15 Step  Social Media Marketing  Strategy for Businesses in 2021
                     www.samar i tan in fotech.com
Too many businesses  
go into social media  
15 Step marketing on an ad  hoc basis. They know  
they should do  
Social Media something about social  media, but don't 
really  understand 
Market ing  Strategy what they  should do. Some firms  just give 
access to the  
for  Businesses  in  2021 company's social  accounts to some  
junior staff members – 
 merely because they  
are young, so should  
know all about social  
media.
1. Select Relevant 
 and Realist ic  
Social Media  
Marke t ing  Goals
Make Sure Your Goals Are 
SMART
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Suitable  Social Media Goals 
Your  Business Could Set
Your goals will be personal to your business and complement your  
overarching business goals. However, typical types of social media 
 goals you could consider (couched in a suitable SMART-style)  
include:
Increasing brand awareness
Achieving a set h igher  quant i ty  of  
sales  Improv ing your ROI
Driving people to  increase in-store 
sales  Grow your fan base
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2. Determine  
Your  Most  
Relevant  Metr ics
Too many businesses create a  
social presence and spend time 
 and other resources on using  
their social accounts, without  
ever establishing whether they 
 see any success  or not.
Unfortunately, social analyti cs  
can be a gray area because they  
are not the same for every  
business. Once again, your most 
 relevant social metrics will 
relate  to the goals you have set 
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 yourself.
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3. Decide Who  You Wan t  as 
Your  Social Media Audience
One of the most  common mistakes made by fi rms on social media is to think that all followers will  
be good for them. There is a good reason why pundits deemphasize the metric Follower Numbers  
and call them vanity metrics. There is little point having somebody as  a follower unless he is likely to  
take an interest in the content you share.
This  is probably the biggest problem with buying fake followers. A s  we wrote in 8  Reasons  You   
Shouldn’t Buy  Instagram Followers, fake followers don’t engage  with your account. S o m e  aren’t real  
people at all, merely bots. They  certainly won’t make future customers.
L oo k  back  at those goals you set  in Step  1. There is little point having social media followers who 
 can’t help you work towards meeti ng your goals. In most  situati ons, you want your social media 
 followers to be of a similar type to your intended customers.
This  is parti cularly relevant if you sell products to a geographically disti nct market. In that case,  you  
will not want to have many followers from regions and countries where people cannot buy your  
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4. Understand Your Social 
Media  Audience
Not all social  media 
You  might be a middle-aged  To  be successful  at doing  
 audiences are 
executi ve who uses  Facebook.  this, you need to have a  
alike.
However, if you personally don’t  solid understanding of your 
Different types of people  
match the target market of your   customer base. If you have 
use social  media in varying 
business, you can’t automati cally  ever established personas 
 ways. If you’re going to  
 assume that your customers   for your ideal customers,  
meet your goals, you need  
will  also be spending their ti me now is the ti me to dust  
to be using the same social 
on  Facebook. them off.
 media networks as  your  
target audience.
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Some people wor ry  about  h o w  they  are going to  f ind  the  t ime  
and  energy to  operate accounts on every social ne twork .  In mos t  
cases,  you don ’ t  need to .  You s imply  need to  f ind  the r igh t  
social  ne tworks  for  your business. You w a n t  t o  discover the  
social  ne tworks  where  your  in tended  audience spends thei r  
t ime .
You may  have to  carry ou t  some research f i rst  t o  discover where  
5. Select  your  in tended  audience hangs out .  This shouldn ' t  be too  di f f icul t ,   part icular ly i f  you k n o w  your customers .  If you don ’ t  
already  understand this ,  you could survey them ,  asking t h e m  
t he   R ight  for  the i r   preferred social accounts .
Social  
You could  start  w i t h  your audience 's mos t  preferred ne twork  and 
Media   t hen  w iden  to  inc lude others where a suf f ic ient ly  large number   operates act ive social accounts . You general ly wou ldn ' t  need to  
go  fur ther  than  three to  f ive social networks ,  however .
Networks   
for  Your  Pew Research has col lected valuable data on the  use of  d i f ferent   onl ine p la t forms  by  demographic  groups (for US adults)  t ha t  
may   be of  value to  you in  dec iding the  best  social media  
Audience networks  for   your  audience .
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Don ’ t  Waste Time on Social  
Ne tworks  Your Audience Don ’ t  Use
If a  sufficiently large proportion of your target audience spends time on a social network, you want 
to  be there too. If they have little interest in a platform, you can give it a miss, and not waste your 
time and  resources there.
There is another factor that you should consider to make your life easier. Many businesses find it 
easier  to use some form of social media marketing platform to help them schedule posts in one 
place in bulk.
