2024 Approach to Social Media Marketing: Strategy Tips

Social media is vital to boost the growth of both SMBs and large enterprises. A strategically created social media campaign can be a magnet to attract relevant traffic, engagement, and conversions.

But creating campaigns alone doesn’t guarantee success. The key to driving growth with your social media is creating campaigns alongside measuring their ROI.

How will you ensure success if you cannot tell whether your campaign is tanking or generating qualified leads? Surprisingly, only 30 percent of brands track their ROI.

The latest Global Statshot report published in partnership with We Are Social and Hootsuite depicts why tracking KPIs for social media makes complete business sense.

More than half of the global population, 57.6 percent to be precise, use social media.

Roughly three out of every five individuals on the planet have a social media account.

The average amount of time people spend on social media every day is 2 hours 27 minutes.

Create a holistic picture of your marketing performance with omnichannel analytics [Guide]

If you are aiming to leverage the power of social media to boost your conversions, you cannot overlook the analytics part. The opportunity is too huge to ignore. You get the data that can help you optimize your marketing efforts and attract new prospects faster.

In this post, we have shared tips that will help you develop an analytics-driven approach for social media marketing in 2022 and beyond.

🚀Snatch these 12 dashboards for marketing analysts to draw up a holistic picture of your performance🚀

1. Set Specific Business Goals

What do you want to achieve from social media marketing? The answer to this question will help you define what and how you measure. Your goals will be the driving force of your success, so make sure the goals you set are realistic.

Here are a few examples of realistic goals that businesses of all sizes can pursue.

Increase Brand Awareness

Social media marketing is an excellent opportunity to reach out to new audiences. Brands can create fun content that resonates with the public and brings new followers.

Warby Parker, for instance, sells fashionable eyewear. To position their brand as vibrant, fresh, and fun, they created engaging posts to grab the eyeballs of target audiences. Notice the following social media post in which they have shown a cute dog wearing glasses.

The content looks fresh and fun. The best part? It aligns with their brand style.
The engaging content has helped them achieve:

559k+ followers
50+ comments (on average)
4,000+ likes (on average)
A loyal audience that shows an insane amount of love on their posts
A host of successful marketing campaigns on Instagram

HubSpot's Blog Research states that 34 percent of marketers will focus on reaching new audiences through social media in 2022. If your aim is also to reach new audiences, creating engaging and fun content can prove beneficial.

Nearly 90 percent of consumers follow a business page on Instagram. So, you can start by posting content on Instagram.

Generate Qualified Leads and Sales

Followers on social media never make random purchase decisions. So, to notify them about new products, offers, and discounts, brands need to increase engagement. Businesses can try posting content about exclusive deals, but don’t overdo it with sales-y content, or you’ll risk turning off your audience.

While you might have come across various brands that posted irresistible offers on the new year, Papa John's did the same but with a twist.

Observe how smartly they planted the idea of having pizza on New Year’s Eve. It is a promotional post, but they have made the post engaging and New Year-related in the first place. They remind their audience to have pizza and enjoy themselves. They have shared a link to their website in the bio to encourage customers to make a decision in their favor.

This subtle approach to establishing rapport and generating leads via social media is known as social selling, which is an emerging trend in 2022. Around 31% of brands agree that social selling has helped them build and nurture strong relationships with their customers. On the other hand, 33 percent of users like to engage with brands via social media instead of phone calls. As a business owner, you can either post promotional offers directly or choose an indirect social selling approach to generate sales.

Grow Brand Audience

Established brands expanding in new countries or launching new products need to grow their audience.

Take a look at Nike's LinkedIn page.

You will see that they have used specific keywords that describe their services. They have also mentioned the countries where their brand serves. Nike's team even uses keywords and phrases in their regular posts.

It is no surprise they have 4,781,292 followers with an average post engagement of 3K.

Tools like Ahrefs can help your brand find trending keywords and terms relevant to your services.

Notice the following screenshot of Ahrefs keyword explorer dashboard. Observe how it offers insights on search suggestions, trending keywords, and more.

Implementing these insights can skyrocket your post's reach on social media.

