Social media is everywhere these days, and you cannot ignore it! It is essential to build your brand, grow your customer base, and positively affect your search rankings. So, when you’re working on building and developing your website, you must consider social media. Today’s blog looks at how to create an effective social media strategy.

Select your Goal(s)

First, decide what the primary goal of your social media presence will be? What is the reason(s) for putting your business out there on social media? For followers to learn about your products or services? To increase sales via promotions or educate them on a topic? You can choose many different goals, and you don’t have to pick just one, so start by selecting a few to focus on first. If you find it hard to choose, try turning it around – what content would you like to share? What goals could you figure from that?

Type of content you want to share.

Once you know your goals, what kind of content will you offer? Are you going to share your blog posts or relevant posts from elsewhere? Product information or “How to” videos? Behind the scenes footage, such as meet the team or how things are made? There are so many things you can do, and don’t forget about the content you may already have on your website that may be ideal for social posts.

Mindmapping can help during this phase – get creative and note down all the content that you can think of on paper or an online digital tool. You’re thinking of all the types of content that would fit your brand and products.

Next, choose what you will focus on – Keep in mind that engaging your customers with engaging content increases their brand affinity. It would be best to think about what your audience would like to see, read, and share with others. As a rule of thumb, engaging content does better than sales posts.

Determine your content categories and topics

You now know what you want your social media presence to achieve and the type of content you will use. Are there any themes or content categories for this? such as information about products, technical knowledge or expertise, company news, announcements, events and information, or simply engaging with customers (competition, q&a etc.)

Whilst social media is about broadcasting and getting your brand heard, the important focal point for any brand is about engaging in existing online conversations related to your brand or products because people expect to connect through social media. You are more likely to get engagement through social media than email nowadays.

 To help keep your social media focused, every post you put out must contribute to at least one of these categories.

Prioritise and allocate your time

Prioritising and allocating time will vary by the person doing social media, whether a full-time social media/content creator or a marketing executive who has it as part of their weekly tasks. You should set aside time per week to create all the content you need for that week or, if necessary, for that month and then use a platform such as Buffer, Later or Hootsuite to schedule it in. Then focus the rest of the allocated time responding to people who engaged with the content.

Choose social media platforms that suit your business.

Perhaps the most crucial advice for social media is that not every social platform fits your brand or your message. The number of companies who think they should be on TikTok because it is the latest craze when it does not fit their brand or message whatsoever. LinkedIn is an excellent network to build your presence if you’re in the recruitment game. Twitter is good for news or technology – we tend to see Twitter as the best platform for Customer Service or Support Services. Instagram or Pinterest is a good fit for recipes or homeware and fashion.  

It would be best to research the different platforms out there. There are many up-to-date reports on what platforms work best for different content. Are you focusing on text-based content or more visual images and videos? Decide what platforms will fit your goals and whether they accommodate the type of content you will create.

Choose a couple of platforms to focus on first before you branch out and add more later on, as it’s hard to keep up when you have loads on the go. Take advantage of paid advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and even Pinterest and LinkedIn, which could help boost your brand and company beyond the scope of your actual followers. Remember, paid advertising isn’t just for selling products, and you can use it to grow your audience and promote some of the exciting and fun content you publish.

Think about which social media your (desired) audience uses

You could be sharing the best content you can offer, but it doesn’t get any traction – We’ve all been there! You need to reach the people that need or want your content, and to do this, you need to know your desired or target audience to find your audience. So, first, analyse your audience. When you know who you’d like to reach, look into the platforms they use most, then combine this data with your own goals and the platforms that fit those. Then you can decide where you’ll be publishing and with what type of content.

Find your brand voice and social media style. 

Based on your audience and brand, think about how you’d like to communicate on social media. Is your tone formal or playful? Would you use emojis regularly? Could your posts contain words like “gonna” rather than “going to”? Decide what fits your brand, the content you’d like to put out there, and what works for your audience. Thinking about this thoroughly now makes writing future posts easier.

Follower Engagement

You contact a company anywhere in the world through social media. All you need is a device with an internet connection, meaning people will ask questions, make a complaint (probably a lot), share their enthusiasm, give reviews, etc. Come up with a strategy or plan for handling this. Are you going to respond to every message that people send you? Are you going to keep an eye on all mentions of your brand name, even if your profile wasn’t specifically tagged (there are tools such as SEMRush to help with this), which is an excellent way to grow your brand awareness?

A dose of realism

How much time would you be able to allocate to social media? Daily? Weekly? Realistically it depends on your job role and your schedule.

It would be best to put the effort in and not do it as an extra or an afterthought because you probably won’t reach your goals anytime soon like that!  

Think about a process that would work for you. How many posts do you want to publish on what platforms? The average is 2-3 times a day for some industries, others a handful of times a week. Are you going to sit down once a week to write all of them, or do some every day? Will you only post your content or collect and share articles with others? It’s easier to generate more content if you repost others’, but it could also cost you more time if you’re not already reading those other sources. By sharing someone else’s content, you send traffic their way and not yours; however, depending on your social media goals, that may not be a problem.

Create a social media plan.

You know where you’re going with your social. You have a strategy. It would help if you created a good action plan to fit your weekly schedule. You can always alter it along the way, but it’s great to have a plan in place to get you started. List your goals, the brand voice you decide on, the content categories for focusing on and priorities; This’ll not only help you but others who will be helping you.

Set SMART goals for social media presence

To coincide with your strategic goals, you should create SMART goals to help you get there. If you don’t reach these goals, you set new ones for the next period, but it helps to have something to aim for to motivate you.

You can do a lot to build your social media presence, but remember to monitor and keep track of analytics to watch your growth.

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