Introduction

Nowadays, the hashtag is much more than just the pound key on your phone; it has become an indispensable content marketing and eMarketing strategy and social media tool for categorizing posts and making content easily searchable. By using the right hashtags, your business can be more visible on social media and encourage audiences to join in on the conversation. Hashtags gained popularity over microblog sites first and were soon supported by many well-known social networking sites, including Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+.

11 Benefits of Hashtag

By using hashtags, small and large businesses alike can benefit from the popularity of these social media platforms. A hashtag can be incredibly valuable if it is used strategically. You can use them to expose your content to more people, raise brand awareness, target a specific group of people, boost your search traffic optimization tool, and use trending topics and hot topics to your advantage, among other things. The following list will show 11 benefits of using hashtags.

1. Hashtags are Great for Promoting Your Business

The use of hashtags allows your audience to take part in your conversations. Your social media followers will be able to follow what’s happening in real-time when you establish a hashtag for a promotion or event. To be effective with hashtags, you should use them moderately. In your posts and updates, you will not need to include them all. You should also avoid using long hashtags.

2. Hashtags Encourage Audience Engagement

By using hashtags, you can open up conversations for your audience depending on which social platform you are using. At the time of deciding which hashtags to use, you should keep in mind that hashtags are used differently on each platform. For example, hashtags that are used on Instagram are likely to describe the picture and video content more than anything else. Other social media platforms, such as Twitter, have hashtags that are focused on a certain topic or group of people that you want to engage.

Use Appropriate and Specific Hashtags for Each Platform

If you are using hashtags on different platforms, make sure you use them appropriately. In most cases, you will be given guidelines for picking and using the appropriate social media platform. When you use the most relevant and popular hashtags on each platform for your business and events, you will be able to reach more people. In addition, by using the paid search campaigns, you will target your audience better and improve the conversions rate of your social media account. Target audiences usually result in more engagement.

3. Hashtags Make Searching More Efficient

The use of hashtags can greatly simplify the process of finding relevant posts as well as specific posts. Search results will be constantly updated when hashtags are popular. Social media platforms and search engines make hashtags more visible when you optimize conversations, content, and updates. Using hashtags is an effective way to search for content and people who are speaking about specific topics.

4. Hashtags Make It Easier To Find You

You will be able to conduct more efficient searches with hashtags, as mentioned earlier. When someone searches for you or what you offer, they do the same. Your audience can use hashtags to search and discover what your business offers across multiple platforms. Twitter and Instagram both have hashtag search options. People who are interested in your services, as well as existing customers, can use hashtags to search for information and posts about you.

5. Hashtags Attract More Followers

The use of hashtags on some social networks, such as Instagram, will help you reach more people, and this will almost always lead to more followers. This can be used as a lead generation strategy for your social media account. Your business becomes more visible when you have more followers. The use of hashtags is more helpful on other platforms for representing the topic of a post and helping users to find related content more quickly.

6. Hashtags Help You to Establish Relationships with Followers

Establishing relationships with your followers can be done in a unique way by using hashtags. People love sharing important moments, events, and purchases through hashtags. They can help you make the most of these social media practices. This enables the opportunity for real customer engagement and more exposure for you. Creating relationships with your followers is possible since people enjoy posting, and you want your followers to be engaged.

7. Hashtags are Great for Cross Promotion

As soon as you understand which hashtags are best suited to your business or event, you are likely to use them across multiple platforms. These hashtags are consistently used across different platforms to create multiple conversations. You will gain more exposure and engage more customers with this.

8. Customers Can Easily Give Their Input

Customer feedback will have a tremendous impact on your reputation and business methods. By using social media platforms, you have direct access to the opinions and ideas of your customers. Additionally, they give you an idea of what is hot and trending on the social media platforms that you may have missed otherwise. Hashtags also help you to gather customer feedback and encourage customer engagement, as you can easily find the reaction of the customers about events, promotions, and properties by using hashtags.

9. Hashtags for Photo Content Description

A great photo is the best way of advertisement for selling any product or offering any service. It is important to reach as many people as possible when you post your photography on social media platforms. One of the main business goals of your social media accounts is to gain followers, likes, and appreciation from the viewers. You should use the best hashtags along with relevant ads to describe what you are selling or offering.