Boost Community Engagement

According to the Sprout Social Index report, around 46 percent of users follow and engage with interactive brands. In this case, brands can promote user-generated content (UGC).

Why?

As per recent stats, 72 percent of customers trust user-generated reviews and testimonials. They are no longer interested in brands speaking about their products. That's why brands are shifting away from serving perfectly curated content and choosing to share the real experiences of users.

For instance, consider the case of Crocs. This brand has gained immense popularity on TikTok during the last year. Their trending hashtag #croctok became viral and inspired thousands of TikTok users to create UGC video content.

‍

The fun videos showcased customers showing off their new Crocs. Some of the viral content included dance videos, some portrayed shoe decorating themes.

These videos crossed 70 million views, which is a massive number.

According to Cloudflare, TikTok surpassed Google's popularity in 2021. This platform is likely to gain even more momentum in 2022 and beyond. So, marketers can use TikTok to encourage users share UGC content. This tactic can go a long way if you aim to boost community engagement.

🚀Set the right goals for your social media campaigns with our engagement rate forecast for 2022🚀

Drive Relevant Traffic

Brands laser-focused on driving relevant traffic to their website can add a well-optimized link in their bio and posts.

Given that Instagram only allows you to include one clickable link in your entire on-platform presence, using a “link in bio” landing page is one of the best tactics for generating interest for your brand. It also helps to drive engagement and loyalty among your followers.

Notice how one of the most visited museums in NY - the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), uses a custom URL in its Instagram bio. The link perfectly fits with its branding and adds more credibility to the page.

It enables brands and creators to curate user-friendly landing pages where they can host links to their content and product pages. Such a tactic can improve the chances of users reaching your website.

2. Analyze Your Target Audience

When it comes to scaling your social media game, assumptions do not work. You should know your target audience well. Why? Knowing the end users can help you make informed decisions and convert more leads.

Unfortunately, only 55 percent of social media marketers explore their target audience demographics. That said, you have a golden opportunity. You can get ahead of your competitors fast by making data-driven decisions.

Don’t spend your energy manually researching and finding the information. With SocialPilot’s marketing tool, you can quickly perform detailed research. Here's a screenshot of their simple-to-understand dashboard.

As you can notice, this social analytics tool offers clear visuals that break down the information like the audience’s gender, location, and more. Using this data, you can understand the behavior of your target audience and how it impacts your bottom line.

According to Forbes, customer service will be a prime factor in deciding the success of brands in 2022. So, such tools can help you understand who your customers are and what they need. This data-driven strategy can help you serve them better and scale up your business in no time.

3. Establish Your Most Important KPIs and Metrics

Your KPIs should be specific and measurable, just like your business goals.

Digging into insightful data that aligns with your campaign goals can go a long way. With measurable metrics, you can manifest the best ROI for your business.

‍

Here is a list of metrics that can boost the growth of your brand in no time.

Post Reach: This is the number of users who viewed or interacted with your post. It helps you determine your reach.

Clicks: Tracking clicks on the posts is essential to create scalable content that encourages prospects to take action.

Engagement: This is the most vital metric that showcases how well your audience perceives you. You can find it by calculating the number of social media interactions divided by the total number of impressions.

Organic and Paid Likes: This metric helps find whether the target audience finds your content engaging.

Sentiment: This metric helps to discover the reaction of your audience on interacting with your content. Did your audience feel your post was offensive or inspiring? When it comes to branding, it's always good to dig deeper.

Hashtag Performance: This helps you keep a tab on the best performing hashtags for your brand. You can shape and create revenue-generating content by using the most impactful hashtags.

The powerful tool offered by Sprout Social can help you establish these KPIs. Notice the following screenshot of this all-in-one platform that shows its capabilities.

4. Create Engaging Content and Publish on the Right Platform

Posting the right content can hook your target audience and encourage prospects to choose your products. But, not all content sells. You have to draft solid strategy-driven content.

Below are a few ideas that will inspire you to create the best content and gain a competitive edge.

Stories and Short Videos

The art of storytelling is powerful. Drafting creative posts, images, or short videos with an engaging storyline can work wonders for your brand. Here’s a short video of Airbnb created with the same strategy in mind. It has crossed over 6,007,562 views on YouTube, which shows the power of short videos.

