April 24, 2017
Creating a social media marketing strategy and not sure where to start?
Just what are your goals and objectives?
What is it that you want your social media to do for you? As soon as you have worked that out, you’ll then need to do it is determine what your goals and objectives are going to be for your social media marketing strategy for it to be a successful one. My advice is set your goals and objectives early, as these are going to be the benchmarks in order to measure your success and allow you to move quickly if things are not going in the direction you wanted them to. Having clear and concise goals will enable you to gauge how successful you have been in proving ROI.
Where are we at right now?
Before creating your social media marketing plan, and after determining what your goals and objectives are, you’re going to need to assess how you are currently using social media, and what has been its primary purpose for your business to date. This means conducting an audit. You’ll need to determine what social media channels you are using, who are your audience, who you are connected with – and then more importantly, how are your competitors using social media, what channels they are using, what type of audience they have, and if it’s the same audience you have or aspire to.
Harder, better, faster stronger?
After going through a (what can sometimes be lengthy) audit process, it’s now time to concentrate more detail on your own social media presence. Hopefully the audit process would have revealed to you what the best networks are to help you achieve your goal and objectives you set out earlier. If you are in a position where you do have social media profiles across the primary channels, its time start building those from scratch – but my advice is to do that with your broader goals and objectives from the outset in order to cast your net far and wide. If, however, you do have existing accounts, maybe it’s time to consider updating or refining them to get the best possible results – go harder, better, faster and stronger.
What is everyone else doing right now?
I’ve no doubt that whilst conducting the audit of your competitors, you’ll have gathered lots of inspiration by what they’re doing. This is good news! Because if you’re not sure what types of content or information are going to get the best results for your goals and objectives, there is no harm whatsoever in peeking over the fence at your competitors and adopting/adapting what works well for them to work even better for you. Furthermore, you could consider a social listening tool, as it would certainly cut down the time you’d need to invest in “peeking over the fence”, and it’ll give you more of an indication of the appeal your competitors have towards their and your prospects.
Don’t we need to get this down on paper?
Having a clear and concise content plan is paramount to the success of and social media marketing strategy. It will provide a daily focus for the business, and should ultimately dovetail with your content marketing plan to create a two-prong approach. This can then be pulled into an editorial calendar, that can be managed on a weekly/monthly basis – and before you know it, social media marketing begins to become easy.
We are testing and evaluating our social media, aren’t we?
For your social media marketing strategy to work to its full potential, you’re going to need to adjust, test and tinker with it constantly. In order for you to determine that all important ROI, you’re going to need to incorporate tracking and testing capabilities into every action. You’re probably going to be wanting to track the number of link clicks you’re getting, page visits, your social media reach – to name a few.
So, there you have it. 6 questions you’re going to need to ask yourself so that you can create a social media marketing strategy that works for your business (and you of course).
