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Read MoreThe impact of social media is everywhere.
Once a tool to check in on friends or see cool photographs, it’s now the leading marketing tool for most businesses.
In this article, we’ll dig into why that is, what exactly makes for a successful social media strategy, the impact this can have in driving business growth, and the ways Pictory can simplify your entire digital marketing approach.
What a Strong Social Media Strategy Looks Like
The best digital marketing begins with a social strategy to support it.
Go in with a plan and you’re far more likely to see the desired results and build lasting digital assets.
Here’s what a solid social media marketing strategy should include:
Clear Business Goals and KPIs
As we’ll explore later, social media marketing can offer a range of rewards but that will mean little if they don’t meet your business goals.
For example, a business with high website traffic but low follow-through in terms of purchases will be less worried about attracting new customers than they will be bridging the gap from click to cart.
Start your strategizing with clear goals and KPIs.
That way you can direct your digital marketing efforts directly toward the areas your business would most benefit from.
Planning like this also ensures that you have a more considered, consistent brand voice and social presence no matter the platform you’re posting to.
Content Creation
Once your goals are clear, you can then build your marketing content around them.
Creating engaging content is usually most successful when you’re not just selling your audience something but offering them added value too.
Perhaps you make them laugh, allow them to learn something, draw them in with a great story, or simply offer beautiful imagery – the point is that there is more to the content than the selling.
Prioritizing relevant content is also extremely important for any digital strategy.
Consider what would be useful to your target audience or a way in which your business can offer insight into an important pain point.
For example, if you’re marketing photographic services to families, you could run a humorous social media campaign on how to get kids to sit still for family photos.
It would engage the parents who likely follow you on a relatable issue, while also highlighting the product on offer.
When in doubt, approach creating engaging content not just as the seller but what you can imagine your audience pausing on in their feed.
What might make them stop and hear you out?
Strong Video Focus
No content marketing approach is complete without a strong focus on video creation.
As we’ll look at later, most social media platforms are prioritizing videos above most else.
They are one of the key ways to drive business growth in the modern marketing landscape.
The reason for that is simple: people engage more with videos.
Platforms like TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram Reels would not see the views they do if people didn’t.
Content Production and Editing
The part that many forget to consider in their social strategy is that even the most casual shoots require an element of planning and editing that will affect how frequently you can post, and how you present your brand voice online.
It’s why something like Pictory, and our AI functionality, should be a part of your strategy right from the start.
For instance, our extensive library of stock footage means that social media marketing videos that would have taken hours to shoot can actually be made in a fraction of the time.
Planning for the tools at hand allows businesses to structure their content timeline more accurately and be more consistent with posting.
Posting and Scheduling
When to post, how frequently, and how much lead time you’ll need to create engaging content all need to be included in a solid strategy.
Depending on the target audience of a brand, certain times or days of the week may be more beneficial to upload social media posts to encourage engagement.
To determine this, look at key metrics on social media platforms like Instagram to see when your audience is most active.
Scheduling and planning content in advance is also the best way to ensure that you’re posting regularly enough and maintaining a healthy social media presence.
So much of online marketing and building brand awareness on social media is simply staying consistent about posting.
It continually reminds your audience what your business is and the services or products they can look to you for.
For a full guide on this, check out our Best Social Media Posting Guide!
Balancing Multiple Social Media Platforms
Knowing the right social media platforms to be on is all down to a brand’s target audience.
Younger, Gen Z users tend to flock to TikTok while Instagram and YouTube both generally have a broader audience.
Whatever your target audience looks like though, every brand needs to account for presence on at least two or three different social channels in order to expand reach.
Even if the bulk of a business’s operations run from just one major social media platform, that content still needs to be marketed elsewhere to attract clicks and viewership.
Paid Social Media Advertising
Paid social media advertising isn’t always a necessity for brands – many will try to stick to organic marketing as much as possible or only use paid ads until they hit certain KPIs.
Not all social media advertising campaigns are created equal, and since there is so much choice in whether you want to target aspects such as website clicks, account follows, etc. a clear approach needs to be included in the strategy.
Even choosing not to run paid advertising can be its own strategic decision, depending on your business model.
