Episode 18 of the Digital Marketing Creators Podcast. Today we're gonna talk about how to develop a social media marketing strategy. Stay tuned.

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Creators Podcast where we help creators and entrepreneurs just like you magnify your brand message through digital marketing tips and strategies. And now your host Andre Vaughn.

As a creator, or entrepreneur, you have so many things coming your way in terms of online marketing, digital marketing, and it can be so confusing, but we broke it down in this free mini course that we have, it's called the Five Day Digital Marketing Mini Course. And you can get that at DigitalMarketingCreators.com/free-mini-course or anywhere on that website, you should see something where you can sign up for that free course. And it's not a long course he does a real short course. And you know, we didn't want to take up a lot of your time when we put it together. But it kind of guides you through different aspects of of digital marketing, and we try to keep it condensed for you. So check that out at Digital MarketingCreators.com/free-mini-course.

Are you looking to fine tune your social media marketing strategy for the year? Of course, you are going to be listening to this if you was no but seriously, to implement a social media marketing strategy. It's not that hard, everything really is about action. If you want to know the truth about it, you're not going to know everything up front.

So you know, sometimes you can just Wing Wing Wing these things, and put stuff out there but be strategic about everything. Before you just up in quote unquote winging it. there's a few things that I'm going to recommend in terms of you know, making a social media marketing strategy and you know, putting together a great guide, I'm going to try to put together a nice guide to lead you in the in the right direction of having success with your social media marketing strategy.

So one of the things I always talk about always talking about setting goals and and, you know, having a plan to do these things, you have to know what platforms that you're going to use, what platforms are your, you know, your target audience, you know, what platforms are they on are what platforms for more experienced people, what platforms have you been building in, and, you know, engaging with people and things of that nature. But an important thing is to make sure that you have an idea of your brand awareness, the one thing you should want to do is to make sure your community has some sort of engagement.

Also, these some, these are some very important things that will lead you in the right direction, in terms of social media marketing strategy. So of course, you want to get your name out there. And you want to, you know, focus on content that emphasizes you know, your personality, your values, and you know, who you are as a content creator who you are as a brand, you want to be interested, or you should be interested in, you know, growing your brands, or growing your brand's audience, also, so bringing new followers into the fold means finding new ways to introduce your brand to folks who haven't heard of you before.

And so and so that's why, you know, these, these deep conversations that you can have with people via social media are important, as well. And it's important to, you know, the platforms that you're growing the social media platforms that you're growing. So make sure you're monitoring and listening to what's going on. And, you know, all in all, we all want to generate leads and sales. So that's the, that's going to be just for most people on social media and doing social media marketing. That's what you're marketing, you're marketing yourself, your brand, your products, your services, that should always be top of mind.

You should be doing things such as, um, in terms of your community engagement, things such as experimenting with messaging, whether it's in your DM's or whatever, because you're creating these conversations, you're having these conversations. I would say if you're comfortable enough, or if somebody else is comfortable enough, getting on some sort of a zoom call, with maybe one or two a year, your fans and followers also, you're going to have to do some of these things to see what people want and how they're responding to certain content that you're putting out.

Don't be too scared, don't be, too. We all were not too big to do those things. So I don't care who you are, or how much money you have, or any of that stuff that doesn't matter. What matters are the people that you are building this community with, and their wants and needs and things of that nature. So that's more important than anything. Also, are you using things such as hashtags are using hashtags to boost your community engagement, that's going to be more prevalent on sites such as Twitter and Instagram.

Also, maybe even to a degree, you know, some of your short form video areas like Tik Tok, I did say Instagram, but Instagram reels, and some of the other ones such as Snapchat, and YouTube shorts, also, so make sure you are implementing hashtags to help boost your community engagement. Have you taken time to research a target audience, you have to remember, different platforms attract different audiences.

So I was looking at something on X, I'm gonna link this into the show notes is a great article Sprout Social, where they say, the social media demographics, like these numbers speak directly to which networks your brand should approach and what types of content to publish. So it's basically talking about a social media marketing strategy says Facebook and YouTube are both prime places for ads to impart to their high earning user bases.

And I've spoken about Facebook, always group Facebook and Instagram together along with Google search, and our Google AdWords and YouTube because both you both entities, even though they're owned by each other, Facebook and Instagram, and YouTube and Google respectively, they have the same ad platforms. So PPC is not going to be difficult if you're using both of them.

But you have to know what you're doing. Also, like I always suggest using on YouTube using the In Stream Ads. And you can utilize things such as Instagram Stories, for ads. Also, in both of these places, the the ad inventory is not as high as the other one. So your, your price for your ads are going to be a little cheaper, but you want to see what's effective more than anything instead of what's cheap. You know, we all want to pay cheaper for ads and things like that. But these different platforms, they attract different audiences.

They say I'm the top social networks among millennials and Gen Zers. via Instagram and YouTube signal in the strength of bold eye popping content that oozes with personality. They also say in his article that women vastly outnumber men on Pinterest, which is noted to boost the highest average order value for social shoppers, LinkedIn is user base as well educated, making it a hub for in depth, industry specific content, that might be more niche than what you see on Facebook, or Twitter.

Also, when you when you're trying to develop a social media marketing strategy, you have to, you really have to keying in on your metrics and your key performance indicators. Also your KPIs. So you have to find out, you know, what's important things such as, you know, your hashtag performance, how your hashtags, performing, you know, the engagement, also, which is the total number of social interactions divided by the number of impressions, clicks, the number of clicks on your content or account.