10. Hashtags Specify Your Niche

In most cases, buyers have a certain mindset. You can use the best hashtags to promote your properties that suit their requirements, regardless of whether they are looking for luxury homes, ranch-style properties, or vacation homes. For example, you may own an Italian restaurant in Mont-Royal. Using Hashtags like #italianrestaurant, #MontRoyalitalianrestaurant, #MontRoyalrestaurant, etc., you can specify the specific details of your niche, location, and specifics.  Recently, YouTube has launched an optimized landing page for users to discover niche content and videos.

11. Hashtags are a Powerful Marketing Tool

The most important thing is to make sure you know the hashtags that are most relevant to your business and clients in order to use them efficiently. The use of hashtags can help your business reach its full potential when using social media marketing online.

Conclusion

Increasingly, hashtags (#) are being used to facilitate digital interaction, bringing people from all over the world together under one idea. Though hashtags have cemented their popularity in the digital landscape, many people still do not understand what a hashtag is or how it can boost their business.

The executive chairman of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos, has rightly said, ““If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”

Bang on! What is a business going to do without a proper social media strategy? As an omnichannel data powerhouse, V12 says that 90% of the customers try to get associated with a brand or want to purchase its products or services through social media. Further, an effective marketing plan, including a powerful content strategy for social media, helps a business to:

1. Achieve a sense of purpose
2. Determine your business goal
3. Define your target audience
4. Achieve clarity regarding the key targets on a short-term basis

Yes, we know that the planning part is extensive. However, by following an easy step-by-step guide, and setting up some short-term measurable goals, you can propel your business towards success. So, read on as we discuss how to create a social media strategy or the document outlining the social media goals for your business in 10 steps.

1. Have you heard of S.M.A.R.T goals?

So, let’s start with the first step, and that is setting S.M.A.R.T social media goals that agree with the objectives of your business. How else are you going to measure the success/failure of your business and the return on investment?

Why you will use the S.M.A.R.T Goal Framework:

 By S.M.A.R.T goals, we refer to goals that are:

1. Specific
2. Measurable
3. Attainable
4. Relevant
5. Time-bound

S.M.A.R.T goals will help you channelize your actions and yield visible business results. For example, many businesses collaborate with influencers and content creators on Instagram as a part of their social media content plan. Thus, they interact with the niche audience and attract the traffic they want.

2. Tracking Value Metrics:

 You can easily find and assess the quantitative metrics, such as the number of followers on social media. However, it is important to get an idea about the real values. These real values include engagement, click-through, and conversion rates. However, it is important to know which metrics are important for which network. For example, In the case of LinkedIn, one should go for click-through. On the other hand, you can use Instagram for brand awareness, and measure the success of a campaign on Facebook through cost-per-click.

3. Know Your Audience:

Do you know who your real audiences are? Unless you know them and have an idea about what they want to see, you will not be able to create an effective content plan for social media. In other words, if you know your audience, you can easily turn them into your customers. By knowing your customers, we mean having an idea about the following.

1. Age
2. Location/Geography
3. Average income
4. Job
5. Interests and others

4. Gather Essential Data:

Social media marketing and social media content strategy cannot be based on assumptions. Those should be data-driven. You can use social media analytics and tools to find the relevant information you want. For, it is not wise to guess that users of a particular age group (say 18-35) are using a particular platform frequently. If you are planning to target that particular age group, you should have the data to focus on a definite social media platform.

5. Know who your competitors are and keep track of their social media activities:

It’s time for some competitive analysis. Well, this analysis can be performed using advanced tools to know who your competitors are. Besides, it will help you know where they are winning over you and where they are lagging behind. Further, it will help you explore various opportunities. For example, if your competitor has made its presence felt on Instagram, but absent on Facebook or Twitter, you can easily capitalize those channels to reach out to more consumers.

6. Go for Social Media Audit:

Have you been using social media for quite some time now? It’s time you measure and monitor your strategies/endeavors so far. You can ask yourself the questions, mentioned below.

1. Which strategy is working, and which one is unable to yield any result?
2. Are people engaging with you, and who are they?
3. Which particular network is being used by your target audience?
4. How is your social media presence doing in comparison to your competitors?

Once you have these required pieces of information, you can plan a further roadmap.

