Social Media has been increasing day by day, where social media also defeating organic searches. No doubt social media channels like facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and Google plus has covered half of the market.

Do not need to explain that these popular social sites have billions of active users. But who do not know that exact figure: here is overview;

Before jump into Social Media Strategy steps, first we need to know about below type of Media’s:-

• Owned
• Paid
• Earned

Social Media Marketing is not successful until all of these 3 tactics combine together.

Before going into deep, let me explain you what is Owned, Paid and Earned Social media.

Owned  –  Owned social media properties are facebook, twitter, linkedIn, G+ , Pinterest and more where these social sites help you to drive traffic to your  main website.

With owned social media traffic, you are able to dig deeper into who your followers are, and what they like to engage with.

The more people you are able to engage with through your owned social media channels, the more you will be able to grow your social media following.

Paid – Paid media is most popular media today.  80% of social media today is paid. All social media sites offer advertising that could help to grow your following and website traffic.

Another way to gain better exposure to your content is to pay twitter influence to tweet and share your facebook post.

Using re-targeting, PPC and display ads is an effective and more direct way to drive targeted traffic to your owned media channels.

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Earned – When your social media followers who viewed your post or tweet, link back to your website organically through a mention, retweet, or share, you are acquiring earned social media.

In my opinion Earned media is best media to gain traffic because you do not need to put so much effort after achieving enough followers and fans.

Now the Main Social Media Strategies that work from the beginning of Social Media

1) Identify Business Goals-

Every social media strategy is made to full fill your business goal. So First identify what is your company need and how social media will help to accomplish these goals.

You may come up with multiple goals but I suggest you to choose primary goal and secondary goal only, chasing too many goals can distract you and you cannot achieve any of them.

2) Set Time Frame –

After selecting your main and secondary goal, you have to set a time frame to accomplish those goals. You cannot take too many years or you cannot complete them in few weeks.

No one can proceed further if they do not know when you will count your goal is completed. For example – if one of your primary goals is generating leads and sales, how many leads and sales do you have to generate before you consider that goal a success?

When you make sure that for example within 6 month I can achieve X number of leads or sale after that I will follow my secondary goal, then you can exactly be sure that your second goal will be achieved in Y number of month.

3) Who are your Customers?

If you are new to social media marketing and have low or no engagement, you have to identify what type of customers you need to follow or target.

When you come to know your target audience’s age, motivations , income,  pains, problems, obstacles, occupation, interests, habits, likes, dislikes, and objections, then it’s easier and cheaper to target them on social media.

For example – if you started targeting or chasing people blindly just to increase number of followers, likes or circle, and have spent years to achieve millions of followers hoping that you will start getting leads or sale very soon then you are wrong.

Millions of wrong customers can never help you to achieve your goals.  Only few hundred in compare to millions can give you healthy sale.

4) Identify Competitors –

Use Google to identify your competitors by using your main keywords. Those are at top 3 position in Google, might be your top competitors ( if you have chosen right keywords ).

Start by compiling a list of at least 3 top competitors. Search which social networks they are using and analyze their marketing strategy. Look at their number of followers, posting frequency and time of day.

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Also pay attention to the content they are posting and how they’re responding to their fans.

Note – There is no guarantee that if your competitor is posting 20 posts in day then you should also follow the same strategy. Just focus on quality and time (when to post ). Timing you can fix according to your targeted audience country.

5) Select Best Social Media Channels –

Every business has their own point of view toward each social media channels.  Many businesses create account on each social media sites without researching which social media channel will provide them best return.

My suggestion is to focus on 2 or 3 main social sites without wasting time on other sites that can never profit you.

6) Content Strategy –

Content and social media have good interconnection.  Without good content no one will engage and without social media on one can come to know about your great content.

Content could be any of these type – text only, images, links, video, etc.

 7) Assign job or Role –

Assigning role to perfect and experience guy will help to make social media strategy successful.

For example –

Paid advertising – Mark

Video creation – John

Text Posting – Marin

Customer service – Andrew

When everyone knows his role, it’s time to start planning the execution process. You can either plan daily or weekly or as per your interest of posting.

Tools to Manage Social Media Channels

When you Google, you can find long list of Social Media Management tools. But here I am going to add main and effective tools.

However, social media can be frustrating if you do not have the proper knowledge of tools.

1) HootSuite –

Manage all your social media in one place. From finding prospects to serving customers, Hootsuite helps you do more with your social media.

Save time by managing all of your social media marketing efforts from a single dashboard. With Hootsuite’s platform, you get the tools to manage all your social profiles and automatically find and schedule effective social content.

2) Hubspot –

While there are a lot of tools out there that let you monitor and publish to social accounts, we recommend platforms such as Hubspot where you can not only monitor and publish but also get closed-loop reporting data.

3) MeetEdgar –

Everything you publish with Edgar is stored in an organized library and arranged into categories, like “Quotes,” “Blog Posts,” or “Cat Puns.” To save even more time, you can add content in bulk or connect him to an RSS feed.

4) Buffer –

Buffer for Business is a better way to schedule your content, measure performance, and collaborate with your team on social media.

5) Sprout Social –

Sprout helps entire organizations­—whether it is a small business, international agency or Enterprise Corporation—extracts real business value out of social media through effective engagement, publishing and analytics.

Interested in More Tools – Here is the Video