1. CREATES BETTER BRAND AWARENESS

Social media is the place to conduct 2020 sales activities. The reason being everyone is there. All your prospects have reached a stage where if they haven’t found your brand online, they might never know a brand like yours even exists. This is the power of social media.

And now when you are using it, do you have an idea of how impactful you will be? Social media lets your brand create an existence in the eyes of your prospects. It lets them realize that there is a solution that is available for them. Social media is being the mediator between you and your prospects and this is exactly why such a platform can play the role of good advertising for your brand.

Social media gives your brand the identity that you need to let your prospects know about you. Your brand awareness is bound to increase because you have almost all of your audience on such a platform and that is a great opportunity to exhibit your brand.

2. MORE TRAFFIC DERIVED THAN USUAL

You might be receiving a good number of traffic at the moment either from your website or campaigns or any other activity, but did you know that your social media presence can also drive more traffic for you?

That is correct because with social media you will be conducting so many activities such as sharing social media posts, writing blogs and sharing them, joining groups, having discussions and so much more and all of these actions can push your prospects to learn more about what your brand has to offer.

Interesting Read : How remote social media managers avoid account blocks?

For instance, your brand has been writing blogs related to your solution and the industry you are in. You are constantly sharing it on social media and from the views that you receive, there will always be that one person from the list who would be interested to learn more about who you are and how you are confident in your solutions.

This will make them visit your social media handle and then to your website and then to you. Social media is a great opportunity to capture the potential leads because the ones who come all the way from the social handle to your website are the ones you need to add value to your business.

3. DERIVES MORE CONVERSION RATES

You have created brand awareness and have managed to capture the attention of warm or hot leads. What next? Your route will be towards closing more sales deals, you will be working towards nurturing them, convincing them, and finally converting them. The continuous action of such a process will directly impact your conversion rates as well.

Social media is being helpful here because it is providing an easy solution to find your prospects and then draw them towards exploring and learning your brand better. Your conversion rates are bound to change.

4. HELPS TO DELIVER BETTER CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Think from your prospects point of view, what are the things that make you happy when associating with a brand?:

1. Their engagement with you
2. The way they prioritize you
3. The way they ensure that your needs are being catered

Now all of this takes place well in advance when a brand engages with a prospect. Before you can hop into the selling activities, your first step would be to win your prospect's trust which is where the customer satisfaction falls.

A good brand will always ensure that their prospects are being catered to at all times which is exactly why social media’s existence is important. Whether it is responding to customer reviews, comments or suggestions, social media gives you the opportunity to prove that your brand cares about helping prospects, is alert with every comment or suggestion, and always prioritizes prospect's needs over anything.

5. CREATION OF LOYAL CUSTOMERS

Another reason to love social media is that it helps you get loyal prospects. The leads that are genuinely interested in your solutions are the ones that will come to you and on social media this is common. You tend to engage and nurture those leads that want to learn more about what your brand is offering.

This is a great opportunity for any type of business especially the ones who are yet to grow and want to create a loyal customer base. Social media doesn’t just let you sell to your prospects, through constant communication, interactions, and engagement, brands have the opportunity to build relationships and convert them into confident sales leads much quicker.

6. COST-EFFECTIVE TECHNIQUE

To be on social media doesn’t burn a hole in the pocket. It is extremely cost-efficient and doesn’t require any hardware for it to get installed. A good internet connection can help you create and conduct multiple social media actions no matter where your location is. 

Brands spend multiple amounts of money on branding. They are under the impression that each of their audience should be aware that their solution is available in the market. To beat the tough competition, multiple branding works take place to exhibit the brand in a better manner. This can be managed better by high-end companies but what about the small or midsection companies?

Interesting Read : How to choose the best proxy for Social Media?

They won’t have enough money to get conduct so much hence the use of social media is a great cost-efficient platform that benefits any kind of business. It is easy, simple, and contributes a lot of value to the businesses investing their time and energy to conduct efficient lead generation activities via this channel.

