How To Create An Effective Social Media Content Marketing Strategy?

By Scott Lee

Social media networks are the backbone of many marketing tactics. So, how do you create an effective content strategy for it?

Social media networks come in all shapes, colors, and sizes nowadays. Hence, making content strategies according to each social media network and its audience is important. So, how do you do that? Let's find out.

Why Social Media Marketing Strategy Is Necessary?

Social media networks are used by billions of people around the globe. Stats suggest around 2.9 billion people use Facebook alone.

Moreover, other social media networks yield high numbers, too, such as:

• YouTube has around 2.5 billion;
• Instagram houses 1.4 billion;
• and TikTok has 1 billion active users around the globe.

 Hence, social media networks are a necessary aspect of marketing today.

7 Steps To Create An Effective Social Media Content Strategy

Social media strategies require you to use a variety of tactics and methods. From summarizing a blog with a summary tool, so you can create captions, to creating short videos, you'd have many responsibilities.

So, from word rephrasing to getting a unique version of the captions, and editing videos to fit particular social media video sizes, you'd go through various content creation aspects. But, a strategy tends to have many other aspects. So, here are the six necessary steps you need to take to create an effective social media strategy:

1.   Pick The Right Social Media Network(s)

There are plenty of social media networks today. The most popular of them are Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. However, not all of these social media networks are ideal for your business or objective. It all comes down to the audience or niche. For instance:

• Snapchat and TikTok are ideal for reaching younger audiences.
• Whereas Twitter and Facebook happen to feature people of all ages.
• On the other hand, Instagram is used by people of all ages and people in all facets of life.

So, it comes down to analyzing and researching your audience. So, identify your audience and see which of these platforms they use the most.

Once you do, make sure you use that social media platform or focus on it more than others. However, there is no limit, as you can use more than one or all of the social media platforms if you like.

2.   Identify Your Goals & Objectives

The next step you'll take is to understand the type of objectives that you wish to achieve. For some businesses and marketers, it's all about reaching their audience or bringing traffic to other platforms, such as their blogs or websites.

However, it all comes down to your preferences and objectives at the time. The thing about goals related to social media networks is that they can change with time. So, your objectives might change by the time you're yielding results from one social media strategy.

So, what could your goals possibly be? Answer these questions to figure out:

• Do you wish to attract more audience to your website or blog?
• Do you wish to build a general social media following?
• Do you wish to build a strong online profile?

If you have one or more objectives, you will likely need a long-term social media strategy. So, try to come up with a long-term goal, such as building a following.

However, you should also focus momentarily on small or timely objectives like drawing traffic to your website. This way, you will be able to build a vast online profile.

3.   Build A Content Calendar

Once you understand the objective, move forward with the content creation process. However, it's important to create a calendar before you write content, design images, or make videos. Some brands create weekly calendars.

Meanwhile, other brands focus on monthly and some even yearly calendars. However, seeing how trends change and landscapes can shift within a few hours on social media, it's better if you create weekly or monthly calendars. So, what does this calendar entail? Here's what

• Weekly posts about your brand or industry;
• Informative content regarding intricacies;
• Posts that portray your expertise and industry prowess;
• A blend of visual and written content.

So, make sure you create a content calendar bearing these important factors in mind.

4.   Identify & Create Various Content Types

Social media networks are host to various content types. Most social media networks today allow you to post text, videos, and images. However, they all differ from one another. For instance, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok use a specific reel style.

Whereas Twitter and Facebook allow wide-lens videos as well. The other platforms also allow them, but the portrait video mode suits them more. The same could be said about images, as TikTok or Snapchat isn't exactly ideal for images.

Whereas Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and now even YouTube allows you to post images, written posts, and image carousels. So, you need to identify which type of content you're going to use the most, such as:

• Engaging captions that plug your blog/website
• General captions for your images and videos;

That's when you'll need various tools as well, such as:

• Online image creators like Canva;
• Video editors for reels;
• An online editor like Google Docs to keep track and share with the rest of your team;
• A rephrasing tool to get various versions of the original post captions.

Thus, when you seek assistance from Canva and a rephrasing tool, you'd be able to create effective and engaging content for all social media types. Using an online rephrasing tool helps to easily word rephrase your original post captions to make them more readable and engaging. In this way, you can easily provide unique content in different ways to the audience on social media platforms.

5.   Summarize Blogs/Website Content And Plug Them In Captions

Website or Blog content is usually around 1000-1500 words. They are commonly one of the most challenging content types to share on social media, as platforms like Twitter only allow 144 characters. So, what do you do then?

You can summarize blog and website content to condense their ideas and use them as captions. You can summarize the content manually or with assistance from online summarizing tools. A summary tool helps you to easily summarize until the word/character length is achieved. Once you get the summarized text as per your requirement, you can use it in social media captions.

So, when you use the summarized content in the caption, it’ll embody the concept presented in the blog or website content.  Hence, allowing you to create an engaging caption.  

6.   Track & Analyze Metrics

Once you post content, your job isn't done. In fact, many experts would suggest it's only getting started then. That's why you need to start tracking and analyzing your content metrics. Now, Facebook and Instagram have in-built tools to help you track metrics.

Whereas other social media networks have their own methods. So, you might need an outside tool, such as Sprout Official, BuzzSumo, or Analytics (Snapchat only). Thus, you will have to track metrics and analyze them to further your social media performance and change content creation tactics accordingly.

7.   Tend to KPIs

KPIs or key performance indicators tell you which part of your strategy or content is performing well. These aspects are important because they allow you to tend to specific aspects of your content creation.

That way, you will give your audience more of what they like to see—videos, images, or text. However, they also help you analyze which parts of your content strategy aren't performing as well.

But, then, it depends on your priorities and goals to determine whether you wish to continue focusing on KPIs or work on the least-performing factors.

Conclusion

These are the six key steps of creating a content strategy for social media networks. You need to understand that your work doesn't stop once you post content.

In fact, after that, you have to focus on engagement, reach, and general traffic. Thus, make sure you follow these six steps thoroughly to create a comprehensive social media marketing strategy.

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