5 Ways to Revamp Your Social Media Strategy in 2018

With just a few improvements, your social

media profiles could become the crown jewel of your digital marketing strategy

in 2018. By switching up your approach and committing to a higher level of

quality, you could soon be generating more leads, revenue, and interest in your

company with minimal effort.

The great thing about social media marketing

is that it doesn’t have to take a lot of your time to work wonders. If you plan

ahead and use social media to reinforce your other marketing activities, you

can achieve huge ROI through both organic and paid social campaigns.

So, to inspire you to improve your social

presence and go beyond expectations, try implementing the following five highly

effective social media marketing improvements in 2018.

Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy Document

Writing down your marketing ideas matters.

According to CoSchedule, professionals who document their planned marketing

strategy are over five times more likely to achieve success.

Also, 88% of people who set marketing goals actually achieve them.

Documenting your social strategy involves both

high-level and low-level considerations.

On the high level, you want to include your

overarching goals for social. You want to describe how social media fits within

your overall digital marketing plan. You want a few guiding pointers for brand

voice and the type of values you want to express.

For low-level strategy, consider how often you

want to post per week or per month. Plan a budget for the next quarter.

Describe publisher sources for shared content you want to write.

Getting all of this down in writing helps you

stay focused and consistent. It also makes it easier to communicate your intended

strategy to others, such as employees or contract marketers.

Most importantly, it keeps you from

approaching your social media activities haphazardly. Having intention and

purpose is the key to achieving better results.

Coordinate Social Posts With Specific Campaigns

If you want to push your social media

marketing to the next level in 2018, try a couple of test campaigns. These

campaigns should tie into special events, promotions or campaign pushes so that

they can have an express purpose beyond “just posting because.”

For instance, if you have a promotional offer

like a free consultation, your social campaigns can convert audiences into

leads or customers. If you have an event, like a big in-store sale, you will be

aiming to increase foot traffic over the sale period.

Connecting social media activity to campaigns

in this way ties them to concrete goals. Your performance can be benchmarked,

helping you seek out ways to improve your next campaign based on past data.

For each campaign, create custom graphics and

a variety of post ideas. For example, you can plan to develop a few beautiful

photo-based posts as a way to turn heads on a platform like Instagram. You can

also create a few strong call-to-action posts to generate interest and early

signups on LinkedIn or Facebook.

Creating special, limited time campaigns like

these helps you learn quick lessons and improve rapidly with your social media

use. The data you generate and experience you gain gives you skills that make

you better at using social media, helping you improve and accomplish your goals

more consistently over time.

Create Content Marketing Assets and Landing Pages Just for Social

You can significantly upgrade your social

media marketing returns by creating assets specifically designed to complement

social posts.

For instance, you can create a lead capture

landing page for specific target segments to use with targeted promoted social

media posts. That way, your call to action can take 18-year-old college

students to a different page with different appeals than your page aiming to

convert 70-year-old retirees.

You can also create assets that you know will

perform well on social, such as infographics. Infographics get around 41.5% engagement, on

average, making them the content with the second-best ROI behind video.

Developing assets like these help connect your

social media presence to customer actions that actually generate revenue. They

also ensure you have a best-fit destination for each outgoing click to your

website, as opposed to shoehorning a single “contact us” page link into every

post or something similar. Since each asset is custom-made for social, they’re

better suited to their individual purpose.

Invest in Professional Grade Social Video

Speaking of developing visual content with

high ROI, now is the time to start considering using video within your social

media marketing strategy.

Businesses that use video marketing [generate 66% more qualified customer leads and earn 54%\\

more brand awareness](https://optinmonster.com/video-marketing-statistics-what-you-must-know/ "Link: https://optinmonster.com/video-marketing-statistics-what-you-must-know/")

compared to those that don’t use any video.

Even more impressive, 77% of small business owners who use video report

significant benefits and positive ROI.

In the past, we’ve mentioned how live video

and repurposing content as slideshows can be a great way to dip your toes into

the video marketing scene. But to truly revamp your social presence, you should

consider budgeting for a few (3-5) short, professionally made video assets

worth sharing on social.

Why? Because these assets get attention and

shape the way people see your business. They serve as a form of social proof

for the quality of your services when they include live testimonials. They give

you something to link to within other campaigns and to embed within your blogs.

They also serve as brief sales pitches that can be far more convincing than any

chunk of text.

For best results, plan ahead for when and why

you want to use your video assets and how you can repurpose them in multiple

ways for future campaigns.