7. Find Inspiration:

We are not denying the fact that your brand is unique, and it needs to STAND OUT. However, it is also important to find inspirations, especially for creating copies for social media. In other words, you can always find ideas from other businesses that are doing great on social media. You can refer to case studies (easily found in Facebook), and the marketing strategies of your favorite brands on social media for your valuable insights.

8. Make a Social Media Content Calendar and Set Your Posting Schedule:

Create a social media calendar, mentioning the type of content and the date you will be posting it on any social medium. You can include all the content plans in your calendar, including blog posts, videos, links, images, and others. Along with your day-to-day posting plans, it should also include the social media campaigns of your business. Remember to space out the posts properly using a calendar to yield the maximum benefit.

9. Use the Right Content Mix:

While creating the social media content strategy, you should create the perfect mix of content you post on social media. There is a popular rule of thirds for creating the right content mix for your business. It says:

1. 1/3^rd of the content should inform and educate by sharing thoughts and ideas from industry experts and leaders
2. 1/3^rd of the content should promote your business
3. And the remaining 1/3^rd should be used for personal interactions.

10. Evaluate and Bring Changes if Needed:

However powerful your social media strategy may be, you cannot undermine the importance of evaluation. Be smart! Track the results and introduce changes in the areas that need improvement.

Conclusion:

In this article, we have discussed how to create a social media strategy for your business in 10 easy steps.  It’s time you explore those and see how you can devise the most effective social media marketing plan. It’s a wrap until we come back with some other cool ideas for making your business a success in social media.

Introduction

The success of your social media strategy depends entirely on the quality of the content you post on social media. However, producing high-quality, effective content is challenging for small businesses. This is a competitive, time-consuming process where you should aim to add value to your customer experience.  Content plan for social media usually includes a variety of content types in order to overcome these hurdles. By including different styles in your marketing strategy, you can create a more engaging experience for your audience.

The Top 10 Types of Social Media Content that You Can Create

Here, we have shortlisted the advantages of each style used by social media and content marketers as the content strategy for social media. Besides, we have discussed how to produce them, and the best social media platforms for them.

Written posts, blogs, articles, guides, and more

Advantages

Your company’s expertise and knowledge can be demonstrated in written posts or articles, which can help you to build your credibility.  This can be used as a social media content strategy.

How to produce

You may find it useful to research trending searches when developing this social media content plan. By doing so, you’ll gain insight into the questions people ask, giving you ideas about the articles you must write.

Best platforms

It is ideal for long-form articles, like those that are at least 1,500 words, to use LinkedIn and Facebook. You can post a whole piece, a short snippet, or a link to the piece. Twitter is also a good bet, but it has a limited character count, so you can only post links or quotes, which can still drive traffic to your site.

Electronic books (eBooks)

Advantages

A blog post doesn’t give as much detail as an eBook, so it helps showcase your expertise in your field. Additionally, ebooks are being produced by far fewer firms than blogs, so you don’t have to worry about heavy competition.

How to produce

Ebooks are basically collections of blog posts from the same category, compiled together as chapters. It is important to choose your best content or hire a professional writer who’s experienced with writing eBooks.

Best platforms

LinkedIn users join the site to network with colleagues and learn about their job or other interests, making it a good place to share eBooks. The second-best options are Facebook and Twitter.

Links to external content

Advantages

In the case of a writer not being available for a blog post or if your writer is on vacation, you could link to relevant articles, resources, and websites from other reliable sources. Leaders in your industry can also provide excellent content ideas.

How to produce

You can find similar content on different blogs using the keywords you used on your website. You should read every post and browse the site, too. If you follow this guideline, you will avoid sharing articles on social media accounts from sites that might portray your brand negatively.

Best platforms

Any type of content can be marketed using LinkedIn and Facebook, even just providing the link of the content. In addition to LinkedIn and Facebook, you can also use Twitter.

Images

Advantages

It is much easier for users to consume visual content than long-form blogs and articles. There are many apps that let you edit photos, add filters to them, and more on your smartphone, as the camera on these devices is highly advanced.

How to produce

Images and pictures are among the easiest types of content to create. You only need your smartphone or camera to take the picture.

