How to Build a Social Media Strategy in 2024

Posting on social media is one thing. Having a strategy is a whole other ball game. In this blog post we’re going to go over how you can create a strategy that fits your business on social media in 2024.

1. Getting Started on Social Media

If your business has not made its debut on social media, you need to start by choosing the platforms that fit your brand.

Creating social media accounts is free, meaning your business can make as many as they want. For many companies, social media is one of the most cost-effective ways to start marketing. 

Yet, you’re not going to want to overwhelm yourself when starting your social media strategy plan right away. Instead, make one or two accounts that you feel will be significant in your niche. Do some research to see which platforms your target audience frequents. 

The best way to get started on social media is to stay consistent with a posting schedule. If you can only keep up with one social media account when starting, only create one account.

Making too many accounts at once and not posting enough can hurt your chances of gaining followers and getting noticed on social media. Potential customers might not want to shop with you because you have a bare platform. When businesses post consistently, clients will feel they are reputable and trustworthy. 

A posting schedule can help you stay accountable for creating content and posting on each account. Potential followers aren’t going to follow business accounts that rarely post. Instead, they want to see interesting content that contributes to their social media feeds. 

There are websites you can use to build your posting schedule. They also help to stay consistent with each platform you use. 

Some of these websites can even give you tips on the best times to post based on interactions. You want to make sure that you’re engaging with your followers by responding, liking, and favoriting comments when you post. 

2. Set Goals for Your Social Media Plan

Each business has different social media strategies, which come along with different sets of goals. When you’re planning your social media marketing strategy, you need to decide your purpose and the way you will achieve it through social media. 

One thing that many businesses strive for through marketing is to generate more leads and increase their sales. How can you set goals to accomplish this through social media? 

Another great goal is to increase your brand awareness. Many businesses want their company’s name to be well known and memorable. Social media can help as long as you use it effectively. 

Social media marketing can even help to increase your web traffic. If you’ve been creating content on your website, you can use your social media platforms for advertising it. Doing this will help to drive more traffic to your website so your target audience will see your content. 

You can also use social media to grow your audience and bring in more followers. Social media marketing is all about attracting your target audience to your content and getting them to subscribe or follow you. Think of ways you can make content to advertise your products, but get people to support you on these platforms. 

Whether you’re starting in social media or you’ve been doing it for a while, setting goals can help you get a clear path for what you want to achieve. Ask yourself what you can improve on, and look for ways you can with social media. 

3. Diversify Your Content

No matter what platform you post on, you need to make sure you’re diversifying your content. Each platform gives you the ability to post a variety of content. Whether it is photos, videos, text, blog posts, or more, you need to make sure you’re using them. 

When you create the same content over and over again, your followers are going to get bored. Chances are they might even hit the unfollow button if they see the same kind of thing one too many times. 

Creating the same thing won’t help you reach your marketing goals. You need to get creative with your social media content. Even if you branch out and try something new, be sure that you have the guts to hit publish. 

When you take the time to try new kinds of content, you can see what works best for your target audience. You’ll be able to see what they respond to better. 

One social media content example is the new Instagram Reels. These are sixty-second videos posted on Instagram that users can quickly scroll through to see the next video. 

Instagram Reels are not the traditional kind of content that you see on Instagram, yet it makes a nice change from your typical feed. Many businesses have been implementing this content into their posting schedule to gain more attention and add variety to their social media accounts. 

When you create diverse content on social media, you can also help to improve the algorithm. That way, you will have a better chance for your business’s content to get recommended to potential followers who could become clients. 

Social media websites like when people use every aspect of their platform, meaning they will push their content higher. 

Join over 1500 marketers on our newsletter! 

4. Research Your Target Audience

Gaining followers on social media is about knowing the people you’re marketing and trying to reach. Without it, you’re playing a guessing game. 

How do you figure that out? By researching your target audience, of course! 

You can start by checking out the social media demographics for the platforms that your business is on. For example, if you want to target women, you should make sure your company is on Pinterest. That is because you will find a lot more women on Pinterest than men. 

