Most social media marketing agencies in Canada develop action plans and research before launching a social media campaign. As a social media company,  this blog was created as a guide on how to create effective social media plans (strong social media strategies and budgets) and conduct appropriate research. These steps will not just help your social media campaign to succeed but will also help you build strong social media management skills.

Step 1: Build a Strong Social Media Strategy

Before launching a social media campaign, it’s important to discuss and write down your campaign strategy. By making your team aware of your campaign goals, audience, and budget constraints, your team can share more relevant ideas and create more relevant content. Social media strategies also serve as a measurement tool to determine if a campaign goal or target audience has been achieved. We believe that here is what you need to do to create a powerful social media strategy.

 Set Goals for Smart Social Media

“SMART” is a common acronym used in goal setting. This means that it is concrete, measurable, achievable, relevant, and has a set deadline. Specific goals should be as clear and accurate as possible. Include 5 W’s to help you when you’re having a hard time identifying who, what, where, when, and why. It is also important to set measurable goals so that you can track your progress and change your strategy to ensure that you reach your goals. Setting goals is difficult, but setting sub-goals keeps things going. Sub-goals are secondary goals of the main campaign goals. For example, if your main goal is to run a 3-mile marathon the following month, your sub-goal could be to run 1 mile in the first week. Continue to set sub-goals until you reach your goal of running a 3-mile marathon.

Next, the goal of the campaign must be achievable. Otherwise, you and your team will lose motivation if your goals are not achieved. Accessibility can be easily determined by analyzing the current status of social media and available resources. When it comes to relevance, you need to align your goals with your company’s long-term goals so as not to confuse your team and your customers. Finally, give yourself time constraints to reach your goals. This increases urgency and ensures proper time management. Here are some examples of  smart goals: “My goal is to increase  Twitter and Facebook reach by the end of this month by 2000 by using trending Twitter hashtags and sharing  campaign content with relevant Facebook groups.” This is more constructive than saying, “My goal is to expand my reach on Twitter and Facebook.”

Investigate your Social Media Audience & Create Customer Personas

To maximize your reach, you need to research and select the right audience. First, look at the current audience’s age, location, interests, language, etc. to determine if that audience is ideal for future campaigns. If not, create a customer persona for your target audience. You need to be creative in creating the personality of your clients and stand in their place. Give them a name,  family, profession, salary, interests, personality and more! Once you have a balanced persona, investigate how to create content that speaks to that person. It’s wise to create several customer personas instead of just one, as your reach will increase.  For example, one of the customer personalities on how to make a successful social media  campaign is:

Alina: has her startup looking for ways to increase followers and reach more people on social media. She is strong-willed, confident and always looking for ways to improve her brand. Her interests are learning, blogging, reading and creating compelling content.

As another example, if you are running a new hamburger launch campaign for a fast-food company, one of your personalities would be

Johnson: He’s studying now, low-income, having parties, and hanging out with his friends., does not cook often

 Survey on Several Social Channels

Before you start a campaign, you need to decide which social network to use. There are over 60 different social channels where you can run your campaign. Choose the social channel you want to choose based on your campaign goals. Even good social media agencies are selective and do not run campaigns on all social platforms. The blog on choosing the right social channels for your campaign gives an overview of all the major social channels and how to use them.

 Budget Social Media Campaigns

When it comes to advertising, it’s very easy to get too absorbed and spend too much money. Maximize your budget for improving social media management by targeting only the desired audience on the social channels of your choice. In this way, we exclude people who are not interested in the campaign. Setting a budget protects you from making irrational marketing decisions that can result in a low ROI (return on investment). ROI measures the effectiveness of your advertising campaign based on cost and revenue. The method for calculating ROI is as follows:

ROI = (Profit – Expenses) Expenses x 10

Your profit is the amount you earned by selling your paid ads, and your spending is the amount you paid during your campaign. Spending includes not only paid advertising, but also salaries for social media managers, graphic designers, photographers, and those hired outside to create content for the campaign. When creating a campaign budget, you can use the rate of return method or stick to your budget. The Percent Revenue method allocates a  percentage of sales to your marketing budget.

This method works well for small growing businesses as they can increase their budget slowly and steadily as the revenue increases. Even though these percentages can be unique to every company, we see on average, small businesses allocating anywhere from 5-15% of their revenue towards marketing. However, based on marketing research, this method is recommended for businesses with a margin at or above 10-12% (after net income). Fixed budgets work well for smaller or mid-sized campaigns because they do not always require huge investments. If your finances are scarce, concentrate most of your fixed budget on your top campaign goal and remember, there are methods of gaining engagements on social media organically.

Click here to read about step 2, selecting the right social channels for your campaign

About SI Global Solutions

SI Global Solutions (Pvt) Ltd is the fastest growing System Integrator and consultancy company having a presence in Elgin, USA, Dubai, UAE, Toronto, Canada and local branches in Pakistan spread across Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. SI Global specializes in System Integration, Consultancy, Application development, Social Media Marketing, Web Design & Development and much more, even working within Maritime projects.