Crafting Adaptable Social Media Marketing Strategies

Marketing on social media today requires a unique set of skills, attentive and conscientious to the consistently changing interests of your audience. Algorithm changes and new features for businesses are constantly evolving. It’s important to have a social media marketing (SMM) strategy that can adapt to changes in technology and the interests of your audience.

In fact, the ability to react and adapt quickly to change is ranked as the most important factor for succeeding in today’s social media environment.

Research platforms and trends

Social media channels are always changing and upgrading and vary widely by features and algorithms. For example, in 2018 Facebook added a way to boost retargeting efforts with their Dynamic Ads for Broad Audiences (DABA) that uses interest, behavior, and demographic data to serve the products it thinks is most relevant from your product catalog. This new algorithm would be an excellent addition to a campaign focused on boosting sales or increasing web traffic.

Social media usage and popularity also shift year to year. Look also at the behavior of users on particular channels. Instagram users, for example are likely to be more engaged with posts with a location. Knowing key details like this will help marketers better adapt SMM campaigns.

Research each social media channel and continue researching throughout your campaign. Social media marketing is not a “set it and forget it” arena.

Goal alignment

Begin by setting attainable goals. Use a variety of campaign objectives. Establishing intentions for your strategy creates a benchmark on which to measure the campaign’s success. The content you put out there should reflect the goal of your brand.

Next, align your goals and platforms. If your goal is ecommerce, then a platform like Twitter would not be your best bet. And don’t choose just one platform.

Finally, target your core audience. Social media targeting involves using factors like keywords, hashtags, geotargeting, etc., so you can display posts to specific audiences. The targeting tactics you choose are dependent on the channels you use. An adaptable SMM strategy will move with your target demographic.

Ways to Engage

For most social media campaign objectives, audience engagement is key. It just might look different for different objectives.

If the goal is education to move users through your sales funnel, create a variety of original content that can be disseminated in several mediums (think video, shareable content, etc.), rather than sharing recycled content.

One of the best tools for engagement may be the users themselves. Putting engagement tools in the hands of users creates organic content that is highly engaging. The camera feature is a great example. Most social media platforms have a camera feature; take advantage. One idea is the “lenses” or “filters” features on Snapchat. Brands can promote products through these features creating engaging, shareable content that promotes brand awareness.

And sometimes your best promotional tool is the people who already know and love your brand. Influencer marketing is a great way to stay fluid in the SMM space. Reach out to a variety of influencers to promote your product or brand.

Evaluating your strategy

Choose metrics that will best assess your goals. This is perhaps the biggest piece to the puzzle as this data-driven approach will help you adapt your strategy.

If your goal is to raise brand awareness, you should be monitoring metrics like engagement and organic likes. Conversely, if your goal is to increase web traffic, you’re likely going to have more success measuring ROI or CTR.

It’s important to design, track, and optimize campaigns for the conversion metrics that matter to your business. Return to these metrics often.