Just because everyone and their mother has a social media account these days doesn’t mean that it’s easy to create a social media campaign. It’s not enough to just have a presence on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You’ve got to know how to use them to your advantage.
So how do you do that? Create a social media marketing campaign. It will take some time, but if you have the right knowledge and tools on your side, you can build your audience and reach new people.
Read on to learn how you can expand your reach through a well-made campaign.
1. Research Competitors
Step one — scope out the competition. What are the competitors in your field doing? What’s working for them and what seems to have fallen flat?
You don’t need to make the same mistakes as others. You also don’t need to go through the same trial-and-error process they did to discover what works.
Understanding what works for your competitors is incredibly important. You can use that information to inform your own campaign and maybe do even better.
2. Set Your Goals
After you’ve researched the competition, you need to set your own goals. What do you want this campaign to achieve?
Do you want to gain new followers? Raise awareness of a new promotion that you’re running? Build brand awareness in general?
The type of content you post should change based on the goals you’ve set. You need to know where you want to end up before you can start creating content.
3. Listen to Your Audience
Wondering what type of content you should post? See what your target customers and current followers are posting.
It’s always good to sound as natural as possible without being forced. Social media “listening” is a great way to figure out how to craft your brand voice.
You don’t have to take it as far as the major corporations who are fake-feuding with one another and using Gen Z slang, but it can help inform your online voice.
4. Don’t Just Post Promotions
Part of listening to your audience is understanding what will work for them and what won’t. Here’s one tip we can give you now — don’t just post promotional material.
Remember that social media is a conversation, not just a place for you to post random content. If you only post different promotions, people will be turned off by your future content.
They may unfollow or decide to ignore your posts altogether.
Share content others have created or post things that are designed to engage your audience, like polls.
5. Understand Each Platform
A post that does well on Instagram won’t necessarily succeed on Twitter. You can’t craft one post to distribute across every platform you’re on.
Take the time to get to know the different rules and quirks of each social media platform. The demographics shift with each one, so you’ll need to know how to change up your content, too.
You should also know where your audience is concentrated. Do you have a target demographic of young people on Instagram? Or are you aiming for the Baby Boomers on Facebook?
6. Create Unique Content
Creating good content is easier said than done, we know. But creating unique content is an important step in creating any social media marketing campaign.
You want your content to be relevant to your target audience. You also want it to be something that’s easily shared in their networks so that you can reach even more people.
When you’re thinking of what to post, aim for unique and helpful content. Maybe that’s a how-to video, an explanatory blog post, or even a who’s who of your office.
7. Use Scheduling Software
Even if you have a full-time social media manager, no one can be online all the time. Some of your day-to-day tasks have to be spent doing something else.
This is where social media scheduling tools come in handy. Use your favorite one to plan out all of your content ahead of time and see exactly when things will be posted across all of your social media channels.
This not only helps you see the big picture of your strategy but also lets you schedule things at convenient times. If your new product goes live at midnight, for example, you can schedule a tweet to go up right at that moment — even if all of your employees are asleep.
8. Go Live
Static content isn’t the only thing that you should include in your campaign, though. Don’t forget the power that going live can hold.
Facebook and Instagram both have live features that are easy to use. Going on Facebook or Instagram live is a great way to connect with your audience in real-time.
Take people on a behind-the-scenes tour, answer questions, and bring them into your world for a moment. They’ll feel more connected to the brand.
9. Use Analytics
Finally, no matter what, always take the time to analyse your campaign.
Take advantage of the built-in analytics in many social media platforms to track how you’re doing in real time. How many people have been interacting with each post? Are you reaching new people or just the ones who were already following your accounts? What is the most popular?
After your campaign is over, it’s also important to stop and look at what was successful. You can’t ever improve without assessing and reflecting at the end of each campaign.
This will help you see what went well, what didn’t work, and what you can improve for next time.
Create Your Social Media Marketing Campaign
This blog post will give you the tools you need to get started with your own social media marketing campaign. If you’d rather work with experts, though, we’ve got you covered.
We have years of experience of building audiences, expanding businesses’ social reach, and creating successful social media marketing campaigns. We’ve got a full management service, so you’ll know that we’ve got all of your bases covered.
Discover how we can help you create a personalised campaign today.
