If you are a known-brand or trying to develop one, there are zero percent chances that you are not considering targeting social media platforms to create awareness about your brand and its offerings. We all know it for a fact social media is here to stay for a while and every business, big and small, is utilizing social media’s potential to reach out to a diverse audience.

Even if you have not yet optimized your brand on social media platforms, it’s not too late. You can get started this instant. Cultivating your brand on social media platforms has a great many benefits to it. It not only helps with raising awareness, but also bears an indirect effect on search engine optimization of the brand. In order to establish a strong social media presence however, you need to have a strategized structure.

We have specially designed this article to tutor you on how to develop a strong structure which lays the foundation of a perfect social media strategy. We are going to discuss ten simple and effective ways which will not only help you create a robust social media presence but also provide a boost to your social media marketing strategy.

1. Identify your Target Audience:

Identifying your target audience is the most basic yet vital step. But why is that so significant? Well, there is a large number of social media platforms out there and you cannot possibly target each and every to develop and sustain meaningful presence. Rather it is necessary for you to identify your target audience and analyze different platforms to figure out which of these numerous platforms are employed by the majority of those whom you are trying to reach out to. Provide ample time for this exercise and gather all your facts and figures in order to make a suitable decision.

Once you have identified your target audience, you can move onto categorizing these platforms on the bases of the type of audience which utilizes that particular platform, and the platform’s particular niche. And then pick the top three to create and devise a course of action in order to make yourself a prominent entity on these. Don’t forget a unique strategy that narrows your effort down to the target audience is bound to define and impact the future of your social media presence.

2. Set SMART Goals for campaigns:

While constructing strategies for social media platforms, set smart goals for your campaigns. Any marketing literate would know what smart goals mean here. But if you don’t know, you do not need to worry about it. We have got you covered here. Every letter in “SMART” holds a significant meaning to it:

• Specific: A goal specifically defined in order to achieve a specific purpose. For example: You have identified Instagram as one of the platforms you reckon draws in your target audience. You’ll form a strategy specifically for Instagram to reach out to the potential audience that will be different from the one you’ll need to construct for twitter for example.
• Measurable: A measurable set of goals must be focused upon in order to help keep track of the performance indicators pertaining to your campaign.
• Achievable: Realistic goals should be set in order to gain maximum achievability rate.
• Relevant: Set relevant objectives in order to achieve the most qualified traffic.
• Time-Bound: Make your goals time-bound. Do not aim at what can’t be accomplished in any specified time frame.

Above all, remember clarity regarding the bottom-line purpose of your social media campaign is highly important. It prevents you from running aimlessly into the wide and wild world of social media.

3. Be as human as possible:

This point may seem very insignificant but is actually highly vital. Customers will interact with you promptly if you reach out to them with material that appeals to their human side and in a manner they can relate with. Being unnatural is the major error of judgment most brands make on social media platforms. Their content doesn’t appeal the audience enough to propel engagement. So keep your content as instuitive and relatable as possible – it should come across as an effortless endeavor. Foucs on providing transparent information, and insight, which gets people interested and draws them into interaction.

Showing the human side of your business will bring you great benefit. It will convey to your customers the real spirit of the brand – one that underlines your social feeds. Most brands nowadays are therefore known for a friendly approach that allows their clientele to harbor a sense of amicability with the brand not to forget cultivate brand loyalty with a personal touch.

4. Seek relationship rather than that of the followers:

Building a quality relationship with your audience is far more important than simply acquiring a large following. Following will automatically increase when you deliver on your promises efficiently. So better seek a reliable relationship than simply building up the number. Having 200 followers who actually engage with your content and respond to it is better than boasting 20,000 followers who barely pay attention to the content on your page. The beauty of social media platforms is they allow you to build a unique relationship with your followers. And the biggest benefit attached to that is it kind of works as a CX survey for a brand. They can complain about what you offer, suggest something new, or share their happiness with your product/services.