Best platforms

The best platforms for sharing images are Instagram and Pinterest, both of which work well with images. You can also use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Snapchat as alternative options. You can also improve engagement and click-throughs by adding images to blog posts and creating copies for social media.

Videos

Advantages

Taking videos is easy and convenient, and they are more engaging than photographs. You can create videos that will drive traffic to your website and encourage sales with how-to guides, video tours, and product updates and demonstrations.

How to produce

 Producing video is difficult as well, just as it is with images. Depending on where you fall on that spectrum, you may need specialized skills and equipment.

Best platforms

Although YouTube is the king of video content, Facebook also has good performance in video content. Instagram is the best option for short videos, even above YouTube.

Video Stories

Advantages

There are thousands of stories on Instagram every day, but they last for 24 hours and then disappear. You can also find them on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. Keeping your users informed about upcoming events, special offers, or other announcements is a great way to keep them engaged. There are truly endless possibilities!

How to produce

In every app on the social network platform, you have the option of posting images or videos. A business can easily create them since high-quality production is not required.

Best platforms

Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook have popularized this content type and remain to be the most popular.

Live Videos

Advantages

The use of live videos allows audiences that cannot physically attend events to still view them. You can watch live streaming after they end, unlike stories, which are removed after 24 hours.

How to produce

 Live content is readily accessible and convenient to users through social media platforms supporting live content. The preview allows you to see what your audience will see before you go live, so you can be sure everything looks good.

Best platforms

The most popular live streaming social media network is Facebook Live. Other smaller platforms, such as Periscope, may not have as large an audience, but may still be viable.

Infographics

Advantages

Using visuals, infographics illustrate written concepts, explanations, and statistics. When communicating complex ideas, they are especially effective.

How to produce

To create your infographics, you should first create an outline. After completing the outline, your writer and designer can start creating the components and piecing them together.

Best platforms

Both Facebook and LinkedIn are excellent options for infographics while Twitter can be your alternative choice.

Testimonials and reviews

Advantages

Reviews and testimonials are incredibly valuable because people tend to trust other opinions of the customers more than companies own.

How to produce

Get in touch with past clients and ask for a testimonial. The practice of rewarding people for reviews is bad practice, however, since it can lead to dishonesty, and review sites such as Yelp may punish you for it.

Best platforms

Social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn are great places to post reviews and testimonials. On business pages, Facebook even provides star ratings.

Announcements

Advantages

By letting people know what’s new and noteworthy with your business, you can build hype and alert people to new products, projects, events, and live streams. Readers love getting the inside scoop on their favorite stores and brands!

How to produce

If possible, information should be slowly released. An announcement can be viewed as a series of teasers leading up to some big news.

Best platforms

Keeping in mind that each social network has its own best practices, announcements can be made on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or even through social messaging tools.

Conclusion

To make your brand stand out, save time, and enhance your customer experience, use the features of the social media platforms to weave these content types together. Be creative with your ideas, and don’t be afraid to experiment. Your unique audience will help you determine what types of content to provide. There’s no way to know what works until you try it!

Whether you like it or not, nowadays, content marketing is embracing the video culture of today and moving towards videos. According to a recent survey, 43% of people want to see more video content from marketers, and four times as many customers watch a video rather than read about it. Nowadays, so many people are connected through social media there is no doubt if you are a business entrepreneur, having a social media presence is a smart business move.

 Are you looking for ways to up your social media presence and attract more customers? If so, then you are in the right and proper place. Keep reading the article to learn how to storyboard your future social media campaign and attract your target audience. Social media storyboards ensure you deliver your message in the best possible way, like storyboarding your Instagram story.  It also saves your time in creating content for your page.

What is a Storyboard?

A storyboard is considered as a series of sketches that represent the individual shots plan for a video, film, or commercial. It contains directions for camera angle, lighting, and transition, along with dialogue and other notes. Just like all good writers start their articles or stories with outlines, good marketers begin their videos with storyboards. A social media storyboard can be worked as a great collaboration tool when working the social media influencers. You may ask social media influencers to provide an outline of the story’s content, or you may share storyboard templates for the content you are expecting.

The History of Storyboard

Before learning how to create a professional storyboard, it is important to know the history of the storyboard. The idea of a storyboard began in the 1930s when Webb Smith, the animator for Disney, came up with a unique idea to draw different scenes on a piece of paper and then attach them together on a bulletin. The same concept is also applied in social media.

