7 steps to define your Social Media Strategy for 2021
Are you on Facebook? I bet you have a profile on at least one of these social media channels. Since the launch of Facebook on September 26, 2020, it has now 2.7 billion users. The world population has grown to over 7.8 billion. This means roughly one in four people on Earth is on Facebook. The total Facebook population is more than multiple countries combined. We can say it’s a nation of its own. And, that’s only Facebook. We haven’t yet started to discuss other social media channels.
An estimate by Statista suggests that nearly 50% of the world’s population uses social media. That’s over 3 billion users worldwide. This is not the most surprising fact. What’s surprising is that these users are addicted to social media. They use it not once, but multiple times on a particular day!
I don’t have to stress the fact that social media marketing should be on your priority list for 2021. So, are you ready to figure out your social media marketing strategy for 2021? If you are not clear where to start, you are not alone. Social media isn’t as straightforward as it was a decade ago. Judge this from that fact that 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram per day.
We have put together a comprehensive guide to help you create a robust social media strategy for 2021. This clear cut strategy will help you reach your marketing goals with a sense of purpose. Below is a step-by-step social media guide to help you engage your audience like never before.
- Identify your business goals and align them with your social media strategy
- You need to identify a target audience
- Data is the key. Choose the best metrics based on your objective.
- Keep an eye on your competitors. But, before that identify who they are for your business.
- Create and curate engaging social content
- Timeliness will help you be closer to your customers anytime
- Assess what’s working, what isn’t and how you can improve
1. Identify your business goals and align them with your social media strategy
Social media marketing is tricky. Unless you know what you are doing, you will be lost in the plethora of data and posts. You need to define the objective first. Define your end goal before coming up with the social media plan.
Whether it is increasing your social media presence or getting more business or lead out of social media is up to you. The most important thing that matters is you set realistic goals for the year ahead. We recommend tackling smaller objectives that allow you to scale your social media efforts reasonably and affordably.
Sample social media goals for 2021 and beyond
Below are some sample goals that businesses of all shapes and sizes can divide and conquer. Here are 9 social media goals you can set for your business in 2021:
- Increase brand awareness Focus on brand awareness if you are new to the business or want to capture a new target audience. Use content that focuses on your brand personality or values to create an authentic & lasting impression on social media.
Metrics to track for brand awareness: Followers count, Reach of your social media posts, Mentions, shares, and RTs
- Generate leads and sales Based on your business type, choose this objective if you directly want your customers to buy from your social media page. If not, you can use this objective to drive traffic to your high conversion website page.
Metrics to track for lead generation: Personal information (usually email addresses) collected through social media, Downloads of your gated content, Participation, Clicks on your lead-generation social media posts, Conversions of leads from social media
- Grow your brand’s audience In case you need more people talking about your business, go for this objective. Find innovative ways to bring new followers onto your page.
To grow your audience, you must discover conversations around your business or recent trends in your industry. Monitor & listen to specific keywords, hashtags or phrases that are closer to your brand. There is no denying the fact that you reach your core audience faster by personalized social media targeting
Metrics to track the brand audience: Follower count, Shares, Comments and Likes.
- Increase community engagement You need to grab the attention of your current audience. That means you need to experiment with content and messaging to gain their attention. For example, you can promote user-generated content or run stories by asking questions from your followers.
Metrics to track for community engagement: Comments, Likes, Shares per post, Mentions & replies
- Increase web traffic Social media is the best proxy to drive traffic to your website or conversion landing page. Track all your traffic, clicks or engagement coming from social media to calculate the ROI from social media.
Metrics to track traffic: Traffic from social media, the share of overall traffic, the bounce rate of social media traffic and clicks on your social media posts.
Any strategic combination of these goals will work to start formulating your strategy around. Make sure you keep it simple and achievable.
2. You need to identify a target audience
In archery, you need an aim otherwise you’d be hitting nothing. The same applies to social media marketing. Without a clear target audience, you a hitting nothing.
You can leverage demographic data and numerous social media analytics tools such as Buffer Analyze, Sprout Social, Hootsuite and Zoho Social, to define your target audience. Everything you need to know about your target audience is already out in the market.
- Most of the users on Instagram belong to GenZ. They look for content that is eye-catching and engaging at the same time.
- YouTube & Facebook are the best channels for ads as their user base is high earning people.
- Pinterest is dominated by women.
- LinkedIn’s user base is well educated and aware. It is a one-stop destination for serious content and conversations around the industry & job market.
No platform is one size fits all. You need to choose the right channel based on the type of customers you are targeting. Do a deeper analysis of your customers. Draw up your customer persona and then proceed further with drafting your strategy. Use the analytics dashboard of the social media analytics platform to match your customer persona with the type of people who follow you.
3. Data is the key. Choose the best metrics based on your objective.
Your social media strategy needs to be data-driven. Tell your social media managers to select the key metrics based on your objective and ask them to send you a weekly report of all the metrics you are tracking. This needs to be done ceremoniously to achieve your 2021 business goals.
Keep a closer eye on these key metrics:
- Reach: Number of unique users that saw your post. This measures how far your content is spreading among your target audience.
- Organic and Paid Likes: Measure paid and organic like count separately. If you’re on Facebook, paid likes are your friends as gaming organic traction is difficult on the channel. You can tweak your ad budget amount based on this ratio of paid & organic likes.
- Sentiment: Measures what’s the user interaction with your content, brand or hashtag. Customers may get offended or delighted by the type of content you post. Positive user sentiments resonate with your customers and you end up being the star of the show. Always find out what people are talking about your brand.
- Clicks: Measure how many times a user has engaged with your post or content. Link clicks help you track your leads across the marketing funnel.
