SMM: How do you develop your Social Media Marketing strategy?

SMM (Social Media Marketing): definition

SMM: What are we talking about?

The acronym of the expression SMM Refers to Social Media Marketing. These are all the marketing techniques used to promote your business or offer on social networks.
SMM is a webmarketing discipline that includes several elements:

• The SMO (Social media optimization): i.e. the action of publishing content on social networks without using advertising features. We are talking about organic or natural content;
• The SMA (Social media advertising): here, it means using advertising on social networks to promote your business to the greatest number of people.

To succeed on social networks, a brand can then rely on what is called social media strategy. She focuses on defining what we are going to say on the different channels, what will be the visual universe of the publications and with what tone we will communicate and interact.

Why is social media marketing important?

Today, use the Social media marketing, or even at Social Selling, when you are a company it is obvious. And for good reason! Half of the population uses social media.

These media have taken on an impressive scale in our daily lives, and for good reason: nearly 31% of French people have already purchased a product via a social network (study by the YouGov France Institute conducted in 2020).

For a brand, it has become an essential step to be present on these networks. Especially since social networks are platforms that integrate statistical tools very interesting. It is then possible to accurately monitor the success of a marketing campaign and its evolution over time.

What are the benefits of Social Media Marketing?

Humanize your business

Starting out in network marketing as a business can be very positive. The first advantage being that of having the possibility tohumanize your business.

Indeed, social networks allow you to broadcast content on a daily basis to interact with your community (prospects and potential customers).

To be successful, it is important to follow the codes of social media platforms. In particular, the latter encourage the use of short formats, snapshots and that need to be humanized (example stories on Instagram). This invites companies to share the behind the scenes of their work with spontaneity.

It is then possible to have a more current communication, more transparent and less formal. Top-down communications where a brand delivers content without ever engaging with its target audience (such asOutbound marketing) are very far away.

Creating more authentic relationships

Social networks allow anyone to give their opinion, comment or send a message to a brand. So SMM is an excellent way to interact with your audience and create a real sense of community.

A social network is probably the marketing channel that can make it easier to receive reactions from its targets: through reviews, likes, comments or private messages.

Many businesses have understood this advantage and are taking advantage of it. It is not uncommon to see brands that involve their subscribers in their product/service development by asking them questions via social networks.

Businesses can also choose to carry out communication actions in partnership with influencers to embody a brand image that is closer to people.

Generate leads

Finally, creating content and sharing it on social networks or setting up advertising via this medium can also have a real impact. impact on a company's sales.

Even if a social media strategy does not necessarily pursue the objective of improving website traffic, it can contribute to this. We explain ourselves.

In general, the objectives of a presence on social networks are rather a search for notoriety: you want to develop your audience, create a community, make yourself known or improve your brand image.

It is more difficult to pursue a goal of increasing turnover via social networks because that is not their primary goal. However, it is not impossible!

A business can generate new leads thanks to social networks through various means:

• With the publicity : well-designed, well-targeted, it can help attract new customers to a site;
• By adding links to the website/products to be purchased on social networks;
• By taking advantage of shopping features (Facebook or Instagram shopping);
• By organizing major highlights on social networks: for example by creating “teasing” videos for the launch of a new collection;

There is no shortage of possibilities!

How to set up your Social Media Marketing strategy?

Step 1: Define your goals

To get started in SMM, you have to go methodically! As with any digital marketing action, in this stage it is important to lay the foundations by thinking about objectives of its presence on social networks.

Objectives can be of different types. At this stage, for example, you can seek to attract new customers, improve your employer brand or even increase your sales. You can also have a goal for one social network and a different one for another.

The important thing, however, is to set SMART goals. La SMART method allows you to set goals that you will be able to achieve!

For example: “I want to reach at least 200,000 people with my posts on Instagram by the end of the month.” or “I want to receive at least 20 applications for my job offer posted on LinkedIn.”

Having an objective such as “I want to improve my brand image” would not be specific enough. To make sure that the objective is true, you need to be able to measure it usingkey performance indicators (KPI).

