could be overwhelming process. It also depends upon factors like what stage you are at with your business or what marketing budget you have planned out.

If you are a business owner who has just started out. Then make sure you start small with your social media strategy as well. Use free content creation tools to create content. And don’t think about targeting every social media handle all at once. Instead, focus on just one specific blog, video or graphic, and plan out accordingly.

Remember, ONE content could be used in different ways. You can write a blog, make a YouTube video, 2-3 Instagram and Facebook stories, 2-3 Ad campaign posters, IGTV videos, 5-6 tweets, and even a podcast on just ONE SPECIFIC CONTENT IDEA.

Your strategy should be to start small, use free tools, and distribute one content in different innovative ways. Also, use free social media management tools to schedule your content.

If you are a business owner with a marketing team and a marketing budget. Then you should build a social media calendar for 30 or 60 days. Solid distribution of your content using social media management tools, like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buffer, etc. would keep you organized, lower your stress levels, and help you focus on other aspects of your business.

Also, read this blog post on simple content marketing techniques to attract more customers here.

Step 4: Profile Set-up

Start setting up your profile on every social media handle. Your bio, display picture, and landing page link, should be very specific to your business and be simple to read and understand by your target audience.

The most common social media handles to set up your profile in:

Social media calendars are your planner for the days or months ahead in your business. These calendars are customized according to your business and target audience, and it helps you take a back seat for a while and see what’s working, and not working on your social media strategy.

The social media calendars are also important from the perspective that, social media is not the only thing to handle. You don’t want to spend all your time in planning social media posts, stories, videos, Ad campaigns, etc.

Therefore, a personalized social media planner for you and your social media strategist or team would not only save your time and energy, but also, lower your stress levels in trying to do it all and to know it all situations.

If you are a business owner who has just started out. Then planning 10-15 days ahead is more than enough. Remember to deliver value to your customers or potential prospects. Mark down special days or holidays to create some extra special posts for your target audience or run campaigns for special discount offers. After all, these are the days when active users increase in number.

Lastly, check for analytics, i.e which posts, stories, videos, or Ads worked for you and your audience interacted most with. These analytics would help you plan the further upcoming 10-15 days better than before and you can extract out what didn’t work for you previously. (Learn more about Analytics in Step 9).

If you are a business owner with a marketing team and a marketing budget. Then 30 days, 60 days or 90 days calendar are made for you. You already know what works for your business, and your target audience. Also, when and how to target them. Therefore, a calendar very specific to your posts and launch dates would work best for you.

Don’t forget to take care of special days or holidays to create some extra special posts for your target audience or run campaigns for referrals, end of season sale, and other special discount offers.

Lastly, check for analytics, i.e which posts, stories, videos, or Ads worked for you and your audience interacted most with. These analytics would help you plan the next calendar better by introducing new campaigns and excluding what didn’t work for you previously. (Learn more about Analytics in Step 9).

Pro tip:

Be flexible with your social media calendar. Always leave room for immediate changes and new ideas.

In case you want a personalized social media strategy with a editable and ready to use social media calendar made only for your business, then feel free to contact us here.

Step 6: Grow Your Audience

Another key aspect of your social media strategy 2022 is brand awareness and to increase your followers in every social media handle, specifically the ones where your target audience are mostly active. There are two ways to grow your audience and bring them together:

Organic Traffic
Paid Traffic

Organic Traffic– Organic traffic are the visitors that find your website either through search results or social media presence. One of the best ways to grow your audience is to constantly provide value or relevant information to them. Write blogs using target keywords or long tail keywords that answer a specific question for them.

Also, make sure that your blogs and articles are SEO friendly. So work on your metadata, meta description, Slug URLs, and external and internal links. Remember, that it takes time to see results through both, On-page and Off-page SEO techniques.

So to speed things up, use social media to grow your audience and increase brand awareness. Now, there are a lot of ways to increase your followers on social media organically. Once you understand the different social media algorithms, you can start posting accordingly and boost your traffic like never before, even without a marketing budget.

If you are a business owner who has just started out with minimum to zero marketing budget. Then take your time to understand the different social media algorithm before your launch.

Paid Traffic– The visitors that come to your website through paid promotions on different social media handle is called the paid traffic. Paid promotions could be done in the following ways:

Google Ads and Bing Ads
Facebook Ads
Instagram Ads
LinkedIn Ads
Twitter Ads
Influencer marketing.

