How To Start Your Very First Social Media Marketing Campaign For Your Business
15 Mins Read
Published on: 20 July 2023
Last Updated on: 09 October 2024
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From being a one-stop shop for long-lost connections from school days to having exclusive business campaigns, social media has indeed come a long way. In the year 2021, right after the dreadful pandemic hit us, there were more than 4.26 billion social media users worldwide.
With the advent of new social media every day, “Threads” being the new place to gather, the line on the graph will only go up. Estimating a total user count of 6 billion in 2027. Therefore, as business owners, we are sure about one thing.
If you want them to take notice of you, you have to be relevant on the social media pages!
Plus, it doesn’t end with just Facebook and Instagram.
Maybe 12 years ago, it would have, but now you have a few more to keep up with.
Hold on!
Showing your numbers and painting the reality in front of you was not to scare you. It is a precursor to why your social media campaigns need a major revamp. Or, if you are a novice who has never had a solid social media account for your business, this is how you are going to go forth with it.
Social Media Campaigns & It’s Ordeals
Now, looking at the whole scenario from a bird’s eye view might engulf you with confusion. The lack of clarity can lead to anticipating a failure in your very first campaign. So, why not get the record straight first?
You are not supposed to look at the whole thing at once. Rather pick one social media account at one time.
What Should Be Your First Target?
Your very first targeted social media account is definitely heavily dependent on your target customers. Now, these are the social media platforms with the highest number of users in 2023.
- Facebook: 2.96 Billion.
- Youtube: 2.2 Billion.
- Instagram: 2 billion.
- TikTok: 1 Billion.
- SnapChat: 557 Million.
- Pinterest: 444 Million
Now, we can take hours to understand the inside logistics of each social media platform, but let’s focus on what can bring the audience. Therefore, we will be enlisting the pros and cons of each social media platform in terms of business campaigns and the targeted age group known for using them.
Social Media Platform – Performance, Perks & Perils
This will help you understand which activity will bring your customers on board. Whether it is a targeted Instagram Reel or posting on Linkedin.
Target Users: Facebook used to be the hub for young adults and millennials, but lately, it is moving more towards middle-aged ville. This is more of a family-friendly platform where daily and domestic products liked by housewives are having more of a moment. Therefore, the age group is between 30-50 years old.
Pros of Facebook Business
- One of the biggest advantages of Facebook is its large database. There is an audience for everything.
- Specified business pages that can bring organic audiences looking for your business.
Cons of Facebook Business
- Although Facebook has advertisements that you can pay for, the oversaturation of ads on a user’s feed can irritate them. Giving your company a bad name.
- Too many negative comments and reviews (since there is no comment filter, unlike Instagram). This can again give a bad reputation to your company.
Youtube
Target Users: Youtube has no specific target users. It is that one versatile platform that is open for everyone to use. So, you will find content for a 5 to 50-year-old. Although recently, they have shifted kids’ content to a subgenre of ‘Youtube Kids’ to protect the little ones.
Pros For Youtube Business
- Video marketing always has a greater impact on the audience’s psyche than any other.
- For being owned by Google, you have SEO and algorithm benefits if you can dive into technical SEO to get your videos for auto-recommendation.
Cons For Youtube Business
- Higher investment doesn’t always mean higher return. For example, you need to invest in a proper videography team to get an HD video for your audience. However, the views might still be low.
- Since youtube is filled with influencers who have some form of celebrity now, getting above the competition can be difficult.
Target Users: Instagram is the young people’s gathering. Many young adults and teens have made a smooth transition from Facebook to Instagram in the last decade. Therefore, the primary age group is 13 -30.
Pros of Instagram Business
- Being a highly visual platform, Instagram provides you with a plethora of opportunities to showcase your creative side. Something which tends to attract an audience and retain them.
- Chances of engagement are higher. We are talking stories, polls, lives, comments, and even Insta direct messages. Best place to gather the most authentic customer feedback.
Cons Of Instagram Business
- Heavy emphasis on creative content can sometimes dilute the actual message of the post.
- There are few contents that are only for a limited time period, for example, stories. However, the time spent to make one story appealing to the audience is more.