How to storyboard your social media campaign

Here we will define how to storyboard social media campaign in four steps.

Pick a theme

The first thing you have to do is pick a theme that will define and suit your brand. You should decide which color and font will be appropriate to reflect your message as well as your brand. For example, picking an appropriate color and font makes your ig stories more attractive that can be used as a growth hacks technique to increase views. Also, keep in mind that this might change a bit once you get started, and that is ok as long as you have a starting point for your theme.

Start with Your Concept

Next thing, you want to pick your concept based on your end goal. But before it, you should ask yourself some basic questions:

• Do you want to attract more customers?
• Do you want to promote a new product?
• What do you want the outcome to be?

By answering these questions, it will honestly help your storyboard process go smoothly.

Storyboarding Time

Once you have created your theme and you have a proper concept, you can start to write down your “scenes.” You can simply draw squares on blank paper and write down what will be in each square. You should think about all the options you have on social media while selecting the appropriate one.

Options to Explore

You have various options in your hand like images, videos, graphics, polls, etc. You should be specific on each square which of the social media options you will be using. After choosing your main visual, you should write down a brief description of what is happening in this frame. Once you have everything in each of your square boxes, you can add any extras if you want. Nowadays, you have a plethora of extras like hashtags, geotags, stickers, etc.

Call-To-Action

This is the last piece of your storyboard. You should include a clear call to action. This call-to-action should be based on your end goal. How to reach your audience? Do you want your audience to visit your webpage, buy now, swipe up? You should inform them no matter how obvious it might seem. Social media insights help the marketer to intimately understand the people they’re communicating

Storyboarding is a Form of Communication

When it comes to video or film productions, people often look at directors as geniuses that envision everything. But the thing they don’t realize how much directors rely on their team. Storyboarding team is the most important part of that team. Being responsible for making a piece of work come alive, directors work out their ideas onto paper with the storyboard team in order to see how it will work.

Storyboard Artists Help the Entire Production Process

Similar to the directors, the writers of the production hugely depend on the storyboard team. Nowadays, video production companies also realize the importance of storyboard artists and their contributions. When people draw new ideas, a lot of unknown obstacles will come. Finding these unknown obstacles will help to complete everything. In video production, storyboard artists simply play the role of great communicators.

Can Videos and Films Survive Without Storyboards?

When people think about storyboarding, they often think only of pictures, but it is much more than that. Storyboarding helps to effectively create the blueprints of a complex video or film. Now the question must arrive, do you really need storyboards to make a video or film? To answer that question, it might be good to ask, can the company survive without email? It may be possible, but the overall efficiency would drop significantly. Proper video production companies use storyboards in their films to run the overall production smoother, cleaner, and to provide much better results.

Conclusion

As you can see, creating a storyboard is not so complicated and can be a lot of fun. The more you do, it will become much easier. Now it’s time to apply everything you learned and start storyboarding your social media campaign. In case you cannot do it on your own, there is always an expert there to help you out!

Nowadays, social media is the main platform for communication and conversation between brands and their audiences. Then how relevant are websites in 2021? One of the biggest debates that happen within the marketing team is where they would put their efforts.

 Is it on the company’s website or their social media channels to generate more conversion rates? Which channel guarantees the greatest return on investment to grow the company faster? In this article, we will analyze the importance of both and find out which one is the clear winner.

Website vs. Social Media

While discussing the website vs. social media, one thing is clear; neither should be overlooked nor neglected to pertain to your business strategy. We will define ten key points to consider, five points for the website and five points for social media.

• Website: Your Company’s Go to Digital Space

While debating about the role of your website in lead generation efforts, keep the following five important points in mind.

• A Website Helps Your Company Get Found Online

This is one of the most important points to remember that a website is a way your company gets found online with the help of website’s conversion rate. According to a recent study, 90% of people use the internet to find local businesses. If you don’t have a website or properly maintain it, you may miss out on the critical opportunities to be found.

• Websites Can Help Your Online Presence Grow with Proper SEO Strategy

When you have a website, it means your business utilizes a search engine optimization or SEO strategy to grow its online presence. As per the statistics, 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search, so if businesses double down on their SEO and other organic search strategies, they will experience incredible growth in their website lead generation efforts.

