As with any journey, the first step in creating a social-media marketing strategy is to understand where you want to go. What is the purpose of your social media marketing efforts? Do you want to create or raise awareness of your brand? Are you looking to increase sales, or website traffic, or both? Is your goal to build customer loyalty and increase retention? These goals aren’t mutually exclusive, but you should focus on one or two: If you spread yourself too thin, you’re not going to accomplish anything.

It’s time to set clear objectives based on your goals. Focus on the S.M.A.R.T. strategy for goal setting to ensure your objectives are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time based. For example, if you’re a marketer looking to increase sales, you might decide that you want to generate an additional 100 online leads a month. On the other hand, if your goal is brand awareness, then you might want to increase the number of times your brand is mentioned on social media by 50 percent. In all cases, these objectives should be directly tied to your business goals, and they should be achievable. Otherwise, they’re just wishful thinking. Also, make sure your objectives are time limited. For instance, you need to achieve that 50 percent growth in brand awareness within six months, not at some undefined time in the future. Once you set your objectives, make sure you can measure them. Find the right tools to track and analyse each one, so that you can quantify your progress. Not only will this let you know when you have arrived, it will also help you to spot problems early and adjust your course if you need to.

Now you know where you’re going, but you still don’t know how to get there. A successful social-media strategy is all about targeting the right people with the right messages. To do this, you need to understand your audience. For instance, there’s no point in targeting everyone in the 18 to 35 age group if you really want to get to upwardly mobile young professionals who are technology enthusiasts. The best way to do this is to create buyer personas. Sit down and create a detailed profile of your ideal customer. Start by giving them a name. How old are they? What is their income? Do they have children? What do they like or dislike? What motivates them? And so on. If you have more than one ideal customer, create a persona for each.

When it comes to social media, your competition can tell you a lot about what works and what doesn’t. After all, they’re targeting the same customers you are. If you ignore your competition, you’re giving up a fantastic opportunity to learn from their successes and mistakes. To research your competitors, start by picking three or four of the top ones. Find out which social networks they’re active on, and study their content. Is it funny or serious? What kind of cultural references do they use? Do they talk about their product primarily, or do they focus on other things? For example, if you sell snowboards, do your competitors talk about how their snowboards perform, or do they post amazing snowboarding videos that just happen to include their products? Then, see how well each competitor is doing (e.g. how much engagement — comments, shares, likes) — they get on their Facebook updates.) This will let you determine which strategies work and which ones don’t.

Now you have a handle on your ideal customers and your competition, it’s time to start building your messages. This isn’t detailed content; rather it’s the top level set of key messages that you think will resonate with your customers based on the personas you have created. Choose two or three messages, then break each one down another level creating a simple messaging hierarchy. There’s nothing wrong with adopting some of your competitors’ successful messaging ideas but also try to create original messages that set you apart — this will help you to create a unique brand voice. Don’t be afraid to get creative as your social media presence should be exciting, not boring.

Not all social-media platforms are the same. You need to choose the right ones for the products or services you’re selling. For example, LinkedIn is a good platform to target for business-to-business sales while Pinterest may be better if you’re in the fashion business. Some of these channels will become obvious when you look at your competitors but see if any relevant channels were overlooked. You should also identify influencers who can reach your target audience. Good bloggers command high levels of trust in their readers and are indispensable in creating buzz around your brand. Take the time to target the most appropriate bloggers who can help you to do this.

Finally, you need to develop a strong content plan that will deliver engaging material. The content needs to align with your overall messaging and be appropriate for the channels you’re using. This is more than just product information – think about how you can deliver real value to your audience. Don’t just stick to one type of media – a mix of videos, guides, infographics and other styles will engage your potential customers more effectively. Also, don’t think of content as something you post once. You need to have an ongoing presence on social media, and that includes delivering fresh content on a regular basis.

These are contests and promotions to essentially help boost sales for the company.

This could be a recurring monthly campaign promoting a product or giveaway. There are a bunch of different ways to go about doing this.

For the Giveaway, I like using Rafflecopter. You basically create tasks for the participants to complete, such as visiting your website and choosing a favourite product or service, and their name will be stored in the database, then at the end of the giveaway, a name is randomly selected as the winner.

Direct marketing allows you to generate a response from targeted customers. As a result, small businesses can focus their limited marketing resources where they are most likely to get results. A direct marketing campaign with a clear call to action can help you boost your sales to existing customers, increase customer loyalty, recapture old customers and generate new business. Direct marketing can be evaluated and measured precisely. For example, you can send out test marketing emails directing customers to specific landing pages on your website. You can analyse results to see which email was most successful. You can also test your marketing with sample groups before you roll out the campaign that will deliver the best response rate. Whether you are targeting business (b2b) customers or consumers, direct marketing can deliver results.

Your database is at the heart of any good direct marketing strategy. It must be up to date and accurate. Check your mailing lists regularly – remove duplicate entries, correct any mistakes and, above all, delete names of people and businesses who have asked to be removed. The information you hold on your database is marketing gold. It can tell you about your customers’ buying habits and reveal other useful information such as age, gender and location. You can use this data to divide your customers and prospects into smaller groups and target them with special messages. You can build a profile of your best customers and actively seek new contacts matching that description by buying or renting new lists. Direct marketing works because it puts your message in front of people. However, unsolicited emails must only be sent to people and businesses that have given permission to be contacted.

While it can be difficult to measure the effects of advertising or sponsorship, in contrast, direct marketing is totally accountable. With any direct marketing campaign, you can calculate a break-even point – the number of sales you need to make to cover the cost of the marketing. In addition, you can work out the cost per response and the actual return on investment. This simple analysis will enable you to tweak your campaigns in order to improve your results. You can also identify those that are most responsive and target them again in future.