7. RECEIVE VALUABLE MARKET AND CUSTOMER INFORMATION

Another great reason to love social media is that it gives you all the information you need to get started with your lead generation activities. It informs you about the market condition, what is happening, what is trending, what are your prospects views on the change and so much more.

Also, it gives you so much information about your prospects that selling to them becomes a breeze. For instance, when you want to connect on Linkedin, a great platform for b2b businesses to engage with relevant people from the industry, this platform gives out multiple details of the prospects you want to engage with to understand better about them.

Source: Bluleadz

This is a LinkedIn profile of Ms. Aliza who as the profile states works in the product marketing team at Brex. In her ‘About’ section she has stated so much about herself such as how she connects with her customers, what she does outside work and so much more. All of this information can help you to get started to communicate with her and draw her towards how your solution can help her out.

For instance, say that she is looking for a solution that can help her to communicate with her leads better and say that your brand offers live chat solutions that can help to connect with customers in less than 21 seconds, don’t you believe that connecting with her can work out things for your brand?

This is exactly what social media does for you. It lets you grasp every information you need to understand the two main aspects important for your business, the market, and your prospects. 

This is exactly why it’s time now that you start selling efficiently on social media with the help of an even more efficient social media marketing strategy that will work.

1. ENFORCING THE S.M.A.R.T GOALS

Your goal or rather your purpose of conducting an action is a priority when you look for results. This same applies when you create a social media marketing strategy plan. The main focus here should be to define your goals.

Your goals should be questions that you need to find answers for such as:

1. Why am I using this technique for my brand?
2. What will happen when I conduct this activity?
3. Will this method help me capture better leads?
4. What is the main focus which can help my brand grow better?

All of these goals need to be created so that planning a social media marketing strategy becomes easier. And to conduct this activity, the method of S.M.A.R.T Goals can be implemented.

S- Stands for specific. Here your questions are:

1. If I conduct this campaign, will it help in capturing more leads?
2. Will this technique help to increase my social media presence?

You need to be specific about your goals. If you want to conduct action A you need to understand what you will receive by doing it. This will help you frame your goals better and keep you focused on achieving it the right way.

M- Stands for measurable. There is no point in conducting an action when you are not able to measure it. Every activity you’ve conducted needs to be measured as this will help you understand how well you're performing. For instance, if you have used method A B and C when you measure the performance or analytics of it, you will get the answer for which tactics are helping your brand grow online.

This will, in turn, help you to eliminate what is not working for your brand and lets you focus your time and energy on the right tactics only.

A- Stands for attainable. In this goal trick, you need to invest your time in such a goal that can be extended and help your brand to flourish better. For instance, say if you are using sharing blogs as a technique to continue taping your leads, you can extend it further.

Such as writing on relevant topics, tagging experts, having debates in the comment section, creating case studies and so much more. The more you extend the outreach of your activity the better are your chances of accomplishing your goal.

R- Stands for relevant- If your goal is to tap leads, that is a relevant goal and your actions will be based on accomplishing just that. Imagine it in this way, when you are growing your brand on social media, there will be multiple factors you want to cover or conduct. It is important that you realize which are the relevant actions and act on it.

T- Stands for timely. Stick to deadlines because this makes it easier to understand your performance. Say, for instance, you want to tap 10 leads in 3 weeks, ensuring that after three weeks, you are measuring and analyzing the results. When you conduct such an action, you get the opportunity to eliminate what is not working for your brand and make changes accordingly.

You can use the chart below to get an idea.

Source: Hootsuite

2. GET A CLOSER LOOK AT YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Another important social media marketing strategy here is that getting to know your target audience. It is important because all your actions will be framed accordingly. For instance, say if your target audience makes their purchasing decisions when they see good content, wouldn’t that enforce you to start creating more blogs and drawing their attention towards it? 