• A Website promotes Your Services in the Digital Platform

This is another crucial aspect of a website to promote your services in the digital space. According to statistics, more than 1.79 billion people used online shopping last year that signifies there were 1.79 billion people who could have found your website and looked at your service. There is no doubt that the internet is an incredibly powerful tool for lead generation. So, your services need to be outlined and promoted properly on your website.

• Landing Page Promotes Services and Boosts Conversions

One of the most effective ways to promote your services is to have a landing page on your website. A landing page provides an opportunity for your customers to land after they click on a link, whether it’s from a marketing campaign or an organic search. Your landing page should describe all the services you’re providing and how these services solve your consumer’s problem. A well-designed landing page is essential for transforming traffic into conversion.

• A Website is a Crucial Part of Sales Funnel

Website plays a crucial role in your sales funnel. Your website guides people from the top of the sales funnel where they learn about your business and services to the end of your sales funnel, where these people will convert and become customers. Your website also serves as a great automation tool for your business. It’s the place where leads can learn about your services or your brands 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days per year. You can automate parts of your sales process with the help of installing a 24X7 live chat feature.

• A Website Helps Your Company to Establish Credibility

Credibility means a lot of things to consumers in today’s digital-first landscape. If a business looks credible online, their website visitors are more likely to trust them and turn into their valuable customers. According to a recent survey, 81% of consumers said that they need to be able to trust a brand to buy from them. By establishing credibility through your website, you will be able to build trust with your audience.

• A Website Provides Key Data for Your Company

While debating on website vs. social media, always remember that a website provides important data for your web, sales, and marketing teams. According to a recent study, 64% of marketing executives strongly agree that data-driven marketing is essential to success in a hypercompetitive global economy.

• Social Media: Where Your Brand Shines

While debating about the role of social media in social media lead generation efforts, keep the following five important points in mind.

• Social Media Helps You Connect with Your Audience

While discussing website vs. social media in lead generation, something vital to consider is that social media helps companies connect with their audience on a personal level. Digital Information World reports that internet users are now spending more than 142 minutes per day on social networking and messaging platforms.

• Social Media is Where You Build Your Brand

Social media is an important channel that can be used to build your company’s brand. The more audiences are connected with your brand, the more likely they will become your valuable customers and brand advocates. You can build your brand on social media with the help of social media ads.

• Social Media Helps You to Share Your Content

Social media users like to consume content in various ways on different platforms, so always keep in mind social media helps you to share your content with the messes. It actually increases your company’s status as an industry leader. The more you share, the more you enhance your gravitas that can help to influence people to keep following you to obtain valuable information.

• Social Media Allows You to Reach New Audiences

Social media allows you to reach new audiences in ways you can’t solely through your website. Social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn allow you to use the hashtags option to follow specific topics. If you post any content on these platforms using hashtags, your content will be seen by people who follow those hashtags. This can be used as social media growth hacks technique.

• Social Media Encourages Interaction with Your Brand

Social media platforms encourage interaction and engagement between brands and audiences. Always remember that every like, comment, or share option is a validation that your brand is worth engaging with, and it will help your social media growth. Basically, it’s a form of social proof that everyone on social platforms can see. The more you engage on social media platforms, the more your brand will be noticed.

Conclusion

While debating on website vs. social media and which is better for your company, it can be concluded when paired together, your website and social media channels are complementary parts of the same well-oiled machine, and both can be used for lead generation hacks strategies. They have the same goal to get your brand out to the world and convert potential leads to your valuable customers. Both website and social media strategy are the fundamental pillars in your lead generation and growth strategies.

If you have just started to promote your brands on the social media platform, you probably have lots of questions in your mind. Social media marketing is more than just creating a social account and posting updates once in a while. It is actually a digital tool to broadcast your company updates.

You should take a strategic approach to make social media marketing successful. In this guide, we will cover the 10 social media Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) that you should ask yourself before driving into social media. Whether you are a beginner to social media or you have been using it for a while, answer these key questions, and it will help to guide your social media efforts towards success.

Who is my audience?

