9 Social Media Strategies for Businesses in 2023

Consumers who have a good experience with a brand’s social media channels are more likely to recommend it to others. Without an effective content marketing strategy, your business cannot possibly reach its ultimate potential. 

We have shared nine social media strategies to help optimize your social media success in 2023.

1. Set realistic social media marketing goals.

Most businesses know they need to be present on social networks to gain more customers but don’t understand why they are there. 

Yes, you have a business plan; however, your social media marketing strategy must begin with realistic goals and expectations. Overall, your social media strategy needs to complement your broader business objectives.

Set SMART goals for your business.

• S — Specific: Make sure your goals are focused and narrowed down to identify tangible outcomes. Without being specific, your goals risk being too vague to achieve.
• M — Measurable: Have a clear vision of success. This means knowing precisely how to achieve your goals and when. Goals may include measurable KPIs that help your marketing team focus on the right areas to improve.
• A — Attainable: Your goal should pose a challenge but still be reasonable enough to achieve. It is essential to reflect on potential barriers you may need to overcome.
• R — Relevant: This component should answer your why. Why is this goal relevant to you and your business? Ensure that what you try to achieve is worth it to your company and a priority for you.
• T — Time-Bound: All goals should have a target date that motivates you to apply the discipline and focus necessary to achieve them. Setting a realistic time frame is vital so that you do not get discouraged.

The SMARTer your goals are, the more likely you will be able to accomplish them.

2. Define your target social media audience.

A common misconception among businesses on social media is that having a lot of followers is a good thing. Vanity metrics are just that — they only “look good.” It doesn’t mean that all of your followers will be paying customers. 

It is important to avoid thinking that buying fake followers just to boost your follower count will help your business in any way. If anything, it is doing the complete opposite for you. There is little value in having social media followers who don’t engage with your content.  

Defining a target audience is vital because gaining customers in the correct audience can increase conversions, sales, and revenue. 

In-depth social media analytics can find the demographics you need to target with your marketing campaigns to generate conversion rates. You may want to prioritize different content formats depending on your target audience. 

For instance, younger audiences often prefer scrolling through tweets and trending memes, whereas older adults and working professionals are often more drawn to high-quality, informative blog content.

3. Create a blog for your business.

Fresh content is the nucleus of a successful social strategy. Commit to consistently creating new and relevant content to keep your target audience engaged and interested. 

An excellent way to keep your content fresh is to compile a list of common questions and create blogs that will address them. This can equate to at least one new blog post per week. Combining your blogging and social media strategies can help your content reach a larger audience. 

For example, you can create a social media post with a tip for your followers and a link to your blog post that expands on that tip. This action can help drive more traffic to your blog and enhance your follower engagement.

Your social media team can use SEO tactics to increase organic traffic to your blog content.

4. Produce educational content.

Creating downloadable content like ebooks, checklists, instructional videos, and infographics that address your customers’ questions and expand their knowledge can be a great way to keep your followers coming back for more. 

If your customers find your content beneficial, others will like it and share it on their social media, extending your reach.

5. Direct your focus on a few key social channels.

Not all social media platforms deserve your time if your target audience isn’t using that channel. For example, suppose you are targeting business professionals. In that case, it may be more beneficial to focus your social media campaigns on platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter rather than Twitch, Snapchat, or TikTok. 

Not all businesses have the bandwidth to sustain posting quality content on every platform. It can be overwhelming to engage on multiple channels simultaneously. 

It is a good idea to start small on one or two channels you believe will have the furthest reach and where you can build meaningful relationships with your followers.

6. Develop a posting and engagement schedule.

Social media works differently for all businesses. Look at your social media metrics then track when you post content and which times produce the most engagement from your followers. 

With that information, you can create a cheat sheet. It’s an easy way to commit to posting content on your blog or your desired social channels and hold yourself accountable. You can even use social media management tools to automate social media scheduling.

7. Investigate how your competition uses social media.

Knowing what your competition is doing is not being nosy. It is strategic. Conducting a competitor analysis can help you understand their strengths and weaknesses. 

Knowing what your competitors are doing can give you a better understanding of what customers expect from a business in your industry.  

You may be able to spot your competitors’ weak social areas and then exploit the gaps. For example, your competitor may have a robust social presence on Twitter but a weak presence on Facebook. In this case, you may want to focus more energy on your Facebook content rather than competing on Twitter.

8. Create diverse content.

While having a consistent branding and color scheme on your social media profile is nice, people like to see a variety in their social feeds. It is not good marketing to post the same types of photos all the time or the same kinds of videos. 

You will need to diversify your content to keep followers engaged. 

Depending on the platform, mix up your content with enticing imagery, engaging videos, and compelling text copy to keep people interested and wanting more.

9. Consider paid promotion to boost your audience.

Most social platforms allow you to buy some sort of paid ads and will allow you to target who will see those ads by demographics. If you are new to that social platform, this can be a good start to gaining target followers.

What is a social media strategy?

Social media strategies can increase brand awareness, boost engagement rates, and drive traffic to your business through different social media networks and types of content. 

Without a robust social media marketing plan, companies are potentially losing out on possible customers and revenue. 

Many businesses know they need to post some online content. Still, they may not fully understand the magnitude of creativity, commitment, and dedication required to curate success with their social media activity.

A post-and-hope approach just will not cut it in the world of social media marketing. All businesses must create and implement a measured social media strategy and operate their business’s social accounts in an intentional and meaningful manner.

Why do businesses need a social media strategy?

Online businesses’ top three challenges include reaching their target audience, measuring ROI (return on investment), and reaching their business goals. 

Crafting a comprehensive social media strategy can help to combat these goals and improve these circumstances. Social media account strategies also equip you to set attainable goals and guardrails, track performance, and tweak benchmarks over time.

Your business needs to create a social media strategy to:

• Establish clear business expectations and goals for your social media marketing efforts. This can include growing your brand awareness, creating buzz around a new product or promotional event, launching a campaign, and providing a blueprint for your entire business team to follow. 
• Allows you to track goal performance. It is not enough to just set goals. The follow-through is the most critical part of reaching a goal. An excellent social media strategy will contain key performance indicators you can monitor and analyze for your business progress. 
• Creating and tweaking your business benchmarks over time allows you to track your current business performance and compare it against industry standards, the competition, and your past performance. Consistent business evaluation helps you to determine if your social media strategy is working and where it needs improvement. 

The bottom line.

Blindly posting on social media platforms is not going to cut it. Building a social media presence requires a strategic plan to reach the right followers who will become paying customers.

For assistance in building your brand awareness, we have the tools you need.