The only way your social media marketing strategy will succeed is when you accomplish and accommodate what your prospects or rather what your audience needs are. Understand your prospects better and the easiest way to do it is by creating a buyer persona:

1. Conduct online research about your prospects, who are investing in your brand, where they are from, how they found you, what they are looking for in your brand, and much more.
2. Understand your prospect's needs. Why should they invest in your brand?, How can your brand help them?, How can your brand solve their issues? The most important factor for creating a plan is that with the help of such strategies you can cater to your ultimate goal, which is solving the problems your prospects are facing. 
3. Assisting your prospect's goals is another great way to understand them. Your prospects will be connecting with you for a reason, maybe you have the solution they are looking for, or that your brand helps them to connect emotionally, the reason could be multiple, ensure that you are always understanding their goals so that your goals can be aligned accordingly
4. Once you have understood that, the next step is to plan how you can tell your prospects that your solution is the right fit for them. Since you have their concerns or rather their pain points in your hand, it becomes easier to align your solution and explain to them how all their issues can be resolved
5. Lastly, all the research that you have collected, put it to good use. For instance, now that you have information about your prospects, start separating them into categories to distinguish them for the other. Once you’ve done that, start creating a plan accordingly on how you plan to assist them. Remember what actions you will take for your hot leads will be different when you’re assisting your warm leads.

3. STUDY YOUR COMPETITORS/COMPETITIVE MARKET

The next social media marketing strategy plan that you need to sell better via the social platform is your competitor's information. Multiple competitors sell the same products as you which mean that you need to work in such a way where your brand is being showcased as a better product than your competitors.

How can you conduct such an action? The most effective way to do this is by studying your competitors. Conduct your researches on every aspect such as:

1. How do they engage with their prospects?
2. How do they sell their products?
3. Which technique or methods they use to cater to their prospect's needs?
4. How do they exhibit their brand?

All of this information matters because this can help you fill in the gaps which your competitors are not doing. For instance, say that your competitors are not conducting much SEO activities, you can use this to your advantage by taping your leads via this method. Another great way to capture complete information from your competitors is through the method of web scraping.

Web scraping is an efficient method to scrape any information online in seconds and view it in the format you wish to see it in. This can be helpful as a little information might not be visible by you or your competitors. To ensure that you are facing no risks while conducting this action, you can conduct this process with a proxy server. (More details on the proxy server is discussed below)

5. CONDUCT SOCIAL MEDIA AUDITS

As stated in the first pointer, if you are not measuring your social media activities it is not going to help you conduct your social media marketing strategies further. Creating a plan is one part, the second part here is the measurement. You should be able to answer the questions listed below:

1. Which method worked well for your brand awareness?
2. Which method is not helping your brand to grow well?
3. Where is the slow growth taking place?
4. Has the goal set been achieved? If not, what was the reason for failure?
5. Are the results satisfactory?

Imagine it in this way, say you started using a technique and it doesn’t work out for your brand growth, wouldn’t it be better that you eliminate it sooner? Imagine if you don’t conduct frequent audits, what would happen? 

You would continue to function with that slow method and your competitors would skyrocket their business faster than you. Ensure that every activity being conducted can be measured.

Interesting Read : Expert Tips on web scraping with proxies by Social media/SEO experts

To ensure that you are always on track, you can create a doc file and update the following categories:

1. Type of social media handles used
2. The objective behind the actions
3. What activity has been conducted?
4. What was the goal that was achieved?
5. How to enhance it better?
6. Is the brand growing with a particular method, if yes, how
7. KPIs list
8. Audience demographics list

6. CONTINUOUSLY OPTIMIZE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES

This is one of the most crucial factors in your social media marketing strategy, you need to continuously optimize your social media handle. Imagine this, you have a great strategy, but your actions are not matching with the strategy list, what would happen?

Your social media activity will fall low. In order to sell better on social media, you need to optimize your handle better such as:

1. Being active
2. Posting high-quality images and videos
3. Create an activity plan for which social media you want to conduct it on
4. Frame your engagement and communication activity better
5. Enter every detail listed in your profile
6. Apply keywords so that your handle can be easily found

7. CREATE AND FOLLOW A SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT CALENDAR

This is one of the best ways to conduct your strategy. The creation of a content calendar is efficient as it will help you in planning your social media marketing strategy better. Another great thing about this process is that you have all your activities required to reach that goal, so you will be following one format for it.