Before starting your social media efforts, it is important to take time to understand your audience. All successful businesses are based upon their ability to meet the needs of their audience, and social media marketing is no different. It is very crucial to understand the people you are interacting with, from their psychological behavior to their demographics that will help to relate with them directly. You should develop a strong customer relationship that will help to clarify all the demographic questions about your audience, like their age, location, challenges, dreams, hobbies, and many more.

Which social media platforms do my audience use?

After identifying your audience, the next step is to determine which social media platforms they use and direct your efforts accordingly. You should map all the information to social media platforms. Most social media marketing efforts are focused on the trifecta of Facebook ads, Twitter ads, LinkedIn ads, Instagram ads. You should do your research properly to determine which platform is best to focus your social media efforts on to be successful.

What can I achieve from social media?

Your goals and objectives are the foundation of your strategy. It will guide every decision and tactic that comes next. Without having clear goals in your mind, you will not know how to measure your social media effectiveness. Creating goals helps to kick-start the process of collecting data, and tracking metrics, and it also ensures that your future content and marketing efforts are data-driven.

• Identify the goals and objectives of social media

Goals are also important because they align your social media marketing strategy with your overreaching marketing objectives. Your social media marketing efforts should be an integral part of your overall digital marketing strategy. Your marketing goal should be as trackable and specific as possible. The more detailed your goal is, the easier it will be to achieve in a few months.

What is my social media budget?

In marketing, there are two resources: money to spend and man-hours to give. It is completely up to you how you want to allocate them.

• Prepare the social media budget

There is a common misconception that social media is completely free. On the contrary, it is true that it is free to create an account on all the major platforms. But most offer premium services that may be worth considering. In addition, you might consider budgeting for some advertising campaign to extend the reach of your social media marketing.  It is a good idea to make a budget for social media ads if you want to make an impact on the social media platforms like Facebook, where organic growth has steadily inclined over the past few years.

How much time can I give on social media?

Time is another important factor in the social media equation. To achieve desired results and credibility, you have to be prepared to devote time regularly to create and promote content and engage with your audience.

• Allotted time for social media

You should ask yourself how much of a time commitment can you afford for social media. Will you concentrate on just one social media platform or, do you really need some social media help? To create and maintain interest with your targeted audience, you need to post regularly to stay in front of your audience and keep growing.

What type of content should I create?

Your answer to the previous question surely influences the type of content you want to create for social media. You should ask yourself do you have time to write regularly for a blog. Would it be better to make a short video tutorial for YouTube or to communicate through a live stream broadcast? You also keep in mind the content that works based on your chosen platform.

• Create appropriate type of content

Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest require high-quality visuals to stand out, whereas LinkedIn is better suited to industry news and long-form thought pieces. Quality and consistency are two important factors of every type of content you intend to create. You should always think about what you want your audience to know and how they feel after seeing your content.

What are my competitors doing on social media?

It is very much important to observe what your competitors are doing on social media platforms. Which social media platforms do they use? What type of content do they share? How does their audience respond to them? What are they doing really well? What are not they currently doing that you could do well? These are basic questions that you should know to compare your competitors’ social footprint and content against your own.

Who will be responsible for social media?

While developing your social media marketing strategy, it is important to clearly define roles and understand who will manage, monitor, and engage on each account. You may wish to take the full responsibility of handling and maintaining your social media account, but if you want to provide this task to someone, you should consider hiring a social media expert who will take all the responsibilities of a social media marketing job.

How will I monitor social media?

From a marketing perspective, social media monitoring will help you to determine the impact on your product, service, or brand, and if required, make adjustments according to your marketing or sales plan for like for like growth. There are many free and paid network monitoring tools available in the market to track the metrics relevant to your brand across the web.

How will I measure social media?

You should know how to achieve your social media goals. To determine how effective your social media marketing efforts are, you will need to measure your results. Understand and track the metrics that matter to the core of the business and bottom line. Social media metrics should be always tied to your overall business goals. You can use built-in tools to track and measure your progress.

Conclusion

Social media can be a powerful tool for any business organization. It can increase your visibility, establish two-way communication with customers, enhance customer relationships, provide a forum for feedback, and improve the awareness and reputation of your company. If you have clear knowledge about the above FAQs, you will be able to build a successful social marketing plan that can be considered as social media growth hacks for your business.