If you’re thinking about the age of your target audience, social media demographics can help too. Facebook is going to have a lot of older generations. You’ll find Gen Z and Millenials on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat more often than any other platform. 

You can also define your target audience by asking yourself some questions about who you’re trying to reach. These questions can help you get more personal with knowing who your target audience is and describing them. 

• Where do they work?
• What is important to them?
• What is their personality like? 
• Where do they live?
• What are they interested in doing? 
• What challenges do they face?

There are a ton more questions you can ask to narrow down your target audience, but these are a few to get you started. 

Answering these questions can also help you figure out the kinds of content you should be posting on social media to help attract your audience. Once you know what they’re interested in and their personality, you’ll be able to make content that they want to see. 

Be sure to use the knowledge of your target audience to make engaging content on social media. Doing this will attract more people to buy your products and services. 

5. Engage With Your Audience

One of the most significant elements of your social media strategy plan should be deciding how you can engage with your audience more. Interacting with your followers on social media is a powerful way to gain trust and sales. 

What are the best ways to increase your follower engagement on social media? 

A reliable way to start is by creating content that encourages engagement. Compelling visuals that inspire people to leave a comment is one of the number one ways to get people to engage. Yet, that can be tricky to do, especially when you need to be consistently posting content. 

Instead, don’t be afraid to ask questions and get your followers talking. Make sure that you’re engaging too! 

Do your best to respond to all comments on your photos or videos. When you do this, more people will start to chime in on the subject too!

If you are unable to respond, make sure that you’re liking, favoriting, retweeting, or noticing your following in some way. 

Reaching out to your followers will help to build a relationship with them. Do you know what happens when your followers feel like they can trust you and your company? They will want to buy more products from you!

There are tons of benefits to building relationships with your following on social media. One perk is that they will recommend you to their following. Doing this can help your social media account grow. 

You will also find that you’re providing excellent customer service to your clients when you take the time to respond to questions, comments, or concerns. Doing this on social media is a fantastic way to get repeat customers and continue to grow your revenue. 

6. User-Generated Content

Speaking of engaging with your audience, you can also go to them to get content. User-generated content is an extraordinary way to get content to post on your social media accounts. It can help to promote your products or services. 

You might be asking, what is user-generated content? 

Well, user-generated content is what it sounds like, content created by your followers for you. Your followers will use your products or services and make a post saying how much they love them. 

It is an easy way to get more content that you can publish on your social media accounts. Yet, how can you influence your followers to make content for you? 

One of the best ways to get user-generated content is by asking your followers to make a post featuring your products. Let them know they can have the chance to be posted on your page. Chances are, there will be quite a few people that will do it! 

Once you get one person who makes a post for you, repost it and say thank you. After that, you will see a snowball effect. You’ll have a lot more followers who will want to be recognized by your company and start making posts too. 

User-generated content also helps to get the word out about your business. Your followers serve as a billboard as they post about you on their own social media pages. All their social media followers will see how much they enjoy your company and will check you out as well. 

Getting this type of content for your social media is a profitable way to gain more followers and expose your brand to new people.

7. Influencer Marketing on Social Media

If your social media strategy doesn’t include working with an influencer, you’re doing it wrong.

Influencer marketing is becoming one of the biggest trends, whether you use Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or any other platform. You’ll find influencers that fit your values, niche and love talking about your products.

The most significant part of working with influencers on social media is finding the right ones to fit your brand. Be sure to research before pairing with an influencer to see what values they hold and find out what other companies they’ve worked with within the past. 

One of the best ways to find influencers to work with is by asking your audience. See the kind of influencers they’re already watching on social media. Doing this will help you gauge what your target audience is interested in, and you’ll be able to find new influencers. 

What can an influencer do for you? Social media influencers can help to promote your products or services to their audience. They can help spread the word about what you have to offer and even give details about your products. 

You can pay influencers in many different ways, which is why so many businesses like to work with them. Some influencers prefer their payments per post with a specific amount of money. 

