Have you discovered a product through Instagram? Have you used LinkedIn to meet the employees of a company? Have you used Pinterest for inspiration?

Social media is an indispensable part of our daily lives. As the owner of your online business, you should have a social media strategy to reach your niche market on these channels.

In this post we tell you the steps to implement your social media strategy and how to make the most of your social media presence.

Bring out your community manager version and go for it!

Define your objectives
There is no point in launching your social media strategy if you don’t have your objectives defined.

It may be a little difficult at first to think about what your goals are, but this step is essential to build your social media plan. Take a few minutes and ask yourself what you want to achieve:

Do I want to convert my followers into potential customers?
Do I want to build loyalty with my audience?
Do I want to increase web traffic from my social networks?
Do I want to get more sales?
Do I want to improve my brand reputation?
If some of these questions are on your mind, keep them in mind when developing your social media goals.

We propose the SMART method to define your goals. According to this method, your goals should always be:

S for specific. The more detailed your goal is, the better. Solve this point by answering the question “What do I want to achieve?”. Keep in mind that if you get more data, the more detailed and concrete will be your information to write your objectives.

M for measurable. Your objectives must be measurable. Ideally, you should add percentages or exact numbers. For example, “I want to reach 10,000 followers on Instagram”. This number will come in handy to measure what you have achieved.

A for achievable. Don’t set impossible goals that you can’t achieve. All goals have to be achievable sooner or later. Make a brief analysis of what you want to achieve with your social media marketing plan.

Be realistic. Be aware of what you can do and what you can’t do. Think about the resources you have and what you can afford. These goals should be relevant to your audience and to the different social networks you use.
T for time. Last but not least, define how long you want to reach your goal. Do you want it to be quarterly? Are you going to measure your results on a monthly basis? Decide on the time period that best fits your goal and stick to it.

Now let’s see how to define your target audience for social networks.

Who is your target
If you have already created your store, you have already defined your buyer persona: a fictitious character that perfectly represents your ideal customer. For this reason, you have to include real information.

Some of the characteristics that can help you to delimit your buyer persona are: their lifestyle, their behaviors, their age, their socioeconomic level, their location…..

It is crucial to have your target audience well defined in each social network where you are going to have a presence. Just as you define your niche when creating your online store, you must also have it in your social networks.

If, for example, you sell custom hats and you already have your website, it can be a very good option to expand your clientele by showing your products on your Instagram profile. Don’t forget to add your keywords to reach more audience!

Always remember to offer quality content that fits your followers on each platform. The goal should be to end up building loyalty so that they become your future customers.

Now let’s see how to offer a personalized experience to connect with your community on each social platform in a more targeted way!

Which social media channels do you want to target

Choosing which social networks you want to be present on is as important as adapting your content strategy to each of them.

If we take a look at the following graph, we can see that worldwide the favorite social network par excellence is Facebook. But Instagram is not far behind either, with one billion monthly active users, or even the popular video app TikTok, with already 500 million active users in 2019.

It is very important that the type of content is adapted to each social network. Let’s move on to see how to get the most out of your social media plan on each platform.

Your social media plan

Each social network has its own style and purpose. Therefore, determining what you are going to do in each social network is essential to squeeze the most out of your value proposition. Let’s start!

Instagram: this social network is the ideal showcase where you can showcase your products. 80% of users follow at least one brand on Instagram while 60% have discovered new products through this network. That is why it is so important to have this social network in a careful and professional way as if it were your own website.

Creating a sense of community on your Instagram profile can be relatively simple by applying these tips: insert hashtags related to your theme, activate your Instagram Shopping tool, make the most of your Instagram Stories, share content in video format and engage with your followers thanks to User Generated Content (UGC).

Facebook: it is almost mandatory to have your profile or company page on this channel. You can share content more related to the latest news of your online business, new product launches or even promote community feeling thanks to Facebook groups.
You can also synchronize your business profile with its companion, Instagram, and launch more segmented ads, as it is a platform that has very broad targeting options to reach more audience.

TikTok: this short and funny video app is the perfect channel to reach your younger audience. If your brand is aimed at an audience under 30 years old, this is your channel to show the funniest side of running your online store.

Twitter: 6,000 tweets are sent every second worldwide, which means that more than 350,000 tweets are launched every minute. Having a presence on this channel can be very useful to know who mentions you or names you through a hashtag.
In addition, Twitter is the ideal social network to reinforce your brand presence and increase your web traffic. Find out if your audience is present on this social network and turn your tweet clicks into more visits to your website.

Pinterest: lacking inspiration? This social network can help you find new ideas and make your product images inspire more people. Filter your products by categories and offer them to consumers – boost your sales on this social network!

Think carefully about which social network you want to have a presence on after this brief analysis. You don’t have to choose all of these social networks for your social media strategy.

What’s more, ideally you should choose those social networks that best suit your niche and your content. Putting all your digital marketing efforts into two or three social networks instead of six social networks will give you better results.

Plan your content
After you’ve thought about which social network you’re going to post your content on, you need to come up with your plan. Let’s see how you can get organized.

To start with, you need to have your content calendar. You have to plan how many days a week you are going to publish, what type of content it is going to be and in which channel you are going to do it.

Ideally, you should plan well in advance so that you don’t run out of content to publish. Decide whether you are going to plan your calendar on a weekly or monthly basis. We suggest that you plan it with enough time and, if any unforeseen event arises, you are always in time to make any changes.

Analyze your data
Review on a monthly basis how your social media strategy is going and make reports. Analyze which posts have generated the most engagement and at what time. It will be very useful to share content with your community in those time slots.

Both Instagram and Facebook give you access to Statistics to learn more about how your profile is developing in three branches: content, activity and audience.

With these variables you can see your number of followers, their location, what content works best, the reach of your publications… Data that will help you learn more about your audience on social networks.

We recommend that you have a database in which you can add useful information for your social media marketing plan, such as the number of followers or the engagement rate.

Optimize your content
Go back. Review your content. Look at what worked best. Check which marketing campaign has been a success. And experiment with your content!