Social Media Strategy 101
Love it or hate it, social media is a crucial component to promoting yourself and/or your business. Not every platform is necessary, nor will every platform work for you.
If you’re newer to the social media space, the best advice we can give is to create an actual strategy – posting regularly is one thing, but if you don’t have a strategy in place it won’t be beneficial. If you need help creating a strategy or have questions about anything we mention in this post – shoot us a message and we can talk it through!
Step 1: Set goals that align with your business objectives
Before you can create a social media strategy, you need to know how it fits into your business.
I’ve listed some of the most popular business objectives with social media goals associated – make sure to have at least three primary social media goals in place before moving on to step 2!
Grow Your Brand – Awareness (followers, shares, etc.)
Drive Leads and Sales – Conversions (website clicks, product purchases, email signups, etc.)
Create Brand Advocates – Engagement (comments, likes, mentions, etc.)
Step 2: Lock down your target audience
Knowing who your audience and ideal customer are is the key to creating content that they will engage with. It’s also extremely critical if you’re looking to turn social media followers into customers. Having 100,000 followers may look great, but if none of them purchase your products – what is it achieving?
Once you’ve figured out your target audience and ideal customer, do significant research into how they’re using social media – DO NOT make assumptions! Things like who your followers are, where they live, which languages they speak, and how they interact with your brand on social media are all super valuable when creating your strategy.
Step 3: Research competition
It’s more than likely that your competitors are already using social media, which means you can learn from them!
Do a quick analysis – below are a few questions you can answer which will help guide your strategy.
Who are your competitors on social media?
What platforms are they utilizing?
What are they doing on those platforms now?
Has this changed overtime? What were they doing 6 months ago?
What are their threats to your business?
Step 4: Conduct a social media audit
Essentially, a social media audit is the process of reviewing what’s working, what’s failing, and what you can improve on across your social channels. Audits are one of the main pillars of our business at Bright, so send us a note if you’re interested in having us conduct one for you!
Step 5: Determine which platforms to use and define a strategy for each
For each platform that you identify, write one specific goal.
For example: Utilize Facebook’s ad platform to target a specific audience (as earlier defined) in order to increase sales.
If you’re having trouble coming up with a specific goal/mission, you may want to re-think your choice of platform.
Step 6: Create a content calendar
A social media content calendar is SO important and will keep you accountable, which will in turn, provide the maximum impact.
Your social media content calendar will outline the dates and times at which you will publish content on each platform. Having a calendar ensures your posts are spaced out appropriately and published at the optimal times (this is one of our specialties at Bright).
Make sure to also account for the time you will need to spend interacting – it’s important to set aside time to scroll through, engage with your feed, and respond to comments and dm’s.
Step 7: Test, evaluate, and adjust
As you roll out your plan and start tracking your results, you’ll likely find that some strategies aren’t going as planned, while others are performing better than expected. Make sure you re-evaluate regularly to stay relevant!
In the social world, things change FAST. New platforms emerge, while others implement new features or make critical changes that you want to stay on top of! If you’re looking to step up your social media game, send us a message, we’d love to chat!