Tiktok
Target Users: Tiktok became a sensation and a primary place for social media entertainment during the pandemic. It has brought many celebrities and dramas, which we are still recovering from. However, Tiktok’s primary users are still limited to young adults and teens. So the age limit is between 10-40.
Pros of Tik Tok Business
- Tiktok is one place where your business can go viral with one 20-second video. This is what makes it one of the top social media platforms used by businesses.
- Great place for influencer marketing since influencers can convince your audience to buy something.
Cons of TikTok Business
- You have to keep hustling every day, creating new content, because fame is short-lived.
- Limited organic reach and not great for B2B technology-related businesses.
Snapchat
Target User: Snapchat is that one platform that will have its moments, and it is not always on the picture. Usually used mostly by young adults and teens, pre-teens, and kids (if they get hold of an account). However, it is having a revival right now.
Pros Of Snapchat Business
Visual storytelling is a major attraction epi-center for Snapchat users. Especially storytelling through a series of stories. This is why the Snapchat series has become a big deal in recent years.
The augmented reality through Snapchat filters can make the campaigns more interesting, especially if you are catering to the youth.
Cons Of Snapchat Business
The demographic reach is very limited. You will noy find any versatility in your users because of the complicated interface.
Lack of integration, when you start a social media campaign, you would want to build an overall web. However, there are very few chances of relaying backlinks to your website or other social media platforms on Snapchat.
Target Audience: This platform is less about logistics and more about the aesthetic appeal of it. Used mostly by young adults from the age of 10-30, pictures and quality videos plays a major role in someone’s audience.
Pros Of Pinterest
- You can always use this platform for your side marketing campaigns. For example, if Facebook is for your main camping ads, a link to your Pinterest account can give that extra creative edge to it.
- From videos to posts to articles, you will get several places to directly link your website and other digital business ventures through Pinterest.
- Pinterest pins have a longer shelf life than any other social media post.
Cons Of Pinterest
- To be successful on Pinterest, you have to put in a lot of time and a creative mind. It is not going to happen overnight.
- Demographic limitations are a big issue in Pinterest because there are many who haven’t even heard of the platform. Therefore, this cannot be your primary place for all your social media.
How To Start A Social Media Platform For Business
Starting a social media platform could be a jarring process. There is too much to do, and we wouldn’t blame you if you are feeling a little overwhelmed. This is why we have this beginner guidebook to start a social media platform.
1. First, Decide What To Start With
Now that you are the age demographic and know which platform will fit with your target audience, pick one or two (not more than that), to start building a business account on.
Generally, people pick a platform with a huge audience reach. This ensures that their advertisements are well-seen. The other one would be to showcase the creative campaigns, the animations, and the genius taglines.
If you are confused about which to pick, simply go for
- Facebook: Since it allows you to have a business account. Hence easier for your customer to find you.
- Instagram: For creative reels and lives. Mostly short-lived entertaining content.
If your target audience is mostly B2B, then you can switch to Linkedin, which again has a limited reach but will serve your business’s purpose better.
2. Create A Moodboard For Your Campaigns
Creative thought goes into the most technical product, and your posts shouldn’t be different. A mood board is a collage with images, quotes, and ideas which is likely to garner the highest amount of organic audience in your social media posts.
These are the basic elements you should start with when creating a mood board.
Color Palette: Have you ever noticed Coca-Cola’s Instagram account? The first element which makes an audience recognize the brand is its signature cherry red color. Whether it is the logo at every post or strategically placing the color throughout, your social media cannot be a haphazard mess of unplanned color theory. Common color palettes, which many abide by, are the opposites of a color wheel, like yellow-purple, green-pink. Or, they take their business colors and play with monochromes. For example: if your business logo has green as its focal point, your Instagram color palette could be shades of green.
Aesthetic to Match the Color Palette: Aesthetic is a subgenre of themes that you pick for your posts. It has to be reflecting the ethos of your company.
Content: Undoubtedly one of the most important parts of any digital campaign. However, it is not just about writing a few words but also getting the audience hooked. You will need the eye of an expert copywriter to get the content taglines well formatted.
Remember, a mood board is a highly customizable tool, and you can add or modify elements based on your specific campaign’s goals and target audience once you have gathered the images and visual elements that align with your campaign theme.