Other influencers will accept free products as payment and will make a post featuring what you have sent them. You can even give them a specific link or code to tell their followers to use. Whenever the code or link gets to use, they can make a commission from the sale. 

Influencer marketing is an impressive way to help grow your audience and make more sales. You’ll even be able to approve the post before an influencer makes it, so you know it fits your company’s values and aesthetics. 

8. Run a Social Media Contest

Are you looking for a quick way to gain social media followers? Running a social media contest can help you gain followers and increase your engagement. 

Perhaps you aren’t focused on gaining more followers but want to use social media to expand your email list. A contest is exceptional for that as well! 

Running a contest on social media can help you achieve any goal you wish. All you need to do is make that goal a rule in your content. 

If you want your followers to fill out a survey, tell them that to win your contest, they need to answer the questions in the survey. 

You don’t even need to have a spectacular prize when it comes to giveaways. Although Macbooks, Playstations, and other big-ticket items do help. Giving away one of your products can be a cost-effective way to achieve your marketing goals. 

Make sure that you lay out all the rules for your contest in your initial post. You don’t want anyone to feel cheated by your giveaway. If you can’t ship something worldwide, be sure to disclose that. 

Everyone loves winning contests. Making your contest easy to enter and win is a brilliant way to get people to participate. 

That’s why you shouldn’t have too many rules when coming up with your giveaway. Asking your followers to do too many steps can lead people not to enter.

Set one or two goals for your contest so that more people will want to participate. That means if you want people to follow you and enter their email address, only do those two things. Don’t also ask them to subscribe to your YouTube channel and follow you on Pinterest. 

9. Keep Your Direct Messages Open

Today, people don’t want to pick up the phone to talk to a company about a concern or issue. Instead, they head to social media to voice their concerns because it’s efficient.

Keeping your direct messages open so clients can reach you helps with your marketing. You might be asking, how? Well, instead of a client making a post about a problem on their feed for everyone to see, they can talk with you directly to get it solved.

Messaging you in your inbox can help save face, especially with potential customers. You’ll be able to use your excellent customer service skills and handle the issue right away. 

Be sure that you’re responding to all direct messages as soon as you get them. For customers, social media is a lot like text messaging because it is on their phone. They will expect a speedy reply, so be sure to give it to them. 

Handling issues through your direct messages can show that your company is efficient and knows what they’re doing on social media. Customers will also be more willing to work with you in the future if they’re problems are solved fast with no added issues. 

10. Watch How Others Are Doing It

Spying on the competition is always tempting. Did you know that it is a marketing tool to do so? 

A competitive analysis is vital in learning what your competition is doing well and what they could work on improving. It also is a way for you to determine what you could do better at than your competition. 

When you see what your competition is doing, you’ll get an idea of what the industry standard is for social media. 

Join over 1500 marketers on our newsletter! 

You can also see where your company needs to rise above the competition. For example, if there is a strong competitor on Twitter, but there isn’t very much competition on Facebook, you might want to create an account and rise to the top. 

Doing this can help you get to the top on a platform quicker, instead of taking followers and fans away from the competition on a different platform. 

It would help if you also looked at the competition to see how well they are following social media trends. Trends happen on social media nearly every day, and it is crucial to get ahead of them. 

If you can jump on a trend before your competition, you might be able to win over some of their followers. 

Your competition is also one of the best places to look at when deciding how not to do something. Watching your competition respond poorly to an issue can help you see the best ways to react in your future. 

Always have an eye on your social media competition as it is one of the best resources. Whether it is for creating content, customer service, getting ahead of the trends, or something else, you should make sure that you’re always watching what they’re doing. 

Planning Your Social Media Strategy for 2021

As you can see, there are plenty of unique ways you can plan your social media strategy. Approaching the world of social media is different for every company. Be sure to use your ideas so you can stand out from your competition. 

Are you looking to improve your business’s presence in the social media world? We can help craft your brand’s story using social media marketing to draw in more leads and generate more revenue. Be sure to contact us today, so we can get started working on your new marketing strategy right away.