How many times have you checked Facebook today? Or LinkedIn? If you’re like the average Digital Marketer, the answer is probably a lot.

No matter what type of business you are in you know of the importance of social media and creating a social media strategy. It’s all about creating engagement and building a loyal audience and here are 5 ways to do so.

1. Set S.M.A.R.T Objectives & KPI’s

The first step in creating a social media strategy is to lay out a plan and your marketing goals. Without clear and measurable goals it is impossible to effectively measure your performance. Ensure your goals are S.M.A.R.T – Specific-Measurable-Attainable-Relevant and Time-bound.

With so many people using social media you have to have a real game plan and this means laying out specific goals that are attainable and relevant. It’s almost impossible to go from zero subscribers to 100,000 in just 4 weeks unless you’re a celebrity, or behind the world_record_egg movement. However, with the right strategy in place, this goal is achievable long-term. To accomplish a sizeable goal like this it helps to break it down into more manageable goals that you can focus on one step at a time.

KPI’s are your Key Performance Indicators and they give you an idea of how successfully you are meeting your objectives. For example, if your goal is to increase your Facebook posts engagement by 10% within 2 months, your strategy should focus on actions that will directly increase your engagement and your engagement should be monitored closely.

2. Research Your Target Audience

Who are you trying to reach? What’s your ideal customers day like? These are some of the many questions you need to ask yourself. If you’re selling orthopedic back pillows, it will make no sense to target a millennial audience. If you’re wanting to promote a music festival, it’s probably not best to target senior citizens. Unless they’re into gabbering at Defqon, which hey they may be! Knowing your audience is key to an effective and targeted strategy.

No matter what industry you are in, you should be creating a customer persona based on your target audience. Envision your perfect customer. How old are they? What are their interests? What kind of job and education do they have? Once you have a clear picture of your ideal customer you make it much easier to personalise your social media marketing towards them.

Creating customer personas will help to draw on insights and learnings that you may not have focused on before. You may discover where they are spending most of their time online and therefore decide to target more of your strategy on that channel. Are they on Instagram or Snapchat? Do they spend time on Facebook messenger or are they more likely to be looking at Instagram stories? A meaningful way to research your target audience is looking at Facebook audience insights or Instagram audience insights.

3. Conduct a Competitor Analysis

Knowing your competitor landscape will allow you to identify the great things your competitors are doing that you could learn from, as well as pinpoint the things that they may not be doing so well. In their shortcomings lies opportunity!

If they’ve had failures in their social media marketing why was this? What could they have done better? How will you ensure that you are not making the same mistake?

On the other hand, what they did successfully, you can learn from.

Knowing your competitors is always good for starting a social media strategy. Facebook info & ads, is perfect for inspiration and spying on your competition.

4. Set Up a Content Schedule

Content schedules not only help to save time, but they also allow you to plan your content and support your social strategy to run more efficiently.

A content schedule can be managed weekly, monthly or in whatever time frameworks in with your overall strategy. It’s all about having a plan, looking ahead and staying on track. You can plan out your posts, images, links, videos, blog posts etc to ensure you are showcasing the right content at the right time. Stay in control of your content with a well thought out schedule. Buzzsumo is an amazing tool for fuelling ideas to plan content into your schedule, it is expensive, however, the benefits of this tool are priceless. Hootsuite and Sprout Social are both effective platforms for planning social content, Trello doesn’t have as many options but still works well as a free option.

5. Monitor And Measure Metrics

A successful social strategy is one that can be measured for success. Are you reaching your set goals? Is the strategy you have put into place working?

By monitoring and analysing your results you will be able to identify the things that you should continue to do, the things that need a little tweaking and the things that maybe need to be reworked.

Always measure your results against the goals you set at the beginning of your campaign. Take a look at your social page’s engagement, content and customer interaction and don’t be afraid to change things up if they are not working. Once set up correctly, Google Analytics is a powerful tool to understand how your social media is contributing to your website traffic. Sprout Social is a social media reporting platform which looks at your social media performance.

Remember when creating a successful social media strategy in 2019, set your S.M.A.R.T marketing objectives and KPI’s to set your foundation. Know your target audience to help create your content. Analyse your competitor’s social media for inspiration and ideas. Plan and schedule your content to keep the ideas following and ensure regular posting and track your social media performance to monitor and evaluate your hard earned efforts. Follow these 5 steps and just maybe you’ll set the next social media world record?