3. Find The Right Team
Without the right team, this entire project has a chance to fail. Afterall, managing social media shouldn’t be one person’s job. Now, here are a few team members you should consider hiring before starting a social media campaign. The joint working of these people will ensure its success.
A Social Media Manager
One of the most important pieces of the social media puzzle is a social media manager. Their day-to-day would come up with trendy campaigns, coordinate with the team and ensure their timely posts. Yes, there is scheduling for every social media post, which improves your audience reach by leaps and bounds. This mostly depends on the time your primary audiences are mostly alive.
Social Media Copywriter
This is the wordsmith of your team. They formulate excellent taglines which create a dented impact on your audience’s mind. A good copywriter is always a good ire if you want your branding to skyrocket.
Social Media SEO Executive
Many are stuck in this notion that SEO and other forms of optimization are only important for your website and the content within. However, this could be far from true because optimization is the key to reaching your audience. Then the creativity can retain them, but you have to reach out to them before.
A social media SEO executive’s primary job would be to check the current trends and always keep an eye on the changing algorithm. There is no other algorithm as fluctuating as that of social media. All the while ensuring that true creativity isn’t lost within the technical optimization.
They are also responsible for keeping the number of likes, comments, and views on each post at an optimal level which suggests growth. Although, reputable Social Media Marketing Services can also help you see your drawbacks and garner more views by eliminating them.
So, whenever you are in need, give the professionals a call!
With this, we come to an end to the trifecta of people who can take your social media to the next level.
4. Start Creating Campaigns
Every social media post for businesses is well-calculated. There is nothing unplanned that goes up to the page. Generally, businesses have two main posts.
– The regular post is done to ensure relevancy over the platform.
– Campaigns that businesses generally plan before a big launch.
Your business meaning in the social media pages is itself a new thing, which means a social media campaign is well fit for the occasion.
Ensure to create quite a buzz among your existing audience for them to come and check what you have stored on your social media pages.
You can send out the news through other marketing platforms, such as email newsletters. Also, start linking your social media pages to your website. This will give your organic audience easy access to the pages.
5. Decide Upon Social Media Metrics
There are no social media campaigns that can survive without analyzing the metrics. Just imagine yourself brainstorming day and night to create a social media campaign. How will you ascertain its results without the proper metrics?
There are tools that can help you understand the number of views on your social media page per day and the clicks you are garnering. Especially the number of clicks redirecting your audience from other pages where you have created social media backlinks.
6. Creating Social Media Communities
The primary purpose of creating a social media platform for anyone is to get close to their audience base. For that, you will need interactive communication strategies. Other than being active in the comment section and going on live once in a while, you can also create social media communities.
These will include creating groups where customers can talk and lodge complaints regarding any product or service offered by the company. Participate in events and, most importantly, provide live customer feedback before any product launch.
Some of the social media platforms which allow you to create better communities with your loyal customer base are Pinterest, Tumbler, and Reddit. Although they are a little informal, they get the job done in terms of making headways before your competitors.
If you browse these communities talking about your company or similar products in “Incognito mode,” you can even find insights about your competitors firsthand.
7. Create A Social Media Calendar
A social media manager doesn’t wake up every day and decides what to post. The weekly (…sometimes monthly) calendars are brainstormed, checked, edited, and decided long back.
Once you start making progress with your social media account, you have to start building a calendar for regular updates. Along with your weekly and monthly campaigns, you shouldn’t miss out on your daily campaigns as they help you remain relevant among your audience.
Afterall, with the crippling amount of competitors, and changing algorithms, even if you miss a week of posting, you are at the bottom of the barrel again.
8. Create Attractive Banners
Social media is one such platform where everyone is pressing scroll and refresh every second. Thus, if you want to grab your audience at one glance, banners, catchy colors, and exaggerated fonts with embedding taglines are imperative.
If you are having a difficult time attracting an audience to your social media platform, maybe give your content another read. With the depleting attention span of readers, they hardly read long paragraphs as social media posts.
They would like banners with animations, good logos, aesthetics, and tags. Short and to the point is one way to win your social media game.