When you have to measure it becomes easier as you have the analytics of how your social content is working. This is a great way to enhance your social media marketing strategy better. Creating a social media content calendar isn’t difficult, all you need to do is:

1. Identify your actions for your goals
2. List out how you are going to accomplish those goals, for instance, if you are working on content, then how will you start it, with blogs or social media posts, how will you post them, when, and more.
3. Keeping measuring your performance
4. Keep checking with the calendar so you know you're following the right path

Following these effective strategies, you will be able to conduct efficient social media marketing strategies in a better manner than your competitors.

Want a sneak peek of how it looks like?

Let’s give you a few examples.

Source: Eclincher.com

“I use social media as an idea generator, trend mapper and strategic compass for all of our online business ventures.” – Paul Barron (@paulbarron)

“People want to do business with you because you help them get what they want. They don’t do business with you to help you get what you want.” – Don Crowther (@don_crowther)

“Social media is about the people! Not about your business. Provide for the people and the people will provide you.” – Matt Goulart

“Content marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.” – Jon Buscall (@jonbuscall)

“Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t want plastered on a billboard with your face on it.” – Erin Bury (@erinbury)

“If content is king, then conversion is queen.” – John Munsell (@JohnMunsell)

Do you know apart from this there is another solution which you can apply in your strategy planning?

‘Social media scraping’. 

Social media scraping is the process of extracting quality information from social media handles of your competitors or prospects so that you can use this data to tap your prospects better. For instance, if your prospects prefer seeing emails from 2 to 3 pm, you can push your email marketing campaigns according to that period. 

The result?

Higher clicks, larger views, bigger chances of lead conversions. 

The way you manage your social media matters because if your strategy is great but the management of your social media handle is poor, the expected results will not be achieved which is why social media scraping’s existence can help to enhance your social media marketing strategies.

1. OCTOPARSE

Octoparse is a simple user interface that makes web scraping an easy task for all its users. With just 3 simple steps you can easily extract the data you wish to retrieve. Their main advantage is their cloud platform which enables users to conduct multiple extractions with no time restraints and with a faster speed. Also, if you are new to the scraping world and require help, Octoparse has a professional feature where they conduct this process for you. All you need to do is give them your requirements.

Features:

1. Simple for beginners since no coding is required
2. Simple user interface
3. Secured 24/7 cloud platform
4. Plan your schedule any time to conduct your scraping activities
5. Choose where you want to save your scraped data
6. Offers IP rotations so that your identity always remains hidden

Speciality:

1. No coding
2. Paste the website URL you want to extract data from
3. With a click of the button, retrieve all the data you require

Advantages:

1. If you know how to browse, scraping is conducted with ease
2. The tool can be used by any new beginners or individuals who are looking for a simplified web scraping tool
3. With IP rotation you can easily scrape multiple social media handles which is a huge advantage
4. Scraping any websites on the social platform is done without any restrictions
5. Less complicated and more effective platform

Disadvantages :

1. Since it stresses more on no coding format, for intermediaries and above, this tool wouldn’t add much value for them
2. The features can be complicated in the start to understand and implement
3. The support team may not be available when you need them at the moment during your social media activities

Pricing:

You can try out their 14 days free plan which is restricted again and doesn’t let you completely analyze their features. They have 3 plans, Standard, Professional and Enterprise where standard costs $79 a month which is the most popular option chosen, professional costs $209 a month and enterprise costs $4899 a year. If you wish to avail of data service from there it is $399 a month and for $189 for crawler service.

Ratings:

4.5/5

2. DEXI.IO

With dexi.io manual work becomes a thing of the past. Their efficient robots have been claimed by them that it can function similar to how a human would but at a faster pace. They can assign multiple robots to extract data from all your competitor's websites. Being wise enough to use automation in their data extraction platform in the form of robots will give rise to efficient and effective data capture.

