For the modern business, a social media presence is nearly unavoidable. Your social media marketing strategy serves as a powerful tool for building brand awareness and credibility. But it’s important to remember the ultimate goal: delivering valuable, informative, and engaging content to your ideal customers.

Whether it's showcasing your brand, sharing product how-tos, or increasing customer engagement, social media is often one of the first touchpoints your customers have. Your social channels play a pivotal role in connecting with your audience and introducing them to your values and services.

Part of your social media marketing strategy’s role is demand generation. 71% of consumers who have a good experience with a brand’s social media are likely to recommend it to others, making organic social media a cost-effective way to engage potential customers.

Prospective customers often turn to social platforms to vet businesses, so the consistency and content of your posts can make or break your credibility with your audience. In essence, a social media marketing strategy isn't just about visibility—it's about strategically positioning your brand to find and engage leads.

The team at Möve manages successful social media marketing strategies for our clients. We talked to our social media strategist, Zoe Wesley, to get her expertise on best practices to keep in mind as you refresh your organic social media and improve your overall inbound marketing approach.

In this blog, we’ll break down Zoe’s guidance for building an effective social media marketing strategy:

1. Know Your Audience

As part of an inbound marketing strategy, social media offers unparalleled benefits. It allows precise control over messaging and content while providing the opportunity to engage organically with your audience.

Unlike traditional advertising, social media enables direct communication without the need for paid ads––granted you understand your audience well.

Knowing the ins and outs of your audience is the foundation of any successful social media marketing strategy. Before diving into content creation or posting schedules, it's essential to conduct thorough research.

Take the time to dig into these key components:

• Ideal customer profiles
• Customer behaviors
• Pain points
• Competitor audiences

By familiarizing with your audience first, you can tailor your approach to address specific problems and solutions that resonate with your audience. Each social media post should be intentionally aligned with the preferences and messaging that appeals to your target demographic and ICP.

With this groundwork, you set the stage for a highly personalized, research-backed social media marketing strategy that speaks directly to the needs and interests of your audience.

2. Refine Your Messaging

Now that you understand your audience, Zoe recommends crafting tailored messaging that makes the most of your findings and connects with your target market. To refine your messaging, focus on your unique value proposition.

This is how you differentiate your brand from your competitors. Your messaging should articulate your brand identity clearly, conveying the benefits of your product or service to your audience to help them understand how you can solve their pain points.

In this step, you’ll also need to consider the voice and tone your audience will respond to.

For example, while emojis and exclamation points may add personality, it's crucial to gauge their appropriateness for your audience. In a B2B or highly technical context targeting executives and VPs, maintaining a professional tone is part of aligning with the platform you use and the individuals you’re trying to reach. More showy elements could end up diluting your brand instead of engaging your audience.

In other cases, such as for certain consumer goods or younger audiences, more frequent use of jokes, memes, and emojis can be part of your brand’s appeal.

Social media is a great opportunity to showcase your brand’s personality, but it's essential to strike a balance to ensure your brand remains credible and manages audience expectations.

As you develop messaging, keep in mind that your social media marketing strategy doesn’t work in isolation. Cross-functional collaboration with other marketing teams ensures a cohesive brand voice and holistic approach across all channels. Collaborate with paid ads to leverage immediate metrics on messaging and graphics that you might not be able to get through organic social media.

3. Choose the Right Platform

Selecting the right platforms is crucial for the success of your social media marketing strategy.

In the case of tech companies connecting with other industry professionals, you need a professional environment well suited to engaging with other companies. For an audience that values those business-first discussions, Twitter might not be the best fit––LinkedIn is the better choice.

Conversely, lifestyle brands and consumer products thrive on highly visual platforms like Instagram. To share how-to videos that show a product in depth or to cater to younger audiences with dynamic content, TikTok can be a great option.

The process of choosing a platform ties back to the structure provided by a deep understanding of your audience’s preferences and behaviors. This allows you to align your platform choice with your product and audience as well as the type of content you want to share.

By strategically selecting platforms and maintaining an active and consistent presence, you can affirm your credibility, optimize engagement, and showcase your expertise within your industry.

4. Continuously Optimize Your Content

Now you know who you’re posting for, how to craft messaging that connects with them, and where you should post. But what do you share?

Posting your successes comes with some risks. As many as 34% of consumers say “too much self-promotion” is a major turn-off, which can negatively affect your brand’s perception on social media.

Crafting an adaptable, data-driven content strategy for social media is the best way to maximize engagement. Your content must be visually appealing, compelling, and purposeful—whether it's building brand awareness, providing product information, or sharing thought leadership.

Zoe also suggests mixing up content types to keep your audience engaged. You can do this with polls, questions, and insightful conversations to encourage interaction. Consistency is key for growth, but freshness is also important to avoid stagnation.

Remember that what you expect your audience to like is not always what they’ll like best. Analyze the data, pay attention to popular competitor posts, and monitor social media trends to continuously refine your approach. A/B testing with images, captions, and CTAs can also help identify the most effective content and messaging types.

By staying adaptable and responsive, you can ensure your social media content remains relevant and impactful as you strive to meet audience preferences and drive engagement.