Working with a social media marketing agency to create a social media marketing strategy should be a smooth process. A social media marketing strategy is a summary of what you plan to do and wish to achieve on social media. The strategy guides your actions and allows you to know whether you are failing or succeeding. If you want your marketing strategy to be effective, you should be specific. Keep it concise and do not make it so broad and lofty that it is impossible to measure or unattainable. Read on as we walk you through a few steps to create a good strategy.

Select goals that align with your company objectives

You should establish clear goals and objectives. Without clear goals, there is no way to measure your return on investment. You should track meaningful metrics like the number of likes and followers. However, it can be hard to prove the value of your engagement so you should go ahead and track the click-through rates and conversion rates of your campaigns.

Research your audience

You should know your followers, fans, and customers as real people with real needs and wants. This way, you will know how to engage and target them on social media. When it comes to your ideal customers, you need to know things such as location, age, average income, interests and typical industry and job title.

Know your competition

Work with your marketing agency to research your competition by doing a competitive analysis. This will allow you to understand who your competitors are and what they are doing well. You will also get a sense of what is expected in your industry and this will help you set your own social media targets.

You will also be able to spot opportunities. If you realise that one of your competitors is dominant on Twitter but has put small effort into Instagram and Facebook then you will know where to focus to get the underserved audience.

Do a social media audit

If you are using social media, you should take stock of your marketing efforts so far. You should know what is working, who is engaging with you, your most valuable partnerships, the networks that your audience use, and how your social media presence compare to your competitors. After collecting the necessary information, you will be ready to think about different ways to improve.

Improve profiles

You should first decide the best networks to use and as you decide, you will need to decide your strategy for each network. Write a mission statement for the networks you choose. This could just be a one-sentence declaration to help you focus on your specific goal.

Find inspiration

While it is important to keep your brand unique, you can draw inspiration from other businesses that are doing good on social media. If your social media marketing agency is experienced, it should know such brands and help you get inspiration from them. Listen to social media success stories and know what you are doing right or wrong.