Guideline for SMM Strategy Development in the Russian Market

1. Set a key marketing goal for social media promotion. Social media marketing experts are not really interested in entertaining, engaging, or communicating with consumers because they face a specific marketing task—for example, profit mark-up, depth of repeat, increased brand awareness.

2. Analyze the activities of competitors. In this respect, it is important to consider not only the social media publics of competitive brands but also groups by relevant interests. Look what social media host pages of competitors in the Russian market, what content is published and in what tone, how frequent posting is, etc.

3. Analyze the presence of the brand's target audience in every social network. This can be done, for instance, by using standard filters of social media ads managers (say, on VK you can filter audience by geography, sex, age, social status, interests and see how many users are in one or another segment).

4. On the basis of the analytics obtained, choose social media where the brand will be represented. Unlike in Western countries, Facebook is not the most popular social networking service in Russia. The top spot is held by YouTube with a reach of more than 78 million users per month. The second place by monthly coverage and the first one by daily one is taken by VKontakte covering more than 70 million users in Russia. The fourth place is occupied by Odnoklassniki, another Russian social network, with more than 40 million users monthly.

Source: Webindex, Russia, August 2021

5. Develop a content strategy concept. There is no need to make content for the sake of content in order to air just anything. Lots and lots of content appear online every day, so your task is to decide what you want to communicate to your target audience, how exactly you want to touch it, how you can sell it on the right consumer choice, which is you. People on social media need to be convinced that they want to be your followers and clients and to tell about you.

It makes no sense to state a strategy for a week or two, trying to analyze one or two posts and making new decisions off the reel. As a usual thing, strategies are elaborated at least for one quarter (one month at the very least). There are also situational strategies confined to a newsbreak.

6. Decide on a tone of voice—this is how a community manager will be communicating with community users. How formal is the company when interacting? Does it talk with a bit of humor? Can it afford to joke, or is the whole communication in the course of business ethics?

The general rule of social media is that one needs to behave there in a more open and friendly way and to try to contact on a person to person level. However, when this involves a big company or B2B, it imposes certain communicative restrictions, even on social media.

The tone of voice is an important part of the strategy that is established before getting down to work before a brief and TDA are given to a copywriter before community managers start answering clients' questions on social media.

7. Decide on sections (and hashtags). It helps to structure information in minds of both SMM experts and your followers, as well as to plan high-quality, exciting materials in advance.

As a rule, there are four main types of sections:

• Entertainment: humor, gamification (mini-games, polls, contests—interaction with users), situational content, storytelling, interesting facts.
• Useful: expert opinions, lifehacks, instructions, selections.
• Informational: descriptions of goods/services, stories about the company, service peculiarities, inner workings, lifestyle with the brand, company's news.
• Commercial: announcements of events, hot offers/discounts, reviews.

8. Develop a content plan. The main task of the content plan for social media promotion is to regulate content posting in order not to publish posts messily. However, there is more to come: every post must be well-weighed, clear to and necessary for the target audience, must fulfill marketing and SMM tasks, and even be related to other posts. Most commonly, the content plan is planned for one month and made in form of a calendar. For example, we create an Excel document where we put days of the week, dates, and types of content published.

9. Determine KPI. Based on the general business goal of the company's presence on social media, KPI can be a certain rate of the target audience coverage, growth of the number of followers, post/video views, attained involvement (likes, comments, reposts), sales and website traffic, number of leads and their cost etc. At that, we recommend choosing several KPIs and evaluating every social network by them.

10. Elaborate on a content promotion strategy. Apart from standard targeting tools (promotion of social media communities and posts), the promotion also includes working with opinion leaders (bloggers), running specials, advertising on pages of thematic communities.

If you are introducing your product to the Russian market or want to raise brand awareness and establish contact with potential clients, social media are the most appropriate platform. Here it is convenient for users to get information and for companies to maintain communication through the use of various formats and tools. Besides, it is quite a universal channel that suits both small and medium enterprises and major corporations.

Learn more about the social media marketing services of RMAA Agency.

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