Here are some examples of KPIs for a brand awareness objective: reach of a publication, impressions of an advertisement, website traffic from social networks, etc.

Step 2: Know your target

To create relevant communication on social networks, it is important to Know your target well and its typical audience. This will have two benefits:

• You will be able to choose the right social networks on which your audience is present;
• It will be easier to Define an editorial line in line with what your audience wants to read/see.

To do this, you can be inspired by the Buyer persona methodology. To achieve this projection, it is possible to rely on the existing data you have (loyal customers). By placing yourself in the place of these imaginary customers, you will then be able to more easily imagine content that can hit the mark with them.

Step 3: Select your social networks

You know your goals and your targets, you can now at this stage aim for the right social networks to pursue your ambitions with SMM.

Indeed, there are a lot of social networks: Facebook, Youtube, YouTube, Twitter, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest... Of course, it is not legitimate to create an account on each of these channels!

To help you choose the right one, here is an overview of the main social networks preferred by businesses:

• LinkedIn is the professional social network par excellence. We recommend this network for a company that wants to develop its employer brand or to find new customers when you have a BtoB business.

• facebook is the most used social network in France. Internet users share a variety of content there. Today, companies continue to use this network and in particular to exploit its very precise advertising tool.

• instagram is the perfect social network for businesses that have products to sell. Indeed, many Internet users use the network to discover products, in particular via the “Explore” or “Instagram Shopping” tab.

• Twitter: Widely used by professionals in journalism, tech or even by business leaders, Twitter is, among other things, a tool for deploying a customer relationship management strategy (after-sales service).

• Pinterest : This network/search engine is perfect for businesses that sell products, especially in areas such as decoration, fashion, lifestyle. It is a platform where Internet users come looking for inspiration.

• YouTube : YouTube is the world's leading video platform. In particular, it is possible to promote its content or to benefit from better natural referencing on Google thanks to the videos published.

Step 4: Have a solid editorial strategy

La strategy or editorial line is an important step because it determines how you will communicate on social media. It provides a framework for your future interventions.

The editorial strategy includes several elements:

• The description of thetarget audience : it's always a good idea to start with a quick refresher on the typical profile of your ideal customer;
• The Brand tone : how will you address your target audience? For example, by tutoying or on the contrary, with a fairly neutral tone;
• Les themes addressed on your publications: you must rely on persona work to define them and on your other content (example: your items);
• Les types of content to publish or formats: photos, videos, texts, etc...
• Les communication channels : indicate here which social networks have you chosen to invest in order to meet your communication goals.

This step should then allow you to deploy your presence on social media and especially to demonstrate consistency.

Remember that social networks are a place where the attention of Internet users is abused. Everything is going very fast! It is therefore necessary to be able to create unique content, relevant And who will be able to attract your prospects.

In order to properly frame your speech on each of the communication channels, also be sure to determine the Rate of publication that you are going to follow. To do this, be sure to study the Your audience's social media presence ranges and above all to test!

Finally, after having laid the foundations of your editorial line, you can now create a schedule or editorial calendar. This allows you to have a global vision of the content that will be published over a month for example.

Step 5: Know how to analyze your KPIs to adjust

For this step, ask yourself the following question: What is the difference between a business that succeeds thanks to SMM and one that fails? Indeed, in social media marketing, it is important to know analyze the results of its online presence.

If the goals are not being met, you need to understand why and adapt. Inadequate results can have several causes:

• Formats used on social networks that are not suitable (for example: not wanting to make a video on a social network like Instagram);
• Publishing times that don't match your audience's connection times;
• An employee tone that is not engaging enough.

To take the appropriate measures, therefore, pay attention to this step analyze the impact of all your actions on a monthly basis on social networks. For example, you can focus on metrics like:

• The engagement rate;
• The printing rate;
• Video completion rate;
• The cost per click...

The monitoring and analysis of these KPIs are based on the objectives that you have previously defined beforehand.

The steps to create an SMM strategy

Implement a strategy for presence on networks social networks can offer good results to any business.