Moreover, YouTube is quite popular these days. The number of YouTube users across the globe is projected to reach 2.8+ million by 2025. Thus, posting videos on YouTube can be a smart business move.

Reviews and Testimonials

Sharing positive reviews and testimonials is the most subtle way to win your audience's heart. Observe the following screenshot that depicts the social proof of how much consumers love Starbucks.

Starbucks often posts such user-generated reviews on Twitter. Their team even engages with dissatisfied customers to resolve their issues. They encourage customers to share their negative experiences using a Twitter-specific email Id.

This social media strategy has helped them garner 11 million followers on Twitter.

Did you notice? They are not only posting user-generated content but also providing customer service. According to Gartner, by 2023, most companies will look after 60 percent of all customer service requests via social channels. If you haven't paid attention to social customer service, it's the right time to get started.

Contests

Hosting contests is the easiest way to grab the eyeballs of your target audience. You can create posts that ask the audience to perform a simple task. Notice the following contest post by Oreo, where they have asked users to post a picture on Facebook and Instagram to win exciting rewards.

Such contests are a perfect example of social media contests that convert. The fun strategies can help boost product sales in no time. Besides, they increase followers on social channels. No wonder Oreo has gained 40,373,669 followers on Facebook (Meta).

Before jumping into content creation, know what platforms can benefit you the most. For instance, formal B2B posts may not be perceived well by the audience on Instagram. Over 750 million professionals and 65+ million decision-makers from 200 countries use LinkedIn. So, for serious business-related posts, you may consider LinkedIn.

Whereas for fashion brands, Instagram or Pinterest can be a perfect choice.

You can also choose the best platform by exploring where your competitors are posting. Competitive analysis will help you gain in-depth insights into what content can work for your brand.

Synapview by Hootsuite is a fantastic app that lets you track your competitors and draft the best content. Here’s a screenshot of Synapview that helps brands to monitor their competitors on various social media channels like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and more. This thoughtful strategy can bring a transformative change to your business.

5. Know When and How Often to Post

Timeliness is a key aspect of gaining a strong social media presence. Creating engaging posts won't let you ace the game alone. You have to put your posts on your handles at the right time.

Your customers won't operate on your clock. So, when and how often should you post content? As per SocialPilot, the time and days can differ as per the social media platform.

Here are a couple of screenshots from SocialPilot that state the best days and times to reach the feed of most followers.

‍

But timeliness is a tall order when you don't have a large team of marketers.

In such cases, AI-based tools like Loomly can help you schedule the posts for an entire week, month, or even year. Notice the below screenshot of Loomly's intuitive dashboard equipped with advanced functionalities and features.

As you can see, it offers straightforward post-scheduling options. If you intend to create a post for Instagram, you can draft, edit, and post it at a preferable time. It also enables you to run paid campaigns and check their performance through the dashboard. Loomly is an all-in-one platform that can skyrocket your brand's online presence.

6. Gauge the Success of Your Social Campaigns

Social media trends keep changing. You must use social media analytics tools to keep track of the performance of your campaigns throughout the year.

Without continuous analysis, you may miss out on something big. Having a bird’s-eye view of your daily activities helps create a hassle-free road to success.

Here are the metrics that you should assess for different channels.

Facebook: Engagement and reach.

Twitter: Impressions, mentions, and retweets.

LinkedIn: Clicks, interactions, and impressions.

Pinterest: Engagement and impressions.

Instagram: Likes, stories, mentions, and comments.

Identify your top-performing content and change strategies when things don't go as expected. Try using HubSpot’s marketing tool. The platform analyzes all the shared metrics, allowing brands to make informed decisions.

Here’s a screenshot of its dashboard showing real-time analytics reports. These insights can transform your business.

To Sum Up

Setting actionable goals and implementing data-driven social media strategies can make your brand stand out from the crowd.

We are confident that the shared tips and tools will help you add value to your audience experience.

Once your brand earns users' trust, getting ahead of competitors will be much easier. So, go on and let your brand create a sense of authenticity among social media users!