9. Finding The Right Influencers
Along with your own posts, your credibility skyrockets when a prominent person with quite the following also talks about your brand. If you are finding it difficult to reach out to your right audience even after being in the social media forum for quite some time, it is probably because you are not venturing into untapped influencer marketing.
Take some time and find the best influencers out there whose followers match your target audience. The best places to begin your social media influencer campaign are Youtube, Tiktok, and Instagram.
10. Finding The Right Tools
There are social media tools out there that help you to get the job done efficiently, whether it is a social media calendar organizer which integrates all your social media campaigns from different platforms into one. Or an optimization tool that gives you the best social media keywords.
You have to find the right tools which can help you navigate through the problems exclusive to you.
11. Do Not Forget About The Law
Remember, there is a regulatory body for every social media platform which checks the sensitivity of the content before understanding one. Plus, opening your business to social media also gives cybercriminals a pass to breach data.
You should understand each and every privacy policy and pay extra attention to security before opening a social media platform.
Research and comply with all legal and regulatory requirements for starting a social media platform in your region. This may include data protection and privacy laws.
12. Choose Cost Effective Campaigns
Targeted traffic generated through social media campaigns is cost-effective compared to other forms of advertising or marketing. When you optimize your social media platforms, you organically attract users actively seeking what you offer, reducing the need for costly advertising campaigns or paid acquisition strategies.
However, there is some budgeting required in the social media forum as well. At times to make your content a little more attractive, you will have to add animations and high-quality videos. Two of which are the work of expert professionals whom you have to pay for.
Ensure that they are long-term, and bring the right ROI depending on the expenditure.
13. Long-Term Results
Social media is a long-term strategy that can continue to drive targeted traffic to your website over time. By consistently optimizing your social media platforms with relevant and trendy posts and providing valuable content, you can maintain a steady stream of targeted traffic, leading to ongoing business opportunities and sustained growth.
However, you have to keep tracking the results from time to time because the entire process could go to waste if you are trying to milk a social media trend that is of no interest to your audience anymore.
Why Should Your Social Media Post Be SEO Optimized
Amidst the flair of creativity, many social media campaign creators put the SEO aspect in the back seat.
Here is why you shouldn’t do so and why an SEO-optimized social media platform is so crucial.
- Higher Search Engine Rankings: SEO optimization helps improve your social media’s visibility in search results. Users perceive your profiles as more credible and trustworthy when it appears at the top of search results. Higher reaches mean higher views, and these indicate that search engines recognize your profiles as a valuable and reliable source of information or products.
- Authority in Your Industry: By implementing effective SEO strategies, you can establish your business as an authority in your industry. When your social media is consistently coming up on their feed and provides valuable content, users perceive you as a knowledgeable and trustworthy source. This builds credibility and enhances your reputation as a leader in your field.
- Positive User Experience: SEO optimization often focuses on improving the user experience by enhancing social media engagement, posts, and entertainment factors. Users who have a positive experience on your social media profiles are more likely to trust your brand and perceive your business as reputable and reliable.
- Social Proof and Backlinks: SEO efforts can also lead to acquiring backlinks from reputable social proof through positive reviews and testimonials. When other reputable influencers and businesses are linking to your social media, customers share positive experiences, which strengthens your credibility and builds trust among your audience.
- Consistent Online Presence: An SEO-optimized social media ensures your business maintains a consistent online presence. This means that users can find your social media profiles easily across different search engines and platforms, contributing to your overall credibility and trustworthiness.
- Reviews and Ratings: SEO optimization includes managing online reviews and ratings. Positive comments and high ratings on Facebook business from satisfied customers establish credibility and trust among potential customers who rely on the experiences of others when making purchasing decisions.
- Brand Reputation: An SEO-optimized social media presence helps you monitor and manage your brand reputation online. By actively engaging with your audience, addressing their concerns, and providing valuable content, you can build a positive brand reputation, further enhancing credibility and trust.
To End The Discussion!
Starting a social media platform for business is a significant undertaking, and it’s essential to have a well-thought-out strategy and a dedicated team to make it successful. It’s also important to stay adaptable and be open to refining your approach based on user feedback and market trends.
Hopefully, this excerpt was able to provide some insight into the world of business and its social media counterparts. For more queries, do let us know in the comment section below.
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