Without a social media strategy, you haven’t defined, articulated or documented your purpose or goals, nor will you be able to communicate with your target audience effectively or position your brand appropriately.
No aspect of business should be hit and miss, including your social media presence.
Reports vary, but somewhere between 72%, 87% and 98% of companies worldwide now have a presence on social media sites. If you aren’t using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest and others, you’re in the minority.
More importantly your competitors are harnessing the most commonly used social media strategies, and benefiting from them. They’re participating with quality content and interesting discussion, raising and leveraging their brand presence, increasing their reach, and connecting and engaging with a wide range of customers.
By interacting with social media, customers feel a stronger connection to a business and its services – this is what you may be missing if you aren’t social media savvy.
Participating in social media channels must be planned, managed and targeted. Instead of casting your net far and wide, any social media undertaken in your business should be a process that's weaved into your content and social media marketing. A clearly defined strategy enables all staff to know how, when and what business content to communicate, and what channels are appropriate to use.
This allows you to create more meaningful and long-lasting customer relationships and cultivate customer advocates, ultimately building your customer loyalty. You’ll gain valuable insights into your customers and what they need and want.
The four Ps of social marketing are Product, Price, Place and Promotion. When creating your social media strategy consider these objectives:
Why do you want your business to use social media?
Are you joining to make more contacts within your industry?
Do you want to build relationships using an online medium?
Would you like more engagement from your current customers?
Once you determine your purpose for using social media you can set goals and objectives for what you want to achieve. These will also help to measure your success and allow you to plan more effective ongoing strategies.
Create a bio for your business: on most social media sites there’s an option to include a short business description. This is crucial so other users can find you and understand who you are immediately. Write two or three sentences describing your business and the value you can offer. Don’t forget to add your web address.
Choose a social media site: examine the characteristics of each site to determine which one best suits your goals and business values. For example, if your goal is to make new business contacts, consider LinkedIn.
What content will you share? Sharing interesting and valuable information will get you more followers and prompt engagement. Your objectives provide a good guide for what information to share. For example, if you’re aiming to be seen as an industry expert, your posts should relate to your industry, be highly useful and informative. To find more social media strategy examples and content ideas, research your competitors to see which posts are working.
Customers feel a stronger connection to a business and its services by interacting through social media.
How will you engage your followers? Try to get your followers to participate in a conversation with you. This could be by posting valuable content, asking questions or commenting on their posts. Engagement and communication is a two-way street – if you make the effort your customers will too, thus building stronger relationships.
How will you know if your strategy is successful? By monitoring and measuring usage, you’ll discover which actions get the best results. If necessary you can quickly change tactics to get better outcomes. You could develop your own system or use a paid or free social media monitoring service.
Who’ll manage your social media accounts? Social media management is a PR and communications discipline, so if you don’t have a qualified person within your organisation, outsource it to an agency.
Social media policy Do you have a social media policy in place for your employees? A great social media strategy for your business could be compromised by individual use.
Once you have a strategy and get a handle on social media, you can start using the platforms to your advantage - resonating with your existing community and growing your customers.
Catriona founded CP Communications in 2001 and has built it into one of Australia’s leading PR and social media agencies. Recognised as an industry influencer, Catriona is an international speaker and trainer, author and popular media commentator.
As more social media platforms pop up across the digital landscape, it becomes increasingly tricky to decide which one will work best for your business. Download our free eBook to help you determine which way to go.
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