How to Launch a Successful Social Media Marketing Campaign

Shalom Solomon 2nd February, 2021

Have you ever been stuck in traffic before?

If you unglue your eyes from your phone's screen and look around, you'll notice that at least 50% of the people on the bus are also on their phones, sometimes, including the driver.

Ever wondered how that 21 year old coach potato can make millions from the comfort of his living room couch? It's not rituals oh.

The internet today is a mine of opportunities, only those who know where to dig would strike gold.

There is a whole world of people on the internet, and a sizeable number of them are on social media.

This year, a whooping 3.78 billion of the world's population is on social media (Oberlo, 2021); that is 53% of the world's population. Meaning more than half of the people spend their spare time or working hours on social media platforms.

Since people are your target when marketing, it is evident that the only way to grab their attention is by placing your content or business, right on their screens. This is simply what social media marketing is about.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Now, the Textbook Definition of Social Media Marketing

Social Media marketing is a form of digital marketing where advertising, brand promotion, customer engagement and brand awareness creation is achieved through social media platforms. Social Media marketing is done using the most popular social media platforms such as:

Facebook
YouTube
LinkedIn
TikTok
Instagram
Pinterest
SnapChat (I'm not sure it is that popular anymore).

You can also use messaging platforms like

WhatsApp
WeChat and
Messenger.

Launching a social media marketing campaign is not a walk in the park, it can fall through or under perform if mismanaged.

Never fear though, channeling your efforts through the right channels for effective social media marketing would ensure you get your desired results. These right channels are the pillars of social media marketing.

The Pillars of Social Media Marketing

1. Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

The first step in Social Media Marketing is establishing your marketing strategy. Your social media strategy can change over time as your business grows and your goals change.

Steps for developing a proper social media strategy are:

Define your goals: what are the goals for your social media marketing campaign? It could be creating awareness, developing customer engagement on social media, brand promotion or advertising.
Establish your target audience: who are you hoping to reach through your marketing campaign? What gender, age grade, race, tribe, people are you trying to reach? How far do you want your marketing to reach?
Find out what social media platforms your target audience are mostly on and use it.
Use your findings from the step above to select which social media platform to launch your marketing on.

Tip: If you are a small or startup business, don't start marketing on all social media platforms at once. Focus your energy on one or few social media platforms, grow your brand from there; you can move to other social media platforms as time goes on.

2. Planning Your Content Schedule

Planning is the next step after establishing your marketing strategy. Planning your content schedule builds consistency; which is how many relevant business social media platforms stay afloat. Inconsistency is also the reason why many lose relevance and fail to break even.

Planning your content schedule involves:

Having content on ground for publishing
Developing a timetable for posting/ uploading your content.
Establishing the best time to upload your content. Social media marketing tools like Tweroid can help you determine the right time to publish your content.

3. Listening and Engagement

Social Media listening is a vital tool for marketing on social media. It involves observing and tracking

Mentions both tagged and untagged about your brand,
Referrals to your brand or page,
Comments about your brand,
Observing the activities of your competition, and
Keeping tabs on happenings in your industry on social media.

Developing engagement on social media is essential to giving your brand a strong and organic presence.

To qoute 1Password,

"Social media engagement is more than just marketing. It is lending a helping hand when things go awry (wrong), keeping the conversation going when problems are solved and spreading the good word about what we are up to".

4. Social Media Analytics

Improving your social media marketing strategy would be difficult if not impossible without measuring or analyzing your social media content and it's performance. It goes beyond just likes and comments on social media.

Social Media analytics deals with gathering data on the performance of your content and business online, your engagement in relation to your ROI (Return On Investment) and using the data and information gathered to make vital business decisions.

There are both paid and free tools for social media analytics such as Sprout Socials and Mediatoolkit.

5. Advertising

The final pillar is advertising. Using social media advertising to promote your business would cost money but it would definitely give results. Ads on social media has a wider reach as it has access to those who are not part of your followers.

Social media ad platforms are specific such as you can outline your target audience based on their interests, search history, activities on social media and so on.

The Advantages of Social Media Marketing includes:

1. Social media marketing allows for the easy tracking of content performance and progress.

2. Effectiveness, it produces results.

3. Cost effectiveness in relation to the ROI

4. Social media marketing creates brand awareness and enables you build an organic presence online.

5. Customer engagement is guaranteed using social media marketing thus breeding loyal customers.

I believe, the most important advantage of social media marketing is that, with proper research and study, you can launch your campaign yourself. You don't need to hire marketing agents to do it for you. Though, bear in mind that social media marketing requires dedication of your time. So if you're too busy, outsource to marketing agencies or employ a social media marketing strategist. Good luck.

Hope this article was helpful?

Have a nice day (or night, lol).