Basic Rules of Successful Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media has become an integral part of any modern marketing strategy. Despite the widespread popularity of social media, many still do not have a clue how to approach the creation and implementation of strategies in this field of activity properly. Especially if you are a beginner, it would be difficult to identify the main landmarks of your own. Therefore, we have collected the basic rules for creating a successful marketing strategy in social media for you. Consistent adherence to these rules will allow you to better understand the social media, to find out something interesting about its structure and value. Also you can discover a minimum determination of the main aspects that you need to consult with experts in SMM.

All the tips in this article do not require special knowledge or training. They just require a little amount of your time and a desire to understand the insides of social media. On the other hand, you should not expect a stunning effect within the application of these rules in practice. Remember that they are the basis and not the secrets of success within one day (such thing does not exist in any field of activity).

Estimate the Situation Objectively

Many of the tips and advice in the field of social media are hopelessly outdated. And not because they can no longer work. They are still relevant, but their value is overstated. This means that common strategies previously developed at the dawn of the internet are designed for a different audience. When these “tips and tricks” were created, the internet was still young and the threshold of the ascension to the pedestal of glory as a reputable person in any sphere of activity was still extremely low.

Today, the internet audience has grown and become much more satiated. Also, the leaders of social media have become more mature, intellectually developed and ambitious. Now simple tips do not magically become the key to success, but remain the basic rules of the game. Without them, you still can do nothing. Not knowing them, you will not be able to start your way to the top ranks of the SMM. But do not expect magic external help. Social media has become the thing that they have been thought initially — a platform to create unique, interesting, original personalities. And there is no universal instructions for such persons, only help in understanding the fundamental rules. If you can understand and accept this, we can continue.

Investigate Your Target Audience

This obvious advice would not be necessary to give, if the majority of developers of any social media strategy do not commit the same mistake. This error consists in forming an understanding of their target audience on a basis their own wishes. After that we create a phantom and begin to fill it with our hidden and evident desires. Thus we get an absolutely unsustainable strategy in social media field.

First of all, you have to be honest with yourself. If your target audience does not fit into the usual frame of social groups according to professional activity, sex, age, place of residence or other trivial parameters, it should not became a reason to panic and retreat from new information hiding behind ready-made templates. Discover new horizons, completely immerse in the study of the human community, the relationship between which you have not yet fully understand. It will be an exciting journey, believe me.

Set Measurable and Concrete Goals

Once you have passed through fire and water, the first two steps, you can relax a bit and go back to the usual issues. I mean compiling check lists and detailed plans to conquer the world (or at least its virtual slice).

Why specific goals are useful? First of all, they will help you to measure your progress. A certain number of followers, subscribers, fans, comments, likes, shares — everything that could be measured should be measured. You can also consider the far-reaching plans as a structure of a series of increasing targets.

Remember that only a measurable success can bring satisfaction and can be used as a tool for a further development.

Integrate and extend

Remember, we talked about studying the target audience? One of the key discoveries that you should do about your audience — what social platforms its representatives like to use. Start with those that are used by the most part of your potential readers and gradually integrated into the rest of this diversity. This process is almost endless, as the new platform for social interaction appear almost every day.

In a difficult task of integration and expansion of new social sites you will find help within a variety of plugins for WordPress. One of the best representative of this category`s plugins is called Flow-Flow. To learn more about its functions and features you can observe our full review of Flow-Flow .

Carefully Study the Used Platform

We are continuing the previous step. Now you will not just examine the interests of the target audience and follow it on the social platform, which it likes. You have more serious problem. You must become an expert in each of these platforms. Consistently, but carefully.

Start learning with the correct format: what size of images used for avatars, blog, skins and other elements of popular social networking sites? This information is not a secret, so you can only save and organize formatting rules to create the optimum content for a particular social platform.

Create a Schedule and Stick to It

Working with social media is dangerous with too deep involvement. You start with a study of audiences and end up watching videos of cute kittens for 10 hours. This would not have happened if you adhere to a clear timetable.

For easy integration of working schedules with a blog on WordPress special plugins can be useful, for example: Timetable Responsive Schedule For WordPress.

Automate with Intelligence

You can automate much of the process of working with your blog on WordPress. Using standard functionality or additional plugins, you can automate the verification of spam, the formation of RSS-feed, updates of your blog and other components or programs.

But never automate communication with your audience. Automatic replies to letters or comments are banned.

Push Analytics to the Maximum

You probably use Google Analytics, Hootsuite, or other sources. If you have not already, then it is time to think seriously about them. The possibilities of modern platforms for analysts are just amazing. They can give you possibly any information needed for the work. You need only to know how to search for it properly.

To learn how to search properly, do not regret the time to study the detailed guidelines written by th creators of these systems. You are guaranteed to discover a great amount of new features. And new ideas will follow them.

Endless Repeat

The most amazing thing in social media: you can do the same thing, resulting in a wide variety of responses by the audience. So one of the proven strategies is the repetition of similar or identical methods and study the difference of reactions to them.

Of course, you should not repeat the same tricks without interruption. Your audience needs to take a rest from the previous result, to produce a new one.

Final words

Working in social media is a constant research and the immediate application of the results in practice. If you are interested in working in this field, then you will definitely get pleasure from the process of the conquest of authority among different audiences.

If you are using SMM for the specific marketing objectives, it may also be very useful. The only flaw is that the results can be surprisingly useful in ways that you did not expect to touch. That is why SMM is fun!