Social Media Strategy
Stepping Up Your Social Game
Social media for your business can seem like a very difficult thing to conquer. This is especially true if you're not completely sure how to go about it, or if it's a side-of-the-desk job rather than your top priority. The best way to start out and do it well is to begin with a social media strategy, and build on it continually. Crafting a social media strategy for your business doesn't have to be an impossible task. In fact – it's pretty manageable when you tackle it methodically.
There are many incredible benefits that social media can offer your business. It can acquaint users with your products, help to build your brand profile with new audiences, and a great many other things. The key is to start in the right place with a social media strategy, and develop a process that will streamline the tasks to uphold it.
Goals
Before you start writing, designing, and posting. It’s important to ask yourself why your business needs social media. When you know why you’re using it, you’re more likely to experience success. Your goals for social media should directly tie back to your goals for your business at large.
Objectives
Now that you know what success means, how will you measure it? Set tangible metrics that will indicate how your social media ventures are going. When you understand how your social media strategy is working, you can continue to refine it to increase your success.
Audiences
Audiences are incredibly important to take into consideration in your social media strategy. Who you will be speaking to directly influences your tone of voice, the content you post, and where you should post it.
Platforms
You can have the best messaging and content on the planet, but your audiences aren’t going to go out of their way to meet you where you are. If you’re interested in appealing to teens, Snapchat and Instagram are likely a fit. If you’ve got a business-to-business (B2B) offering, it’s great to be on LinkedIn. Whatever your product or service, figure out where your audiences live their social lives, and learn all you can about the platform.
Content
This is the stage where most social media efforts fall down. Once your social media strategy is built out, it’s time to start developing content that will bring it to life. Your content should all be built around a consistent tone of voice that will align with your audience’s preferences and be true to your brand. To perform well with your users, your content must be relevant, informative, and unique.
We recommend developing content in a calendar format a month or more out from the time of posting. When you do the bulk of the content development up front, it is easier to post intermittent spur-of-the-moment when something relevant and newsworthy comes up. This will also allow you to take a high-level glance at what is being posted to ensure the content offers your readers a healthy mix of topics.
“”Set tangible metrics that will indicate how your social media ventures are going. When you understand how your social media strategy is working, you can continue to refine it to increase your success.
