Social Media Marketing: The Ultimate Definitive Guide For 2021

Did you know that more than 80% of Instagram accounts follow a business?

There are around 4.20 billion social media users around the worldwith 15 users joining every second!

Social media is a crazy world!

At the first glance, social media marketing might appear to be very complex and daunting but that’s really not the case.

Sure, it is more competitive than ever before but not as complex as you might be thinking.

Not after you have finished reading this post.

In social media, there’s always something out there that you might be missing. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a complete beginner or a seasoned marketer

Before moving on we should ask ourselves one simple question:

Why bother about Social Media Marketing?

Here are some facts:

• Out of every 100 marketers, 90 say exposure of their business has increased because of their social marketing efforts? And that 75% say it has increased traffic?
• Around 50 million small businesses have their own Facebook Pages dedicated to customers. And 4 million of those businesses pay for social media advertising on Facebook.
• And things aren’t just limited to Facebook. More than 80% of Instagram accounts follow a business.
• In a survey conducted by Animoto, 93% of brands got a new customer because of a video posted on social media.

As a matter of fact, social media is the fastest growing trend in the history of the world. It has grown faster than the internet itself. Internet gathered about a billion users during the first 10 years.

Source: www.ourworldindata.org

 

As of 2020 Facebook has around 2.6 billion users. That’s a bizarre one in five people within 9 years!

People keep checking. They check and check and check. Whether it's our smartphones, tablets, or laptops – we are all hooked.

Slowly and steadily it crept into our lives and has now become a focal point in our lives.

With such widespread use, we get a picture as to just how potent social media marketing can be and why you need to have a well-planned strategy for your business in 2021.

How to create an effective social media marketing strategy in 2021:

You have to understand what your goals are, who are your target audience is, and most importantly, what they want.

What’s important to note here is that a marketing strategy and a marketing plan are two different things. A strategy is where you’re headed. A plan is how you’ll get there.

Source: www.buffer.com

Step 1: Figure out why your business needs to be on social media

Asking the “why” before the “how” and “what” proves to be a very potent thinking mechanism. In general, you’ll always want to focus on just a handful of goals unless you have a team.

There are about nine different social media goals that you can have:

• Drive more traffic to your website
• Generate new leads
• Increase your public brand awareness
• Boost brand engagement
• Grow your revenue
• Provide social customer services
• Build an online community around your business
• Increase mentions in the press
• Get feedback on your brand

It is okay to have more than one social media goal. You should choose the one that suits your goals well. Take your time and go through the list.

Step 2: Figure out your target audience

One of the most vital pieces of a successful social marketing strategy is identifying the right target audience as the market landscape is very diverse.

The target audience includes anyone who could be interested in the products and services that you provide. The group that you can expect to purchase your products or services.

A study proved that research is the most helpful factor in digital marketing, social media marketing, and SEO efforts.

You have to find the pain points of your target audience so that you more effectively craft content and deliver advertisements with the right message.

Always keep in mind that personalization helps advance customer relationships.

Here are five effective ways to identify the right target audience:

Know your existing customers

Examine your social media and website analytics. This will give you an idea of who is viewing your content. Find out which pages they visit the most.

Find purchase path and pain points

The purchase path is the set of touchpoints where a customer visits before ultimately making a purchase. To find out the path you will have to think like a customer.

Ask yourself “How can I provide a solution to this particular problem?” or something like “What exactly does my customer wants?”

Conduct an in-depth market research

One of the best of conducting market research is by doing a SWOT Analysis. It’s a method used to finda business’s strengths and weaknesses, along with opportunities and threats.

Source: www.venngage.com

Step 3: Figure out what you are going to share

Social media is more competitive today than it was ever. Only the best content that actually deserves to get shared, gets shared.

But that does not mean that success is unattainable. Not if you find out the most appropriate thing that your audience wants to see show it to them in a lucrative way.

Source: Coschedule

A few ways to find out the right thing to share:

• Find your top five competitors and the social media channels common to you both.
• Look at the last six months of content that they’ve published.
• Pick the ones that have got high engagements.
• Use it to inspire your own content.

In social media, we talk more in terms of “themes” to share rather than “content” to share.

Here’s a list of brands and the themes that they are sharing:

• On their Instagram profile, MeUndies, an underwear brand, shares photos from their customers and photos of their own products.
• On its Facebook profile, Huckberry, an outdoor and adventure brand, shares its editorial content with high-quality photos of the outdoors.
• Burrow, a luxury couch brand, only shares memes on their Instagram profile.

You may see that some brands have more than one theme on their social media handles. This is perfectly fine as it gives the scope to share a wide range of content.

Remember: The goal should be to create content that’s optimized for sharing and encourages your audience to spread your message for you.

Wrapping it up

I hope after reading all of that you now have a basic idea of how to deal with social media.

Take your time, what you've just read is only the tip of the iceberg.

A modern social presence has plenty of moving pieces. And with this guide putting together yours shouldn't be a big deal.

There are hundreds of social media platforms out there. You don't have to be on all of them. Try to be on the ones where your target audience is.

Social media is a bizarre world. TikTok was on one in five devices connected to the internet within 24 months of its launch!

You don’t just have to imagine it. You can make it real. All you have to do is take the next step.

So, how are you planning to do it? Post your ideas down in the comments section! I'd love to hear from you.

Also if this post was helpful to you consider sharing it with your friends and family or someone who's trying to get into social media marketing!