Any strategy defines a vector of advancement and development, therefore it is based on goals and objectives.

*An effective SMM strategy answers five questions:

• Who are our customers?
• What do we sell?
• How to sell effectively?
• When and where to promote the product?
• What product properties to develop?

Social networks can significantly increase the profits of both a large retailer network and a small SaaS platform. But SMM is a marketing tool, not a magic wand. Successful brands use carefully thought-out strategies and set clearly defined goals.

Time and resources

Before creating an account, think about the time and resources that you can invest in social networks. The more pages and communities you start, the more time you will have to spend on filling and managing them. If you do not have this time, you can hire a manager for this who will create and post content, manage the online community, and communicate with customers. Many hire interns to save money but keep in mind that a social media profile is the face of your company (and often the main channel for engaging with your audience). Without leadership and a clear strategy, an inexperienced social media manager can do more harm than good: spam, post irrelevant content, miss opportunities to engage customers, and so on.

Goals and objectives

Goals and objectives underlie a long-term project. Setting goals is easier with the SMART model: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-limited. Without measurable goals, it is impossible to track progress towards global and intermediate goals of the concept. A simple question that helps measure measurability: is the goal partially or fully achieved? The same goes for tasks. The outline below will help you create a detailed action plan based on the goals of the campaign. And don’t forget to set KPI for tasks and metrics for actions.

Define Target Audience

Understand who the company’s strategy is aimed at. The right portrait of the audience will help not only increase the number of users in the community but also reduce advertising costs (hi, relevant target).

Divide your target audience into smaller segments to increase your communication. And be sure to describe the segments: what they love, what they do, what books they read – the more details, the easier. Almost no one purposefully enters the community, so every entry needs to be advertised. Prepare the advertised entry for promotion to narrow audiences. A different advertisement will be configured for each profile.

How to track results and report?

The metrics you follow will depend on your goals. For example, if you want to build an active online community, you will need to pay attention to the number of subscribers and indicators that reflect involvement: the number of comments, likes, and reposts. If you look only at metrics and work with only one or two platforms, you can either rely on their built-in analytics tools or use profile management tools.

If you are tracking additional metrics (for example, traffic coming to the site), you will need to make sure that you have extracted data from additional sources (for example, Google Analytics) and compared them to understand which posts led to successful conversions.

How will you engage the audience?

Think about how to engage your audience. Your profiles on social networks are a continuation of the company, and, therefore, the tone of your posts should correspond to its nature. At the same time, the tone should be in harmony with the platform: for example, on Instagram, your brand can be fun and informal, but you may need to behave more seriously on a platform like Facebook, where it is customary to behave more calmly and professionally.

Adjust

Does something block your way to success? What if your initial KPIs are not feasible soon? It is vital to understand who your real audience is and what it wants. Consider analytics results. Keep on.