Yes, social media can accomplish so many great things for your business if you leverage it in the right way. From increasing brand awareness, generating more sales, and developing real relationships with your customer’s social media marketing can take your business to the next level. But you’ll need one heck of a social media marketing strategy.
For most business owners the very thought of developing a social media marketing strategy can be downright intimidating and overwhelming. That’s why several business owners turn to social technology companies like rallio.com to help them develop powerful social media solutions for their company.
If you are starting from scratch here’s what you need to know about creating a great social media plan.
First Off What Is A Social Media Strategy?
A social media marketing strategy is a comprehensive guide that includes a breakdown of all the social media marketing activities that you plan to execute, goals, and exactly how you plan on achieving all of this. This detailed plan should include how you plan on using each of your social media profiles. Every Instagram post, status update, tweet, and photo should be implemented in this plan so that you are sending a cohesive message across all platforms.
How To Devise A Social Media Marketing Plan
Set Social Media Marketing Goals that Align with Business Objectives
The first step you need to take when you begin formulating your social media plan is to begin by setting clear goals and objectives for your company. Without establishing these goals you won’t know where to start with your marketing endeavors.
Of course, your social media goals should align with the marketing adjectives you’ve outlined for your company. Here are a couple of examples of goals and adjectives.
Business Adjective
Drive leads and increase sales
Social Media Goal
Increase conversions which is measurable through website clicks and signups
You can start off by writing down at least three of your top social media goals.
Learn As Much As Possible About Your Target Audience
Create multiple personality profiles. Knowing exactly who your core audience is and what type of content they want to see on social media is very important. This is key to actually creating content your followers will comment on, like, and share with others. When it comes to knowing who your targeted customers are you should know essential information like:
- Age
- Hobbies/Interests
- Average income
When you begin to see your followers or customers as real people with real needs and wants you’ll be able to gain so much insight and in turn serve them better.
Learn From Your Competitors
Yes, I said it. There is a lot to be learned from the competition. Chances are your competition has been using social media for some time. Therefore, you can learn from some of the mistakes they have made and piggyback off of some of their successful marketing tactics.
Your social media plan should include a competitive analysis of the competition. A competitive analysis will help you identify who your competitors are and you’ll also get a good idea of what is expected in your specific industry which can help you set SEO marketing targets of your own.
Detailed Social Media Audit
If you have already begun using social media to help market your business then you need to analyze your efforts. Sit down and ask yourself:
What tactics have been working for you and which were unsuccessful?
Which social media channels does your target audience use the most?
How much user engagement are you getting on your posts?
How does your social media presence compare to other businesses in your industry?
Be brutally honest with yourself when you are answering these questions so that you can start thinking about what type of improvements need to be made.
If you use more than one social media channel than your audit should help you decide what the purpose will be for every single one of your social accounts. If you don’t see any purpose for one of your accounts it may be time to just scrap it.
Develop A Content Publishing Schedule
Content is king. How many posts should you be making a day? How often should you upload to your social media page a day? A content publishing schedule takes all of this into consideration and helps simplify the process. Having such a schedule will ensure that the content you are publishing is consistent across all platforms.
According to the experts how often you should be publishing content to your pages depends on the platform. On Instagram you should be making at least 5-20 posts a day. However, on a platform like Twitter users should be making about 21-70 posts a week.
A content publishing schedule should be very clear. It should list the dates and times at which you’ll be publishing. It should reflect the mission statement that you have outlined for each of the platforms that you are using so that all of the content you are using are aligned to the goals you have established.
Evaluate The Plan and Readjust As Needed
This comprehensive social media strategy is one of the most important documents you’ll have for your business. That’s why you shouldn’t expect to nail it on the first try and it’s also ok to seek help from other professionals.
As you start to put your plan in motion you should track your results and look at the performance metrics to determine if your plan is indeed working. Is your social media followers growing? Are your followers engaging more with the content you are publishing? How many new users are visiting your profile page each day?
Regularly refer to your social media plan to ensure that you are staying on track. Don’t be afraid to make changes if needed because social networking is continually evolving and you want to make sure you are using updated methods.
So are you ready to begin developing a social media plan for your business? Take the first step towards growing your business.