Most people know that social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, provide excellent opportunities for promotion. But how do you know what to post? How do you get followers and likes? This article will break down five critical steps to creating a simple social media strategy.
Define Your Goals
This is something that all business owners have to decide before they can get started. Why are you using social media? What do you want to accomplish with it? You’ll need to define specific goals for your campaign so that you can measure your success. Consider the results of your efforts, both short-term and long-term, when determining these goals.
Your goals affect everything about a campaign, so it’s important to be specific. Set a few simple social media goals in advance. For example:
- 10% increase in Likes/Followers through Facebook Posts
- 30% increase in retweets from Twitter followers
- 5 new likes for this Facebook post on Instagram
Every goal should have a measurement or an indicator of success. Be sure to define what will happen if you reach or exceed that goal–it’ll motivate you to work harder!
Your goals affect everything about a campaign, so it’s important to be specific.
Research Your Potential Audience
Figure out who your intended audience is on each social media site. Understanding the people you’re targeting can help you determine which platforms are best for your business or campaign.
Defining your audience is a significant part of the process. Remember, you aren’t selling to everyone. Everyone isn’t your audience. Everyone doesn’t buy from you.
Knowing the WHO of your audience allows you to get to know the people you are targeting to decide better which social media sites they are using, the content they are consuming, and what they are missing. The more you know about your target audience, the easier it will be to create an effective social media campaign.
Determine Your Social Media Platforms
This is the easy part! Figure out which social media platforms have the highest potential to reach your ideal audience, and start there. We always tell clients, it is better to pick ONE platform and OWN it than to try and do everything and get burnt out. You can always extend your network later by branching into secondary social media sites. After researching your potential audience, it’s time to determine the best way to reach them. Create a social media strategy specific to each platform and experiment with different approaches until you find something that works for you and your audience.
Defining your audience is a significant part of the process. Remember, you aren’t selling to everyone. Everyone isn’t your audience. Everyone doesn’t buy from you.
Build a Social Media Schedule
Now that you’ve got all of this information, take some time and create a schedule for your posts. While there are varying suggestions on how frequently to post, that honestly varies by platform. We always guide our clients to create content in batches, so it isn’t a time-consuming daily task that they end up dreading. And we all know what happens when you dread something… you don’t do it.
Create Some Content
Crafting content for social media is different from creating blog posts, traditional content, or other digital content. You need to create content that is relevant, engaging, timely, and beneficial to your audience. No pressure, right? However, if you have done the legwork on really digging into your audience and HOW you serve them, creating your content is much easier. At that point, you can create content that speaks exclusively to them.
Create a social media strategy specific to each platform and experiment with different approaches until you find something that works for you and your audience.
Bonus Tip:
Use A/B testing to see what gets the best results and post about it consistently on each platform. Measure success depending on your business’ goals. Did you reach them? How did this affect sales? Etc.
By following these five simple steps, you can create an effective social media strategy that allows your brand to get the most out of every post. If you need help, our experienced team can help!