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Easy Social Media Marketing Strategy

Created to help beginners get started building their social media marketing platform.

By Jami BrumfieldPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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This video outlines, step by step, a simple strategy to help you get started in social media marketing and building your portfolio from Social Media Marketing Secrets YouTube Channel. 

While Social Media Marketing (SMM) can be a scary endeavor, it is easier than most people understand, as long as they start slow and grow at their own pace. The ultimate goal is to be on multiple platforms, but there is no reason why you need to be on all of them in the very beginning. Start slow, with the most strategic platform for your business, and then branch outward.

Step One: Research Platforms, Know Your Ideal Customer, Understand Your Niche

Research for many is not the favorite step in any plan, but it is necessary in this plan. You must understand your ideal customer, where they are likely to hang out online, and which Social Media Platform will get you the best engagement and connection with those ideal customers.

Your task for this section is to identify your ideal customer, define your niche (niche down if needed), and identify the top one to five platforms you'll have the best impact in.

Then, research five to 10 social media platforms in regards to demographics, geographical connection (if applicable), cost, potential reach and engagement, and ease of social media platform use.

For example, if you're more comfortable with your phone, Instagram might be a good spot to start. If you prefer your computer, maybe Pinterest or Facebook would be a good option. If you prefer videos, maybe Youtube, Twitch, or Periscope would be a good option.

Perform your Market and Competitor Research

Determine how you are unique from your competitors. What will make you stand out to your ideal customer over any other competitor in the market. If during your research you can't determine how you are fresh, unique, or different from your competitors, this would be a good time to re-evaluate your product and service, and see how you can shape it to be different, even better then the competitors.

Pick the platform you're going to have the biggest impact on, and get started with an account.

This is the easy part. Opening a social media account is usually free on most platforms, and takes very little time to build out. The nice thing is you'll be able to build out the next ones faster, because it'll be a copy and paste across most platforms. This will build consistency, but the goal right now is to simply start with one, build it out, and get comfortable with a posting schedule.

The expansion will come later.

It is important to note in this section, that you need to make a solid posting commitment. A social media account with no posts or engagement is many times worse than no social media account at all.

That brings us to creating a content posting calendar

Start by determining what you'll be posting (types of posts: text, video, curated content, original content, photos etc.). You can also do a combination of posts. One of my social media channels, I post one live video, a couple edited videos, curated top industry news posts, and engagement posts. This was developed in this phase of my planning.

I also focus on posting three free, valuable content posts to every one Call to Action (CTA) post. Social media is more about the people, not the product (a video I did on Social Media Marketing Secrets on my YouTube channel) and building the trust, know, and like factor. Once people trust, know, and like you, they're more open to purchasing your products or services.

Think about it, most people don't walk up to a stranger on the street and ask them on a date. First, they get to know you, at least strike up a conversation, make sure there is a connection. Those that do just walk up and ask for a date have a much higher fail rate than those that create that know, like, and even trust factor.

Then determine the frequency of your posts on this social media channel, and the final step is to create a calendar with your plan.

You can also pre-schedule the posts using scheduling tools. I talk about those tools on my YouTube channel and more. If you're looking for quick video breakdowns on social media marketing then subscribe, and click the bell on the Social Media Marketing Secrets channel.

Social Media Marketing Is About Getting Socially Connected

Once you've started posting, then it is important to monitor those posts and engage with your audience. If someone comments on your post, be sure to respond and engage them.

Make sure the engagement is helpful. It isn't enough to say, "I agree," it is more important to continue offering valuable information in your response

Check your Results

Make sure you are monitoring your results, and seeing measured improvement in the goals you have toward your posting plan. What is your goal, and are you achieving or getting closer to achieving these goals? If not, you may have to re-evaluate your posting plan, and make the necessary changes.

Rinse and Repeat

Once you're happy with the results of your first campaign, then pick the second platform, and start building out that platform and your social media marketing portfolio.

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