For example an internet service provider could be sitting on a social media platform observing how people receive new internet packages offered by the company. Are they happy with it? Do they find it reasonable and efficient? Are they inquiring about it? Are they tempted to switch their internet service? All these things don’t only constitute a two-way interaction, but also help the brand analyze customer needs, the weak links, and how they can make their product/service better.

5. Make a content plan:

Knowing your audience is highly important when it comes to creating a content plan. You need to know what will be of interest to your audience. What can trigger the audience to interact with the posts? By keeping in view all these factors determine the type of content which can be best utilized to build a healthy relationship with your target audience.

For example: if you own a coffee brand, it is possible that your audience is highly interested in fancy drinks recipes, amazing tips for brewing, and techniques which save coffee from catching fungi, so on and so forth. Here are a few things you should know about your audience while designing the content.

• Age
• Gender
• Needs
• Likes
• Behaviors
• Goals
• Challenges
• Pain Points
• Trigger points

One important thing: No matter who your audience is, the content should be of high quality which delivers meaning.

6. Automate the tasks smartly:

Automation – is a raging phenomenon in almost every aspect of our daily life right now and businesses cannot escape it by any means. In fact it has taken over marketing to a large extent. But certainly, you cannot entirely rely on automated systems to answer customer queries or retweet. Leaving your social media platform on autopilot mode will make your endeavor lose the human touch. Several things have been seen going wrong on social media due to automation. And it is more and more clearly understood by all businesses it is imperative that only part of social media customer care is automated rather than the whole of it – part of it must always remain human thereby permitting personalized interaction. For instance you can certainly automate the social media platform operations when it comes to tasks like scheduling etc.

I’d suggest you avoid automation when it comes to real customers and followers – the very reason why brands are highly reliant on social media management platforms to help keep things organized at all times.

7. Serve efficiently rather than selling:

Although a major part of social media platforms is being used for promotional purposes. Everybody is eager and driven to improve sales through social media platforms. Surely, in e-commerce you’re more inclined towards promoting your offers and deals. But it must be understood what’s even more important is community management.

Community management is about catering to the queries of brand followers and customers at the earliest possible. A seriously dedicated person is required to conduct the task of community management – one who can remain constantly engaged with the audience through comments and direct messages. If a follower of yours is constantly ranting about a particular problem, you could in fact craft specially laid out content to address or pacify the concern. By offering assistance to customers you prove yourself to be a reliable brand which doesn’t constantly push its products and deals only, rather desires to form and sustain a lifelong relationship with its customers.

8. Optimize the account for engagement:

First thing – don’t let this word “optimize” freak you out here. Unlike search engine optimization, social media’s optimization is not that technical. They can be optimized through catchy images, induction of keywords, regular updating, and sharing new content, etc.

For example, Instagram’s bio link is altered by business page managers every now and then because it is mostly being used for promotions and advertising. They roll out the latest link so that people can visit the website and read about the subject in detail.

9. Make use of Visuals:

Visual content is totally killing it right now. Instagram and Pinterest are image-based platforms and have a high engagement rate. Facebook itself noticed the fact that live videos tend to gain six times more engagement than any other content type. Whereas on twitter GIFS and videos draw way more shares than text-based posts. I would suggest you make use of visual content so that traffic is not only attracted towards your platform but people also feel inclined to engage with the content displayed on it.

10.Stay on top of the news:

We all know for a fact anything can click on social media platforms – even a 10-year challenge type of thing to the #metoo movement. There is a possibility that you start a movement which clicks with the audience. But if it isn’t launched by you then you must need to stay on top of all the trending hashtags, movements, events, and campaigns in order to use them to your own benefit. So staying on top of current information and trends is highly important in order to retain your brand as a prominent entity on social media platforms.

The aforementioned ten points we have discussed are the most basic yet extremely effective in creating an influential presence on social media. If implemented right, they can yield impeccable results.

I hope this article has been of assitance to you as far as understanding the many seemingly small things which in fact possess the power to make or break your brand’s reputation on social media.