We’re the social media strategists for your business

Your strategy about your social media is your master plan for how you create, post and engage with your social media content. 

It covers your social content guidelines, posting cadence, social media marketing campaigns, creative plans and engagement strategy.

Now you ask why you need a social media strategy?

The top three challenges that you as a social media marketer and many others will face will include reaching their audience, measuring ROI, and reaching business goals.

Crafting a social media strategy of your own can help tackle these challenges and much more. Social media strategies also help you to set definite goals and guardrails, track their performance and tweak your benchmarks over time. Without a proper starting time, you cannot measure what’s working and how to shift your activity to hit your goals.

Not only that, but a social media strategy also helps you set expectations for broader team involvement and get everyone perfectly aligned on what they should (and should not) do on your social networks.

We will be talking more about How to create a social media strategy now. 

How to build a social media strategy

Let’s discuss how to create a social media strategy from the scratch:-

1. Define your target audience

If you have not identified and documented your buyer personas yet, then start by defining the key demographics of the audience you are trying to reach i.e. age, gender, occupation, income, hobbies, interests and much more

Do consider their challenges and what are the problems they are solving on the day to day basis. Focus on no more than four kinds of people that represent the majority of your buyers. Do not get hung up on the exceptions or outliers, you will never get started!

2. Start blogging

Fresh content is the key to a successful social strategy, so commit to creating new, quality content on a consistent basis. Compile a list of common questions from prospects and commit yourself to address these questions with a minimum of one new blog post every week.

3. Create educational content

Create and add downloadable content like ebooks, checklists, videos and infographics that address your buyers’ problems. If your content is genuinely helpful, people will be likely to share it on their social media accounts and extend your reach.

4. Focus on a few key social channels

Most startups and small businesses do not have the bandwidth to establish and sustain a quality social media presence on every single channel. It is also very overwhelming to learn the rules of engagement on a bunch of different networks, all at one time.

So begin small. Research key networks to learn where your target audience is spending time and focus your time & effort on building, nurturing and sustaining a community there before moving on to another channel.

5. Make a recipe card to guide you

Social Media isn’t exactly science (and does not work the same way for every business or industry). To see results for your business, establish a consistent posting and schedule for engagement.

Develop a reasonable recipe card- one that you can follow and stick to and get your team to follow. Set goals for your posting and engagement frequency and hold yourself accountable for following your recipe regularly.

6. Measure your result

There are hundreds of things to track on your social media channels. start by looking at how much traffic your social media accounts are driving to your desired website or blog that you own.

Monitor your posts to see what people are responding to and look for trends to particular topics of keywords that gather more interest than others. Once you get an idea of your average traffic, target audience and post-performance, set goals for key metrics and keep a scorecard to measure your progress from day one.

Be sure to choose metrics that are simple to gather- if it is too time-consuming to track, you will fall off the Wagon! Examples of the simple metrics (to start with) include net new fans and followers, amount of interactions and visits to your website from other social media. 

7. Adjust your tactics

Social media will not start working in one day. It takes a lot of time to build the following, establish your brand and start seeing results. Make sure to experiment a bit to find the right combination of channels content and messaging that works for your target audience.

Over time, you will be able to adjust your recipe card, content, and personas based on the information that you are gathering. This will help you fine-tune your strategy and generate better and more consistent results. 

These steps will help you in building a social media strategy for your brand.

Social Media strategy

Social media is a multi-purpose asset for your business. It connects you with your audience along with promoting your products, services and brand. These functions are equally important.

Building a social media strategy for marketing is a tad bit different from the process we discussed above. You may ask “how so?”. For example, your Benchmarks and your goals maybe a little more specific to metrics to track for other marketing efforts. 

When you are using social media to market and promote your business, make sure your experience on your social networks is a positive and consistent one. All content and imagery on your social media accounts should always be consistent with those on a website and other digital real estates. The best way to do so is by choosing a consistent theme for a brand that you will be continuing for a very long time (or forever).

Pay very close attention to any questions or comments your audience post and be sure to quickly address those as this engagement could make or break a conversion of purchase.

Finally, align the content you post and how you post it with Marketing campaigns you are running on various other channels like emails or ads. With this, we put an end to this section.

Social Media Content Strategy

Content is the Crux and of main importance in any social media strategy. without content, you cannot engage with your audience, promote your products or even measure your performance.

The somewhat fleeting and small nature of social media may lead you to believe that you do not have to plan its content as much as you do for let’s say for example your emails or blogs. That is not true at all. Social media content may not be as static as your landing pages on your websites or blog content but it is still of equal importance for engaging your audience and representing your brand as a whole.

For this very reason, you should also have a social media content strategy that should include:-

• Posting guidelines and specifications for each network on which you are active for example share GIFs on Twitter but avoid that on Facebook
• Target audience nuances for the network for example the younger segment of your audience is more active on Instagram than it is on LinkedIn
• Repurposing plans for long-term content from your blog, podcast, ebooks etc.
• Who on your team is permitted to post and who is responsible for engaging followers
• The companies, Publications and those individuals that you will repost and those who you will not or cannot post.

You should give your content its utmost importance. Things will be a lot smoother and more efficient for you if you keep all these points in your mind when you plan content for your social media. 

All the best for your venture, do well. We hope your brand becomes well recognized and you can reach lots of people for your good. 

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