If you want to stay updated and profitable, SWOT analysis is a compulsory business procedure that you should do regularly. Your goal setting will be more productive if you know exactly your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. SWOT analysis is essential for social media marketing, to see that your digital marketing campaigns are aligned with your business objectives.
So, there are four spheres that you need to check for your SMM strategy. Strengths and Weaknesses define the internal influence on the social media marketing campaign. These are the parts you can manage and improve.
The lower part of the SWOT matrix is about Opportunities and Threats, showing the external impact you can't eliminate. The smart approach is to deal with every element of the matrix separately for good results. Once you analyze all the four pieces, you will be more successful in creating a plan of action to reach your objectives.
SWOT Analysis for Social Media Marketing
SWOT analysis has a plenty of various forms, for different businesses and purposes. You can use SWOT analysis in marketing plans and even in personal development. However, let's discuss how you can use it for social media marketing.
Strengths
If your company is new with SMM activities, the list may be smaller. As you continue doing various activities and as you keep in touch with fans in social media networks more, your list will be longer. I will make examples which are common for any social media marketer. Here we have two categories: for beginners and experts.
List for the new Social Media Marketers:
- Having profiles in major social media networks;
- High quality product offers;
- Images in correct resolution;
- Attractive business profile;
- Reasonable budget for SMM;
- Approved Facebook page for business.
In addition to strengths above, Expert marketers can add:
- Amount of fans on Facebook page;
- Amount of followers on Twitter;
- Stable reputation and a great brand image in social networks;
- Many opinions, comments, shares and likes on various networks.
Weaknesses
You should describe every weak area, flaw and drawback of your SMM campaign. For the beginners the list of weaknesses is pretty long, and that's the area you should focus and work about, to remove/minimize this disadvantages and turn them to Strengths. Below there's a list of possible weaknesses in your social media activities:
- Insufficient advertising budget;
- Inactivity in social media networks;
- Lack of comments/likes/shares;
- Poor fan engagement;
- No profile views;
- Poor social media CTR;
- Non targeted fans on social media networks;
- Negative comments without taking action.
Opportunities
It is also important to know your opportunities for possible growth. SM marketers have often failed for not noticing opportunities on their action field. They focus on advertising their companies and forget to engage with prospects who are not very active. You should search for all possible ways to avoid this mistake which can depreciate your social media campaign efforts. It is vital to write a list of all opportunities, so that if and when they happen, you can use them to enhance your SM campaign. Here is a list of common opportunities you can use in your social media campaign:
- Absence of competitors, or just a few;
- Having bright, persuasive, famous people as your page fans;
- Creating groups with more focuused prospects;
- Striking news you can use to start a discussion;
- Attractive, high-res photos you can put in Pinterest and Instagram;
- Connecting your social company page with your website/blog;
- A variety of related digital products that you can offer.
Threats
There are various threats for any business, as well as for any marketing field. It is wise to define the possible threats to your campaign inside of your niche. As we mentioned before, threats are external factors, and therefore can't be influenced by the marketer. However, you can modify the strategies, to change them into opportunities. These are usual threats of your social marketing campaign:
- A lot of competitors;
- Agressive followers writing bad comments;
- Powerful influence of big companies in your niche on social media;
- Negative responses made by competitors;
- Ads with similar products/services on your page.
For proven and fruitful results you should use SWOT analysis as your orientation map for SMM. There are other ways of measuring and predicting your campaign but the SWOT analysis is the easiest and most useful. You can exactly define at which stage your company is, and it's better to use strategies for business development when you know where you are now.
Our marketing specialists in Jordan make a quick survey to understand aims, your focus and direction of future digital marketing activities. In the first phase we collect information who your customers are, how they are engaged with your brand and how your existing social media strategy works. From this side we define main actions and begin to build our social strategy based on a certain KPIs such as improved sales through social channels, measuring visitors and other campaign outcomes. We also check what your competitors are doing in social networks, and which mistakes they're making, so your brand will look more engaging, attractive and recognizable.