Influencer Collaborations
Including influencer marketing in your content strategy is dependent on what type of business you have and the reach you aim to get, but it’s certainly a highly effective way to generate leads.
Unlike paid ads which go through the platform you’re on, influencer deals are made directly with people online who have great exposure and followings.
Influencer marketing can be as simple as sending free products to someone, which they may or may not post, to paying them to feature your brand in some way.
Some businesses even do full influencer collaborations on products and long-term social media campaigns with online figures.
Budget and industry shape whether this is a good fit or not.
Competitor Research
Comparison may be the thief of joy, but competitor research is just smart thinking when it comes to a content strategy.
Competing brands, the content they’re posting, and the audiences they’re attracting with it all need to be assessed early on.
You can’t stand out in the pack without a good sense of who your customers will be judging you against.
Identify Trends
Your competitors aren’t the only accounts that can offer valuable insights for your social media marketing approach.
Take time to look at what’s trending in general and what seems to be gaining popularity across social media channels.
The Impact of Social Media Marketing
After all that you may be wondering whether a comprehensive strategy is even worth it for your social media presence.
There was a time when people decided what to post on the fly, but the competitiveness of the current online landscape means that a far more considered effort is required to make a difference.
This is how a solid social media and digital marketing strategy can impact your business’ success:
Better Brand Awareness
Posting regularly, working with influencers, and making sure your business’ presence is felt on social media all help to build brand awareness.
The more often a brand is seen and spoken about online, the more it sticks in peoples’ minds.
Social media also provides a unique way to showcase a brand’s values, product insights, and behind-the-scenes content of business.
This only further helps with visibility and lead generation.
Metrics and Customer Insight
Even something as simple as an Instagram business account gives brands extra insight into their customers and how to target them.
Audience demographics, such as age and location, can help shape who businesses start to see as prospective customers.
The beauty of social media is that even with all the planning in the world, customers who you never expected to connect with your business may find you and reveal a whole new audience that you’d otherwise missed.
More Targeted Advertising
Thanks to their metrics, tools like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube advertising all make it easier than ever to target audiences more directly.
Whether it’s existing customers you want to reach more or new ones, ads can be designed specifically for that purpose.
This allows businesses to focus their resources far more effectively.
Improved Customer Engagement and Community
Customer loyalty and engagement is a huge factor in business success.
It’s also an area that social media marketing is uniquely equipped to assist with because it allows brands to connect with their customers on a more human, interactive level.
Comments, messages, and the accessible nature of social media platforms (versus traditional media) allows customers to connect with brands more.
This creates a greater sense of community and, over time, tends to improve customer retention and engagement.
Enhanced Customer Support
The ability to communicate directly with customers on social media platforms also has the added benefit of improving customer support.
So often, consumers are hindered from a purchase or choose not to return to a brand simply because of a support issue.
A strong social media presence helps to address that by making brands more available to their consumers and customers, as a result, more likely to go through with a purchase.
Check out our Ultimate Guide to Video Marketing here.
How Pictory can Improve your Digital Impact
Building a strong social media presence and strategy is often a daunting task for people new to it.
For small businesses, especially those that are tight on time, doing all this work can seem near impossible.
We’ve got a few shortcuts up our sleeve though.
Here are 2 ways that Pictory can help simplify your social media content creation strategy, improve your digital impact, and boost your business’ success in the process:
1. Generate Videos Faster Than Ever
With our Script to Video feature and an editing suite that can transform your existing visuals or provide AI-generated ones in minutes, content creation has never been faster.
Need to quickly turn a blog post or podcast into a video to promote online?
We can sort that out in just a few clicks.
2. Stock Videos
Filming video content for social platforms often steals the most time and resources, but our stock video library means that even that doesn’t need to be a problem.
We have extensive royalty-free visual and audio material that can help elevate your content marketing and have your videos ready for a social media platform in no time at all.
3. Automatic Transcription
When you upload a pre-existing video to Pictory, like a webinar or testimonial, our software generates a transcript for you to download in minutes.
You can also use this text to quickly and effortlessly edit out pauses, filler words, and other content from your video.
We also automatically add captions to all of our videos created in any feature, instantly adding another layer of accessibility to all of your content.
Sign up for a free trial of Pictory software here to start exploring the ways our software can optimize your social media strategy.