Running your social media marketing campaigns without a strategy can result in wasted resources and chaos.

After all, working without a strategy is like looking for treasure without a map, trying to pass a test you didn’t study for, or assembling IKEA furniture without the instructions (you get the point).

TL;DR: You need a solid strategy to shape and guide your social media marketing efforts and increase your chances of succeeding.

The big question now is, how do you create a winning social media marketing strategy?

We got you covered.

Continue reading to learn how to develop your strategy and the tips to make your social media marketing successful.

1. Identify your goals

Creating a social media strategy (or any strategy) starts with identifying your goals.

Why are you marketing on social media? What do you want your social media marketing efforts to achieve?

If you don’t set your objectives, tracking and measuring your success and your Return on Investment (ROI) effectively can be almost impossible.

Some of the general social media marketing goals you can include are:

• Drive website traffic
• Increase brand engagement
• Raise brand awareness
• Grow revenue by increasing sales and signups
• Offer social customer service
• Listen and monitor conversations about your brand
• Generate new leads
• Grow your following and build a community around your business

While you can have multiple social media marketing goals, start with (or narrow them down) to the top three objectives.

For instance, run social media campaigns, such as asking poll questions on Instagram to raise audience engagement, drive traffic to your content, and increase brand awareness.

The Instagram Story by Skittles is a great example.

If you have a dedicated social media marketing team, have specific members or groups take on each goal.

2. Know your competitors and what they do right

With the right strategies, studying your competitors and what they do well with their social media marketing can help you develop your approach.

Below are a few ways to help you learn from your competitor’s social media marketing efforts and how you can use the information to improve your approach.

• Do competitive analysis. Performing a competitive analysis helps you understand who your competitors are, including what they’re doing well (and not well).

You can get a good idea about what to expect from your industry, helping you refine your strategies and give them more focus.

You can also learn best practices and reliable tools that work for competitors, from reliable social media management tools to popular online publishing platforms.

Competitive analysis can also help you spot opportunities.

For example, if a competitor is dominant on Instagram, but not on Facebook and Twitter, focus your social media marketing efforts on the two platforms.

Market to audiences your competitors might underserve instead of trying to win fans away from them on platforms they dominate.

• Leverage social listening. Social listening is another way to learn more about your competitors’ social media marketing initiatives.

Use social listening tools to search your competitors’ account handles, names, and other relevant keywords on social media. You can see the content your competitors are sharing, what people say about them, exciting trends, and more.

Let’s say you see a trend among competitors where they post more Instagram Reels to give quick tips on brand-related content.

Share your Reels on the best way to buy SEO articles and get backlinks if you provide SEO services.

Utilize the intel from your competitor research to inform your social media marketing strategy.

3. Determine your target audience

Know your target audience, the people most likely to be interested in your posts, products, and offers. It can help you determine the right content to share with the best people at the perfect time.

Start by creating audience personas for your social media marketing efforts.

Consider the five Ws and one H (5Ws and 1H) approach.

• Who is your target audience? Determine your ideal customer’s age, gender, job title, location, and other demographic data.
• What are your target audiences’ interests that you can address? For instance, if you offer software products, such as robust UX design software, provide educational content and compelling videos about your product’s benefits to potential customers.
• Where do your ideal audiences hang out online? Know which social platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) your potential customers frequent to tailor your social media marketing content and efforts accordingly.
• When are your target audiences most active? Learning when your followers are most active and responsive can help you develop an optimal posting time.
• Why do your ideal audiences consume content? Understanding why your followers read and watch specific social media content can help you tailor your content to their interests and needs, increasing your engagement.
• How do your followers consume content? Knowing our audience’s preferred methods of consuming content can help shape and inform the social media content format and types you should create to drive engagement.

Use HubSpot’s MakeMyPersona tool to easily generate a mix of information about your ideal audience.

Refine your existing marketing personas and audience groups (if you already have one).

Gain insights from your content tracking strategy to assess your content’s performance and audience responses.

4. Establish your critical metrics and KPIs

A data-driven social media strategy is crucial to help you determine the following:

• Your campaign’s success
• How well your social media marketing strategy performs
• Your social media marketing efforts impact on your overall business

Focus on the social media metrics that matter most to your business. It can help you drill down on data that aligns directly with your objectives.

The essential social media marketing metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can include the following:

• Clicks. Track clicks for each campaign to know what drives audience engagement and encourages people to convert and buy.
• Reach. Assess your post’s reach or the number of unique users who saw your content. You’ll know whether your content reaches your target audience’s social feeds.
• Engagement. Monitor and analyze your engagement (social interactions divided by the number of impressions) to understand your audience’s perception of your brand and willingness to interact.

It can help determine if your current social media content strategies, including the content writing tips you follow, help drive your expected engagement rate.

• Sentiment. Track and measure sentiment to know how your audiences react to your brand, content, and offers (among others). It can tell you the sentiment people associate with your social media posts.

Establish your most critical metrics to ensure your social media campaigns align with your marketing efforts, goals, and business.

Optimize your social media marketing with a solid strategy

A strategy can make or break your social media marketing efforts.

It can serve as your blueprint to carry out your approaches and tactics to get the most from promoting your products and business across social media platforms.

Use the tips in this guide as your jumping-off point. Refine and improve your social media strategy as you gain experience and grow your business.