90% of young adults between 18 and 29 use social media. In addition, one-third of millennials say they prefer social media for communicating with businesses. Thus, Social media is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal.
In our experience as a social media agency in Kolkata, many of our clients equate social media success with the number of followers. However, accumulating 10,000 followers may seem impressive and have you feeling on cloud nine, but what's the point if those followers don't buy your products? So whether you're a newbie to social media or an old hand at it, there is always room for improvement when developing your strategy.
As one of the best social media marketing companies in Kolkata, we have outlined the elements needed to develop a profitable social media strategy. Using this guide, you'll be able to optimise the impact of your social campaigns throughout each of the critical development and implementation phases. So let’s get right to it.
1. Strategy
You risk wasting resources on undirected activity when you post on social media without rhyme or reason. As social media agency in Kolkata, we use strategy as a framework to plan, prioritise, execute, measure and optimise our marketing efforts. Without a strategy, you will struggle to know the effectiveness of your campaigns and what works for your audience, be it content type or platform.
2. Content quality
With new campaigns launching every minute, it is increasingly essential to upload engaging content that will compel your audience to take additional action, like visiting your website, calling to schedule an appointment or filling out a lead form. With our reputation as the best social media marketing company in Kolkata, we make sure our content is:
- Visually appealing - According to Buffer, visual content is 40x more likely to get shared on social media than text-based content.
- Emotionally engaging - Most brands avoid sharing polarising or opinionated content. However, content that evokes awe, excitement, or amusement can increase engagement and shareability.
Insightful - One study by Berger and Milkman found that people like sharing helpful information for helping others, self-help, and socialising.
3. Target audience
You must create a Buyer Persona that will allow you to take a deeper look at the demographics you are trying to reach. As a result, you will gain valuable insight into their pain points, interests, social media consumption, and aspirations. With all this information, you can create a custom audience based on location, age, gender, ethnicity, interests, etc. Being a social media agency in Kolkata, we believe that speaking to a specific audience substantially increases your conversion rate.
4. Analytics
The key to social media success is to analyse your data and optimise the results.
While 80% of marketers evaluate social media success based on engagement metrics (likes and shares), 56% rely on website traffic. Social media marketing results are typically measured by:
- Native analytics tools on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Social media management platforms like HootSuite and Buffer
- Web analytics like Google Analytics
5. Goal setting and Objectives
To succeed with your strategy, you must clearly define what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there. The following are some of the top goals we, as a social media agency in Kolkata, strive for:
- Building brand awareness
- Getting website traffic
- Lead generation
- Boost brand engagement
You need to align your goals with various metrics to measure ROI and your efforts' effectiveness.
6. Call to Action
You need a strong call-to-action (CTA) to leverage an engaged and loyal audience. You can use a call to action as simple as inviting the audience to check out your social media, visit your website, or anything that gets your brand closer to generating revenue.
7. Budgeting
You don't have to pay anything to create a page for your company, nor do you have to pay anything to make a post (unless you choose to boost or promote it). However, you will eventually have to invest in paid ads or tools to achieve significant results.
According to our research, as one of the best social media marketing companies in Kolkata, social media budgets are expected to increase over the next five years from about 10% on average to nearly 25%. Thus you must have enough funds to invest in:
- Social media management and analytics tools
- Campaign content
- Community engagement efforts
- Paid social promotions
8. Consistency
Consistent content is frequently posted and carries a unique and recognisable voice, style, tone, and language. It establishes your credibility, builds trust, and enhances your reputation. Our experience as the best social media marketing company in Kolkata shows that posting consistently makes your audience look forward to your content and puts your brand front and centre when they need your services.
9. Follower engagement
Social media engagement might include:
- Likes
- Saves
- DMs
- Shares and Retweets
- Clicks
- Comments and Mentions
Social media posts with more active and thoughtful interactions enjoy a wider reach. Your engagement rate indicates whether your content is relevant to your audience. Below are some content types that are sure-shot conversation starters:
- Polls
- “Ask me anything.”
- Fill in the Blanks
- “Caption this” photos
- Graders
10. Choosing platform
Having an active presence on several different platforms will help you effectively reach your target audience - but you don’t have to maintain an account on all of them. On the other hand, having an outdated social profile looks less professional than none at all, so choose your platforms wisely.
You should consider every platform's purpose and how it relates to your business goals. For example, Facebook works well for building brand loyalty, while LinkedIn is ideal for building B2B relationships. You should also consider the demographics of your target audience. For example, Snapchat is more appealing to people between 15 and 25, whereas LinkedIn is more appealing to people between 25-34.
Final Thoughts
Add the above ingredients to your social media campaigns, and you will have a recipe for effective marketing.
You will probably need some time to digest this guide, but by approaching each section as a starting point to learn what works, they will be much easier to implement. Moreover, don't forget to pay attention to your goals and analytics when creating a social media marketing strategy.
Whether you're looking for paid or organic social media promotion, TechShu is one of the best social media marketing companies in Kolkata, offering a full range of SMM services from content ideation to design implementation. Feel free to contact us if you are interested in our custom packages tailored to your business needs.