As a brand, it is important to ensure that your marketing strategy is effectively reaching your target audience. Your customers may love Facebook, but does your brand? At the same time, you might find that Twitter works well for your business, but TikTok doesn’t make sense. When it comes to social media marketing strategy, it’s important to know which platforms are best aligned with your goals. Here are four ways to create a social strategy that makes sense for your brand.

Research your Target Audience

Before engaging on any social channels, it is important to conduct adequate market research. Researching your ideal consumer base is a vital step in planning your campaigns and determining which networks will be most successful. Social media outlets vary based on many factors, including user demographic. Because of this, it is important to take into consideration age, race, gender and location when choosing how to engage individuals. Based on the platform you utilize, you can customize content that is designed for different audience subsets. Before you spend any time developing a social strategy, make sure you have a comprehensive understanding of the users that will be viewing your content.

As an overview, here are the current trends in social media according to Sprout Social:

• Facebook: 2.9 billion users, primarily between the ages of 25-34 (31.5%)
• Twitter: 211 million users, primarily between the ages of 18-29 (42%)
• Linkedin: 810 million users, primarily between the ages of 25-34 (58.4%)
• Instagram: 2 billion users, between the ages of 25-34 (31.2%) and 18-24 (31%)
• TikTok: 1 billion users, primarily between the ages of 10-19 (25%)
• Youtube: 2 billion users, highest reach with users between 15-35

Create a Comprehensive Social Media Strategy

Once you understand where your audience is, it is time to make a content plan. This involves deciding which social media platforms you will be using, what your brand’s voice will be on each one, and then constructing a set of tactics that can help you reach your goals. This strategy will combine the use of graphics, images, videos, content, and creative copy that will attract users. 

When developing this plan of action, make sure that you are creating focused efforts. Rather than trying to do a little bit on every platform, invest more time and resources on the channels that are most suitable for you. During this strategic period, it is important to identify the individuals that will be responsible for execution. When it comes to social, consistency is key. Having key individuals who are skilled at optimization is vital for this strategy. If you have a lean team and are not able to dedicate enough time to social media, consider hiring a third-party agency that can embody the brand voice and maintain your online community. 

Understand What Competitors Are Doing On Each Platform

Check out what your competitors have been posting on social media. In particular, pay special attention to the platforms that you are looking to focus your efforts on. As you push out content, it is important that it is both unique and engaging. When your content is engaging, you will drive impressions among your audience. Your content needs to contain information that is worth talking about. No matter what approach you take, it is important that the information that you share is on brand and relevant at all times. Based on the nature of your business, there are many different tones that you can adopt. For example, some brands choose to post humorous and unexpected content that is used to spark conversation and develop a positive association with users. Other brands like to provide more formal and educational information that is used to educate their audience. If your audience is not talking about your content, you’re doing something wrong. 

Although it is important not to copy the work of your competitors, it is good to have a pulse on the type of content they are producing. Having an understanding of the strategy of your competitors will help ensure that the posts you create are unique and relevant. 

Create Unique Content Based on the Audience On Each Platform

It is important that you are customizing your content with a specific audience in mind. For this reason, many brands create customer personas that help them direct their language towards a specific customer demographic. Whatever your social platform of choice, you'll want to be targeting consumers who are most likely to purchase your products. For example, teenagers don't tend to visit Facebook as often as they do TikTok; they're also more likely to follow brands on Snapchat. If you want to focus on this audience, it is important to develop content that is designed to appeal to younger people. On the other hand, when you're targeting an older audience, LinkedIn is often a better bet than Twitter. Once you know what platform(s) will best fit your brand's needs, you can customize each campaign to hit home with your audience. Although it requires extra effort to create customized campaigns, your impressions and engagements will increase with this method.

Overview

It can be overwhelming to keep up with social media marketing: there is a seemingly endless list of platforms and it can be difficult to know which ones are best for your brand. According to a recent study, it takes brands on average 20 hours per week to manage their social media accounts. 

These difficulties may cause brands to stick with what they know or opt out of social media entirely. To create a successful strategy, it is important that you have a sound understanding of your brand’s unique value proposition, target audience, and desired results. If you are struggling to maintain social platforms with your in-house marketing team, consider using a digital agency that is skilled at optimizing results from both paid and organic ads.