Features:

1. Provides insights on the market trends before your competitors even find out
2. Conversion of information into potential insights happen on a quicker basis
3. Ensures efficient data gap management
4. Eliminates the need for any manual work
5. Extract large amounts of data easily from any web or cloud sources
6. Receive real-time insights on a minute to minute basis

Specialty:

1. Can create own robot
2. The data extraction process is quicker
3. Conducts data mining
4. Makes use of efficient technologies to conduct data scraping

Advantages:

1. Gives you a detailed insight on your competitor's social media handles by extracting data which help you make precise decisions
2. With the use of multiple robots facility you can easily concentrate on other works because the robots assigned from dexi are reliable
3. The robots have the potential to even crack content from the most secure passwords
4. With the robots monitoring the social media activities, your brand will always have an advantage of staying up to date with new trends

Disadvantages:

1. The robot could function as an error at times 
2. It isn’t a user-friendly experience which may take users time to understand it and then use it for their social media activities
3. At times debugging the robots becomes a hassle task

Pricing:

They have two plans, one for business and one for the enterprise. Under their business plan, they have three plans which are Standard for $119 a month, Professional for $399 a month which is the most popular chosen option and Corporate which is $699 a month. The standard plan doesn’t allow much of an option so you have no choice but to go with the remaining two options available. They haven’t mentioned the price of their enterprise package hence users need to get in touch with them. Between the corporate and the enterprise the choices are similar.

Ratings:

4.6/5

3. OUTWIT HUB

Be it SEO or social network monitoring, Outwit hub is the tool which will benefit all its users in one frame. From finding the keywords that your prospects use frequently to retrieving essential information from your prospect's social posts online, Outwith hub is a platform that ensures whatever data you require its purpose of being a social media scraping tool will ensure that it is conducted. They don’t just emphasize web scraping, they also have additional features which can catch your attention.

Features:

1. Manages and organizes every data from any online sources
2. Makes sourcing tasks simpler
3. Keep a track of SEO activities to be conducted
4. Download documents or images directly to your server or hard disk
5. Collect vital information of your competitors without any hassle

Specialty:

1. Outwit hub v.8.0- Views, extracts and organizes any form of data from any source
2. Email Sourcer v.8.0- Automates and makes your sourcing tasks simpler
3. Tailor-made scrapers- Create your extractors to serve the purpose of your work

Advantages:

1. Instead of you managing the data scraping from the multiple social media handles of your competitors, outwith hub can conduct it on your behalf saving you time to focus on other things
2. Has the option to save posts and images of what your prospects share so that you can improvise on what they like to see more
3. With just one click, scraping from numerous pages becomes a hassle-free task
4. User-friendly interfaces allow you to conduct your social media activities more efficiently

Disadvantages:

1. It doesn’t have many options for social media handling
2. For each action, you need to buy individual platforms to conduct it
3. Limited options to choose from

Pricing:

They have 3 editions, Pro, Expert and Enterprise. Pro edition cost $69 yearly, Expert is $195 yearly and Enterprise is $535 yearly. Even with the packages, the options are limited, not enough to drop your jaw.

Ratings:

4.5/5 

Interesting Read : How to Use Proxies to Manage Several Social Media Accounts?

4. SCRAPINGHUB

Scraping hub another well-established web scraping tool that has imprinted its mark in the industry. Being 12 years in business, 8 billion pages crawled/month and have scraped 300+ web pages, Scrapinghub is an expert in itself with its job. Having a great fanbase of developers and customers, Scrapinghub is an ideal tool for extracting data for any purpose. It offers two types of service one being data service where companies rely on accurate data and the other being developer tools where teams are on the lookout to execute web scraping projects.