Are you tracking the clicks per campaigns, your reach, also the post reach? Here's the thing you have to understand about social media, the newer platforms such as, tick tock, as you're listening to this right now. TikTok, they're gonna when you produce content on TikTok, they're gonna show it to more people as as much as they possibly can. Now on the flip side of that, if you put the same post up on Facebook, not very many people are going to see it.

See you have to you have to understand these platforms and how they work. If it's new, or if it's a new feature on a social media platform. And you're already on their platform, you might want to implement that into your into your social media marketing. content, because the less inventory that it has meaning if it's newer, you're gonna get more bang for your buck sort of speak, or people are going to see that content more is what I'm trying to say, as opposed to, if it's older platform and, and you know, there's a lot of content on that platform, people are not going to people not gonna see it, they're not gonna push it out, they're gonna push the content out as much. So that's why I'm high on short form videos, places such as tick tock Instagram reels, Snapchat, YouTube shorts. So you have to, you have to understand how these platforms work, how they work for you, how are they working for you, not even your competitors?

Because your competitors are probably not immune? And how are they working for people that's using them that successful on those platforms? At the end of the day, you must create engaging content. So that's no surprising you're you're heard that a lot already to the point to where people are saying to themselves, what is great content, what is great content, you know, that's neither here nor there in terms of you know, that that's really just common sense.

So what it what is great content is gone, you know, the type of content that moves, you know, that's why I always do research on my competitors, our research on people that move the needle, who's getting all the shares, the likes, and whatever, see what type of content that they're making. This is not about reinventing the wheel, it's just about being you being yourself, having your personality added a twist, maybe to what someone else is already doing. It's not copying them.

You shouldn't copy anybody you should do, you should do things or create content in your own way. But in your own way, where it was something that was probably possibly done before, but just put your own twist, because at the end of the day, people are gonna, they're gonna vibe with you, they're gonna like you. At the end of the day, it all starts with you, especially if it's a personal brand. That is also I'm getting in tune with the, you know, the top trends in social media.

One of the things that that I'm paying attention to, I'm paying more and more attention to and, and implementing more and more of my stories on like, my Instagram, and you can check that out at we'll have that in the show notes also on my Instagram. So at Andre L. Vaughn at Andre l Vaughn. So I know by me, I mentioned in my Instagram is going to force me more and more to put content out on my IG stories, daily stories on Instagram. Also, the guides on Instagram, you know to have a guide feature where you can upload guides you can think you can do them in video format in text form.

Also, short form videos, short form videos, just like I said, tick tock Instagram real snap check YouTube shorts on tick tock. What I'm seeing on tick tock is producing multiple videos per day. Not the same videos, they you know, they can be you want to be helpful, you want to be entertaining, educational, all that stuff. But you also want to have a nice mixture of that. You want to do reply videos, you want to put about three to five videos out per day on Tik Tok. If you grow an account, I will say with Instagram reels, you can just take that you can take those same videos and upload them to Instagram.

Not after you upload to Tik Tok but in its native form of lowdham to Instagram reels. Snapchat same thing now let me get back to Instagram, not just Instagram, just Instagram reels, use all those other features in Instagram also, like I said before, like the stories like the carousels IG video which you can upload videos more than one minute so if you use all those different things in your you know your writing, you're filling out your description box, you know your captions and all of that stuff. You know, you're being consistent your account will grow and of course also going on other other like minded Instagram sites and you know, commenting and sharing their stuff and all of that stuff.

So You know, engaging on on other accounts. Also, that's how you grow your account on Instagram. In a nutshell. Of course, I know I'm missing, maybe, you know a couple of things also, but in a nutshell, that's it, but back to, um, you know what I'm seeing with short form video, Snapchat features which Snapchat highlights and all of that stuff. So there's a couple of couple of different areas on Snapchat, YouTube shorts, with YouTube shorts, um, I wouldn't, I'm not sure if I'm going to try to certain things that I'm going to I can't speak of it right now. But certain few things that I'm on a trial Instagram shorts, but take that same content, your short form videos, and upload them in those areas. Tiktok starting off, you might have to upload a little more YouTube shorts.

I'm not so sure. Because you know, the YouTube algorithm is a little crazy. So I'm not sure if they love to see multiple videos that same day, or if they want to see a video per day. Starting off on YouTube short play around within let me know, um, you guys can always go to to our group, our private Facebook group at DigitalMarketingCreators.com/group. And I love to hear what you what you guys are talking about. And if you have any questions or any info on any of this stuff in this episode, hey.

So we got the group for especially this short form video stuff. So I'm gonna try to keep you guys posted as much as I possibly can on different things that that I'm actually doing in terms of social media and building my platforms, and so on and so forth. So I have no problem with that I want to help as many people as I possibly can. And hey, I need help also, you know, always say, I don't know everything. So I love to learn, I love to learn this stuff. So I love to geek out on this stuff. So digital marketing creators.com forward slash group. And I'll upload this article to Sprout Social article also on digitalmarketingcreators.com/episode18. So those are the shownotes digitalmarketingcreators.com/episode 18. So keep those things in mind in terms of social media marketing strategy, so we'll see you in the next episode, it's going to be episode 19. We're going to talk about social media marketing for small businesses. So make sure you tune in to that, and we'll see you the next episode. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the Digital Marketing Creators Podcast at www.digitalmarketingcreators.com.