The Internet has made the world a global, interconnected community in the past decade. As a result, our way of interacting with each other has changed. Instead of meeting people in person or telling someone about something in person, we meet online, exchange our opinions on social media platforms, and market online. Marketing has vastly changed with the advent of the online marketing tactics. The event that finally catalyzed the huge migration online was the pandemic.
On average, a person will spend 28% of their time on the Internet using social media. This prominence and popularity of the social media platforms make them a perfect marketing tool. You can get your message across to millions of audiences without leaving your chair. So how does a successful social media marketer work in this evolving and changed landscape where every business is, or is planning to go, online?
We have compiled a checklist that will serve the social media marketer well when he/she finds their job near impossible because of all the innovation taking place every minute.
Why Use a Checklist
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- It helps ensure that you’re not missing or forgetting any task in the coming days or weeks.
- In order to organize your thoughts and ideas
- Allows you to remain consistent and up to date with daily and weekly activities
- Helps organize tasks on the basis of importance or priority
- Enables to keep everything accounted for and everyone accounted to their tasks
Social Media Marketer’s Checklist
Imagine you have some merchandise to sell, like t-shirts, cups, and metal promotional pens, the first thing you do is choose a social media platform. Set up a detailed profile, add photos of the merch, add descriptions, promote it through ads, and you’ll soon be rolling in revenues, or maybe not that quickly. First, you need to go through this checklist.
Choosing a Social Media Platform
Several options to choose from here:
- Facebook – Undoubtedly, the biggest player in the social media space, Facebook is somewhat of a mixed bag for business. It has been difficult for Facebook users to connect with fans in recent times. However, Facebook’s ad platform is the gold standard for social media ads, especially if you can afford paid promotions.
- Instagram – Instagram’s network mainly revolves around visual content. Ecommerce shops or influencer shoutouts are some of the ways you can brand yourself on this site. The platform encourages creativity to sell things one feels passionate about.
- Twitter – Twitter is a solid starting point for a fledgling business. It requires little effort to setup shop here and make direct contact with followers, making it an ideal platform for customer service. A platform that is geared towards facilitating conversations, Twitter can help you produce organic following and engagement.
- LinkedIn – Of course, the network has a singular focus on business trends and networking, however, most business profiles are for beginners. If you’re looking for an influencer, marketing manager or CEO, chances are high that you’ll find them on LinkedIn.
- Pinterest – Insanely popular with millennials and is considered to be one of the best networks for social selling. Pinterest thrives on imagery and inspirational content and where products are viewed front and center. The Pinterest Ads feature will let you create campaigns that will help you reach ever-growing audiences and convert and sell to millions.
So which platform should you choose? Ideally, you should be on all the above platforms, but your focus should be on one or two of these. Focusing on one or two platforms requires that you narrow down your focus onto a specific audience, which is the next item on this checklist.
Defining Your Audience
You need to know everything about the demographic you are targeting: their age, gender, occupation, income level, education level, type of industry they work in, the type of business they’re in, and their earnings.
Completing Your Profile(s)
As soon as you have chosen your social media platform, you can move on to setting up your profile. Make an account and provide all of your business details; the more descriptive you are, the better. If the users find accounts with minimal or incomplete data, they tend to skip over. Fill out the bios and all the About Us sections, and also answer all the FAQs that customers might have etc. Work on optimizing your social media platforms for information, awareness, engagement, and conversion.
Developing a Content Strategy
You need to have a good social media content strategy, which means having a well-thought-out plan of what posts will you make and when you’ll make them. The key here is to post engaging content in order to attract prospects, get more followers and increase the number of post engagements. There are different types of contents you can post, like videos, photos, contests, infographics, text posts, promotional posts, giveaways and discount offers.
When developing a content strategy, be clear about what is the brand identity of your business. If it’s casual or even humorous, serious and formal posts won’t align with your image.
Stick to a Calendar When Posting
Having determined what you want to post, you’ll need to decide how regularly you need to post. A calendar will help you plan postings and determine the frequency of posts beforehand. This saves a lot of time and effort in the long run and also your customers know when you will post which helps them engage more with you and your posts.
Interacting with Followers
The success of any business lies in its ability to interact well with its customers and followers. On social media, communication with your customers will be in the form of likes, comments, mentions, and tags.
An important goal is to interact with your target audience directly. When you post something about your service or product, people will ask for details relating to that service or product, like price, size, location, or color. Staying vigilant on these platforms to acknowledge, answer questions, and interact with customers is key to keeping your brand accessible and relevant.
Answering their questions and thanking them makes the customers feel heard and cared for, which will increase brand loyalty.
Final Words
A good understanding of the social marketing tools at your disposal can ensure success for your business. This checklist was just a primer on the basics that every business, hoping to establish online presence, needs to know.