Features for data services:

1. Need data to be used once, scrapinghub conducts this action
2. Need timely data? Scrapinghub ensures that data is being sent according to the period mentioned by you
3. Have a big enterprise and want a customized option? Scrapinghub manages it
4. Experience no stoppage in the process with scrapinghubs ongoing maintenance
5. Get your consulting game on with the different type of experts you want to engage with

Features of developer tools:

1. Indulge in no IP rotation process with a proxy that doesn’t hit the ban list
2. Keep a track of web crawlers with a cloud-based platform
3. Receive an HTTP API with a proper script and browser
4. Receive automatic extraction API in order to automate large data at scale
5. Build spiders with no hassle

Specialty:

1. Option to scrape once or multiple times as per convenience
2. Offers reliable proxies which don’t get banned
3. Provides tools which enhance your scraping process

Advantages:

1. Can receive daily social media information about your competitors without any hassle
2. Can surf through many competitors websites to extract data since scrapinghub offers a reliable proxy which won’t get banned
3. With tailor-made solutions, you can now customize how you want your process to be
4. A reliable platform where you can place your trust with web scraping

Disadvantages:

1. The user interface may not seem that easy for a beginner or an IT professional to understand
2. Few options may trigger a slow speed during the process
3. Scraping dynamic pages could be a hassle for scrapinghub

Pricing:

Scrapinghub offers 3 options, Once off which is priced at $500 per website, Data subscription which is $250 per month and Custom which is $2000 per month. 

Ratings:

4/5

5. PARSEHUB

A free web scraping tool that conducts web scraping activity without any hassle. All you have to do is open the website you want to scrape, select which data you want to extract and just download it. How easy is it? No code required to extract data and no worries related to infrastructure maintenance. Parsehub is bringing convenience in a cup. 

Features:

1. Retrieves data and stores it on their servers automatically
2. Conducts IP rotation for safe online activities
3. Manage when you want data to reach you
4. Clean up your HTML and texts way before you even download the data
5. With the API and Webhooks, extract data from any web page
6. Organizes your scraped data in the format you prefer to view it

Specialty:

1. Easy to use interface
2. Hassle-free process of data scraping
3. IP rotation ensures high online safety with your identity

Advantages:

1. Can extract any data from anybody’s social media handles without having the fear of being traced or suspicious
2. Can receive regular data from your competitors so that you always have an eye on their next action
3. Have the liberty to access data from any social account without any restrictions

Disadvantages:

1. Since the data is being saved in the server, there could be a risk of parsehub having a look on it
2. Since it offers a free web scraping tool service, many users will be utilizing this service, hence the process would be slower

Pricing:

They have a free pack which is valid only for 2 weeks. Their standard package costs $149 per month, professional costs $499 per month and for enterprise solutions, you need to contact them personally.

Ratings:

4/5

You now have everything you need to get started with the creation of a successful social media strategy. As you went through the tips, the main factors that you’ve observed are that for any strategy to be successful, the right amount of research work is required.

The online platform is huge and provides a lot of information but not all the information will be relevant to your research. Some of the relevant information will either be restricted or blocked and in this case, it could cause a hindrance in your perfect social media marketing strategy planning.

Hence to avoid such an issue it is better to invest in a solution that can give you all the information you need from any sources to help you plan and create a better and powerful social media marketing strategy.

The presence of a proxy server is what you require to successfully conduct a better strategic plan to boost your social media efforts. 

A proxy server is a secure solution that ensures any activity you conduct online is not witnessed or seen by anyone. Your IP address is the main reason why you can get caught from trying to access information from a restricted website. 

With a proxy server, your IP address will be hidden, and even if you get caught your original IP will not be touched. Proxy servers change IP addresses so that you always get a new one. For instance, say you want to access a company’s information from another country but their website only allows users from that country.

Interesting Read : 10+ Instagram Marketing Tips For Brands and Social Media Managers

All you need to do is you have to access that information with a proxy server. The location which will be viewed would look like you are accessing it from that country. 

Creating a social media marketing strategy isn’t easy, every ounce of information matters hence using a proxy server during this process can help you grasp all the right data and help you frame an effective strategy that will benefit your business growth.