How to build your social media marketing strategy for 2020

Ready to figure out your social media marketing strategy?

If you’re overwhelmed or don’t know where to start, you’re definitely not alone.

Because social media isn’t as straightforward as it used to be. Not by a long shot.

From choosing the right channels to figuring out your content strategy, analysis paralysis is a serious problem for marketers today.

That’s why we put together a comprehensive guide to creating a social media marketing plan from scratch.

A succinct strategy will help your brand tackle its goals with a sense of purpose. Below is a step-by-step social media marketing guide to help you identify your social goals, engage audiences and optimize your results:

1. Set meaningful social marketing goals
2. Research your target audience
3. Establish your most important metrics
4. Analyze your competition
5. Create and curate engaging content
6. Make timeliness a top priority
7. Assess your results and optimize
8. Communicate goals, challenges and wins with your team

1. Set goals that make sense for your business

First things first: you need to figure out what you want out of social media at large.

Because coming up with a social media plan means having an end-game in mind.

Whether that means more dollars and cents from your existing social presence or amping up your reach with new followers is totally up to you.

What matters is that you set realistic social media goals. We recommend tackling smaller objectives that allow you to scale your social efforts in a way that’s both reasonable and affordable.

Sample social media goals for 2020 and beyond

Below are some sample goals that businesses of all shapes and sizes can divide and conquer. Based on data from the Sprout Social Index, these are the top priorities for marketers today.

Increase brand awareness. To create authentic and lasting brand awareness, avoid solely publishing promotional messages. Instead, focus on content that emphasizes your personality or values first.