Step 7: Engage Your Audience

Constant interaction and engagement with your target audience is the small secret of social media strategy people often miss out on. Always engage with your customers or potential prospects. Use social media as a way to connect with them.

Reply to comments or queries in the first 1 hour of posting,
Answer some of their queries in the private chat windows too,
Use Chat Bots or live chat sessions on your website,
Ask and understand what they want,
Discuss problems, and the solutions they are looking forward to,
Always deliver what you promised you would after the discussion of various problems and solutions through your product or services.

Post engagement and interaction would help your target audience know you and your business better. And believe me when I say, there is nothing more profitable than a targeted happy audience base!!!

Step 8: Lead Magnets and Call Of Action

Lead magnets are appealing offers that you make to your potential prospects for their contact information in exchange for some valuable resource.

There are different kinds of lead magnets that you should keep in mind while creating content for your target audience.

Your lead magnet could be anything starting from a service on a discounted price to products or services you giveaway for free, in order to increase your contact list and brand awareness. Freebies in particular are popular these days. Also, they help you drive more leads, and it is often followed by a compelling call of action. Some example of freebies are:

E-books,
Coupons,
Gift Cards,
Templates,
Case Studies,
Demo Courses,
Sample products,
Consultation calls,
Trial subscription for 7-10 days,
Online webinar or live classes, etc.

Your lead magnets depend upon the type of business you own and the kind of content you create. Also, you don’t have to giveaway all your product or services for free, of course. But a part of it should be out there for your target audience, in order to understand your business, before they make a decision to buy from you and not your competitors.

These lead magnets would not only provide value to your target audience but it should also be so irresistible that it is followed by a compelling call of action.

Call of action is the desired action you wish your potential prospects to perform.

Example: the free e-books could only be downloaded once they have provided you with their email addresses. (It will help you grow your email list.)

Or one has to visit your landing page, in order to avail the free subscription or use your free templates bundle. (Landing pages can then again direct them to another call of action.)

Step 9: Analytics

While you use Google Analytics to track conversions on your website and other social networking sites and applications. It is also advisable to analyze your traffic through various individual social media analytics and insights to understand you target audience better.

Example: You can see how we’re able to measure impressions, total audience count, number of clicks, engagements, and metrics on which it is all based. And when you compare this data below with the previous month, it gives you an overall report on your page’s performance and growth on Pinterest. This data will help know what your followers love to interact with and then plan your next marketing campaign accordingly.

While, Goggle Analytics help you know which marketing campaigns are performing well. Individual social media analytics and insights would tell you how your audience interact with your posts and stories, and what kind of content and at what timings you should be posting, in order to drive more leads.

Example: Look at these Instagram insights below. These are very basic data that is present right in front of you in your Instagram account. But we often miss out considering these small but important factors. If noticed, this data could help you immensely to know your audience (age, gender, location, etc) which in return would benefit you in planning the type of content you create, locations you can target and the timings you need to post.

Some social media analytics and insights to look into are:

Facebook Insights
LinkedIn Analytics
Instagram Insights
Twitter Analytics
YouTube Analytics
Pinterest Analytics

There are also various social media management tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buffer, Social Pilot, etc, that offer collaborative data of all the social media networks at one place to you. Which not only help you save time to study all the analytics at one dashboard but also makes it quite hassle-free and easy to understand for you and your marketing team.

Step 10: Customer Satisfaction and Retention

Like I said before, there is nothing more profitable than satisfied customers. Your last but crucial step to follow for your social media strategy to be success is customer satisfaction and retention. Your audience are what help you build your brand. So make sure, you don’t forget them once you make a sale.

Also, if a person has purchased your product or service, and is happy with the delivery of the same. Then he is more likely to leave good reviews and in best cases, recommend you to other potential prospects. Some of the things you could do to improve your customer satisfaction and retention are:

Ask for feedback,
Read all complaints and compliments,
Give customer services through multiple channels, like social media, emails, live chats, chat bots, calls etc, and connect with them in case of an issue,
Post all the compliments, and appreciation on your website and social media,
Give additional benefits to old customers through special discounts or referral programs,
Give them self-help options like detailed FAQs, manuals or video tutorials.

Hope you enjoyed reading the ultimate social media strategy 2022 guidebook which is presented to you in the simplest way possible. Let me know in the comments below about the ideas that you would love to implement right away! Or come back later to tell us what marketing campaign worked for you or your organization. I bet you’ll have something to say!!