- Engagement: This is the total of social interaction divided by the number of impressions. Benchmark your engagement number against your competitors or the industry you’re in to see where you need to work on & how to better engage your customers.
- Hashtag performance: Measures your customer engagement with your hashtags. Tells you which hashtags are associated with your brand and which hashtags created the highest engagement. Using the right set of hashtags with your post can increase engagement multifold.
Social media marketing is an art as well as science. You cannot separate the numbers from your campaign. Choose the best metrics to shape up your social media strategy for 2021.
4. Keep an eye on your competitors. But, before that identify who they are for your business.
I am sure you already have a set of competitors already identified for your business. Trust me when I say those are not the only competitors you’ll have when it comes to social media. There are direct competitors and then there are in-direct social media competitors that you need to acknowledge.
Here’s how I do it. I keep a track of all my direct competitors using my social media management tool. In case you do not use such a tool, you can directly keep a track of your competitor’s pages every week to stay apprised of what’s working for them & what they are doing. Take cues from your competitor’s social media pages to polish your own strategy.
You need to spot your social media competitors
Use Google search to find your competitors. It’s the simplest way by which you can define your competition. Use keywords, phrases or terms associated with your business to see what comes up when you search for those keywords. Dig the social media channels of your competitors. You can also use Instagram suggestions to figure out which social media pages are in the same domain as yours.
Once you have identified your competitors, keep in mind to track them regularly and make your social media strategy unique and in resonance with your brand’s identity. Optimize your own strategy. Rinse and repeat.
5. Create and curate engaging social content
Believe me when I say, content is the backbone of your social media strategy. Till now you’d have a fair idea of what kind of content to create based on your strategy objective and target audience. If you’re wondering about what types of content will be highly engaging for your audience, here’s a quick guide:
- Video is the top format for social media
A whopping 90% of the social media users say they watch videos online at least once a month. Instagram Reels and TikTok videos are all the buzz right now. Many social media influencers such as Kayla Itsines, Simeon Panda & Michelle Lewin in the fitness industry use short videos of them working out to generate customer interest.
- Use Content themes
According to Venngage, one-third of marketers struggle to create compelling visual content. Doing it everyday is a major challenge. You run out of content to generate without sticking to a particular theme. As a marketer, you should focus on creating multiple themes based on which you can create content that can be published daily. Instagram profiles portray your theme in the best way.
Here are a few examples:
1) White border | @evegreco
2) Dark border | @beautifulandyummy
3) Colour coordinated | @stellamariabaer
4) Rectangular images | @auroradesign
5) Favorite filter | @marianna_hewitt
6) White background | @ohheyits_kaye
7) Minimalist | @minimaliststyle
Distribute such themes across your content calendar to have ready to go content that is engaging and communicate your brand purpose to your followers.
- User-Generated Content is the new age magic
You know 500 million people open Instagram Stories and Instagram Explore every month! That’s how engaging Instagram stories are. With User-generated content, you can leverage user interactions with your content to market your brand. Never pass an opportunity to pick on your follower’s brains to source interesting stories, posts or Q&As.
- Use Stories to stay ahead of the game
Stories are simply the most engaging and can’t miss as your followers tend to follow stories in the Fear of Missing out (FOMO). Newly uploaded stories pop-up first in your followers feed, putting you ahead of the plethora of stories uploaded online.
6. Timeliness will help you be closer to your customers anytime
You customers are active 24×7 and hence, you also need to be active so as to respond to them in a timely manner. Timeliness pays off. According to Statista, 44% of your customers expect a response within 1 hour of reaching out. Let me tell you it is not only about responding but also reaching out to your customers at the right time. Here are two strategies you must apply in 2021:
- Maintain posting frequency & find the best times to post
I personally follow the strategy of posting at least once every 2 days to engage with my followers on social media. You can decide your own frequency based on your content niche, target group, availability of content and target engagement level. About the best times to post on a day, here are the studies suggesting the best practices:
HubSpot – between 2 PM and 3 PM – Thursday the best day
Sprout Social – Wednesday at 11 AM and Friday at 10–11 AM
Expert Voice – Wednesday: 11 AM and 3 PM (doesn’t specify time zone)
Don’t forget to engage with your followers after posting. Make sure you respond to comments or shares in a timely manner.
- Reply to your customer queries and shout-outs on time
If you wish to create a brand presence that is better than your competitors, be super fast in responding to your customer comments, shoutouts or questions on direct messages. Don’t forget it’s all about networking. Never leave your customers hanging. Be it a small comment or a mention, you need to capitalize on it and make your customers feel heard. These days we have a new arm of social media management getting strong, i.e. Social Listening. Brands wanting to create brand awareness are constantly listening to their customers on social media. The best way to hear your customers is by following the hashtags associated with your business and also those that your customers follow. Use the right social media monitoring tools to find instances across all social media channels to engage and interact with your customers all round the clock.
7. Assess what’s working, what isn’t and how you can improve
By now you should have a big-picture understanding of your social media strategy. However, it’s important that you’re able to adapt your strategy as you progress throughout the year.
Without continuously analyzing your efforts, you’ll never know how one campaign did over another. Having a bird’s eye view of your social media activity helps put things into perspective. This means looking at your top-performing content and fine-tuning your campaigns accordingly.
There’s no denying that a lot of social media is a matter of trial-and-error. Monitoring the metrics behind your campaigns in real-time allows you to make small tweaks to your social media marketing strategy rather than sweeping, time-consuming changes. This dynamic approach to marketing makes perfect sense in a day and age where social media is constantly evolving. You can be reactive in the short term to get the most out of your running campaigns, and then proactively use these takeaways to inform your next major strategy.