You might also consider whether you want a single company-wide account on a social network, 
or  whether you want multiple accounts, each targeted at a niche audience
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6. Invest igate H o w  
Your  Compet i to rs  
Approach  Social 
MeModst fiirams don’t operate in isolation. Yo u  will usually have  
competi tors who will also run a social strategy. You  will  
defi nitely need to know what they are doing. What is their  
focus? W hom  are they targeti ng? What key  phrases are they 
 trying to dominate?
You  can quickly conduct  a competi tor analysis to help you 
 bett er understand their strengths and weaknesses.  This   
should give you a bett er understanding of what potenti al  
customers  expect  from businesses  in your industry.
Yo u  might spot  your competi tors’  weak social  areas and 
 be able to exploit the gaps. For instance, one of your  
competi tors might be infl uenti al on Twitt er, but have a  
weak Faceb ook  presence, despite your target market  
using that network. In that case,  it may pay you to put  
09 more resources into Faceb ook  rather than competi ng  
head to head on Twitt er.
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7. Plan the  Types of  Content  You In tend   
t o  Share
Of course, to be successfu l  on social media, you will need high-quality content to share. 
 One of the biggest  mistakes that businesses do is to share excess ive  promoti onal  
material. Remember,  social networks are designed to be social – they were never  
intended to be a marketplace for you to sell your products.
Therefore, you need to balance the content you share socially, to be a mixture of  
informati ve and entertaining items, with a small percentage of promoti onal material  
added in. You  will also need to like and share other peoples’ content.
This  is probably the most  signifi cant reason that most  infl uencers gain that status. They  
know their audience well and create the perfect content to interest their followers. A s  a  
brand, you need to do the same.
If you have previously determined your goals and discovered what works (and what  
doesn’t) for your competi ti on, you should have a reasonable idea of the type of content 
 that will resonate with your target audience.
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Be Realist ic Ab ou t  Wha t  You Can  
Produce
You need to understand any limitati ons you may face when creati ng  
content. For  example, you might want to run a great YouTube  channel,  
but if you don’t have the equipment, people, knowledge, and ti me to  
create high-quality videos, it is pointless going down that track.
Likewise,  there is little value in planning to make  live video streams if  
you don't have anybody who feels  comfortable  presenti ng in front of  
the camera in a live broadcast.
Yo u  need to balance the types of content that your target audience  
most  enjoy, with the material that you feel best  equipped and most   
comfortable  making.
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Don ’ t  Mix  Your Personal Tastes w i t h   
Those of  Your Target Audience
The  odds are that you, or the person running your business social  
account, will also run personal social accounts. You  must disti nguish  
between the two types of accounts. Just because you like to make a  
parti cular type of post  on your own accounts,  does  not mean that those 
 posts  will work on the company accounts.
Yo u  presumably post  about things that interest you. However,  when  
operati ng the business account, you need to think solely about the  
tastes of your target audience.
Yo u should probably write down your niche topics. This  is parti cularly  
important when you curate content. For example, you should even  
restrict the tweets  you retweet to those that relate to your niche topics.
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8 .  Don ’ t  Mix  Your Personal Tastes w i t h  
 Those of  Your Target Audience
It is vital that you set your accounts  up correctly. You  will want a consistent visual look  
across  all of your social  channels. Use  the correct colors, logos, and similar graphics  on each 
 network.
Don’t waste  any of your social  real estate. Ta ke  the ti me to fill in your bios and profi les fully.  
Make sure that you link to relevant places, perhaps even create specifi c landing pages  on  
your website for people who cl ick through from your social  accounts.
It is worth taking the ti me to ensure that you have uploaded all the images  on your bios and  
profi les at the best  resoluti on for the social  network. We  include these opti mum sizes  in our  
post, Be st  Image S izes  for Social  Media – The  Ulti mate Guide for Marketers.
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Whi le  you could  manual ly  make  all  of  your 
9 .  Establ ish social  posts ,  t ha t  is inef f ic ient ,  and may  no t  
lead to  the   best  results .  Most of  the  social 
 t he  Best  networks  n o w  use  some fo r m of  a lgor i thm to  f i l ter  the  results they  give people .  This means 
Times t o   t ha t  i f  you post  at  a  d i f ferent  t ime  to  w he n  your target  audience is  onl ine ,  they  may  never 
Post and  see your  content .
Set Up a  Ideally ,  you w i l l  w a n t  t o  use one of  the  social  
schedul ing tools so you can set up  and organize 
Content    mu l t i p le  posts at  the  same t ime .  We have  
reviewed many  social media  marke t ing   
Calendar plat forms .  You ’re sure to  f ind  tha t  a t  least one of   these w i l l  make  your  l i fe easier .
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10. Create Sui table  Content  t o  Share w i t h  
 Your Fol lowers
There are four questions you should ask yourself when creating 
content:
What is the optimal character count per social media channel?
What is the number of hashtags for messages on each social 
channel?  Should I be using emoji in my social media messages?
What is the best content type for each channel?
Don't forget the importance of images and videos. Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to 
be  shared on social media than other types of content. Instagram has rapidly grown in importance 
over the  last few years, and it has a significant visual focus. Top brands on Instagram report a per-
follower  engagement rate of 4.21%. That is 58 times higher than on Facebook and 120 times higher 
than on  Twitter.
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Customize Your Content  for  Each Social  
Ne two rk
It's important to remember that not every social channel is 
identical.  Ideally, you should customize your content for 
each network.
Twitter :- Twitter comes with a self-imposed limitation.  
Facebook :- Facebook posts can be longer than tweets.  
Instagram :- Instagram is an image-based social 
network.  Pinterest :- Pinterest is also very image-
focused.
LinkedIn :- LinkedIn is a professional network.
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11. Promote  Your Social 
Channels
Although good content will ulti mately sell your social  channels,  you sti ll need to gain  
your initial following. People have to fi nd your channels before they can choose to  
follow you.
You  should place butt ons for all your audial accounts  at various places on your  
website – on your home page, in your footer, on your About and Communicati ons  
pages,  for example. If you have an email list.
Many fi rms cross-promote  their social  channels.  For  example, you can make  tweets  
promoti ng your YouTube  channel.
You  can even run ads  on your social  channels,  with a highly targeted audience, to build  
brand recogniti on and increase your social  followers.
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12. Engage w i t h  Your Audiences
People  don’t just go  onto social  networks  to read, look at, or watch content. They  go   
online to interact with other people and to be social. Successfu l  bus inesses  do not  
just broadcast  to their social  audiences.  They  engage  with them too.
This  is why you should not att empt to cover every social network unless you have a  
very diverse target market and an army of personnel dedicated to this task. B y   
focus ing your att enti on on the social  networks  your target market frequents,  you can  
use your resources  effi ciently.
S o m e  fi rms have found it very useful to create custom hashtags.  Not only can these  
encourage discuss ions  and sharing, but they also make it easier for you to search for  
posts  that reference your business.
Ideally, you should respond to all social  menti ons of your business  and demonstrate  
that customer care is a priority for you.
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13. Consider Paid Promot ion  t o  
Boost  Your Audiences
Most social networks allow you to buy some  
form of paid ads. Most will enable you to  
demographically  target your ads, making  them 
 only visible to your preferred target audience.
Paid promoti ons allow you to reach relevant  
audiences  to whom you don't currently connect. 
 Yo u  can use adverti sements to build brand  
recogniti on, promote parti cular posts/videos,  or 
 even to sell products.
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14. Consider Work ing  w i t h  Inf luencers  t o  
 Widen  Your Reach
We  obviously understand the advantages of working with infl uencers and  
engaging  in infl uencer marketi ng. If you select  the right infl uencers,  you have the  
chance to reach a whole new audience, who hopefully will have an interest in your  
business and its products.
Infl uencers have already mastered the art of social  media marketi ng – that is their  
strength. They  have built a solid reputati on online, and have a large number of  
keen and interested followers.
Yo u  might consider  working with infl uencers,  having them to direct their followers  
to your social sites. Yo u  will, of course, have to create content that will interest  
them when they arrive at your pages,  however.
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15. Track  Your  Resul ts  a n d  A d a p t
Of course, no matt er how much you plan your social  eff orts,  there is no guarantee that  
things  will work as  you expected.  If you don’t track your results, however, you will never  
know the s u c c e s s  of your social  campaigns.
You  began the process  by setti ng goals  and then determined your most  relevant  
metrics. Therefore, you will want to keep a constant eye on how these metrics are  
progressing.  Are  your social  campaigns  having the desired eff ects  on these metrics?
We  have previously looked at 15 Instagram Analyti cs Tools  for Infl uencers. S o m e  of  
these also provide metrics  for other social  platf orms. Many of the social  networks  off er  
their own analyti cs tools that will provide much of the necessary  data.
Use these tools to track your success .  If they show that you are producing popular,  
well-shared content, create more of that type. If your content doesn’t perform so  well,  
take note of what does work, and adapt your social sharing to focus  on the kind of  
material your followers preferred.
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Than
k  
you!
Questions? 
Clarifications?  Let 
us know!
Check more on  www.sa
maritaninfotech.com
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