Social Media Strategy – 7 Steps
To Quickly Amp Up Your Game!
If you want to succeed in social media marketing, you MUST have a solid social media strategy. Without which, you will FAIL! However, with a great strategy, you will flourish online. That means you will expand your brand, increase sales, and ultimately improve your bottom line.
Winning on social media platforms is a lot like playing chess; you must be a strategist at every step. Let’s take a look at some simple steps to amp up your game.
Remember, You MUST Play To WIN
If your business does not have a solid, effective social media strategy and presence, you are leaving a ton of money on the table. In fact, it’s only a matter of time until your competitors grasp this concept and then completely leave you in the dust.
It doesn’t matter if your business is a purely local brick and mortar ‘institution’ with a solid reputation in your town, city, or region. Since more and more consumers are filtering their buying decisions through the Internet, even upstart lower quality service providers and merchants are set to snatch business away from their less than Net-savvy competitors.
Follow the social media success steps below, so your business doesn’t end up as another casualty as the Internet marketing landscape continually changes.
Step 1 - Take Stock of Your Current Social Media Presence
You need to perform a social media audit of your social accounts to become aware of your strengths and weaknesses and possible areas for improvement.
- Which social media platforms are your business currently on?
- Do these accounts use generic covers, or do you have branded customized covers?
- Do all your accounts have all the basic information your prospective and current customers need to find your main website?
- Of all the active social media accounts that your business has, which send the most visitors or referrals to your business’ physical location? Which ones send the most traffic to your website?
- How does the quality of your social media profiles stack up against your competition?
Step 2 - Compile a Clear Profile of Your Ideal Target Customer
If you want your social media marketing efforts to deliver a solid ROI, you need to be as clear as possible about your target customer. All your social content creation and promotion efforts must target this individual.
Conduct a survey or reach out to your current customers using the parameters below. If your business is a startup, or, if you have never implemented social media marketing, do industry research to find your target customers’ profile. Profile your target customer with the following questions.
- What is the ideal customer’s age range?
- Where do they live?
- What do they do for a living? What job title would they use?
- How much money do they make annually?
- What problems or challenges do they have that your business can help with?
- Which social media platforms do people with the parameters above use?
- Can they be found on YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn?
Step 3 - Write a Concise Mission Statement For Your Business’ Social Media Strategy Efforts
Don’t assume that you already know what you want from social media. Sit down and carefully craft a mission statement that can clearly and effectively guide your company in all your social media activities.
It would be best if you connected the reasons WHY you’re using social media with your company’s brand identity. Aim your statement to your business’ ideal customer (see step 2); this is called building a social media strategy.
Keep revising and tightening your social media statement until it can clearly guide you in figuring out which content to create and how to do outreach on multiple social platforms.
Step 4 - Be Crystal Clear On How You Will Measure Success
This is where many businesses screw up on social media marketing. Too many confuse “likes,” “retweets,” and “favorites” with the intention to buy. You have to measure success in such a way that it leads to your bottom line. Create a sequence of different success metrics that eventually lead to profits.
- Reach (how many people get a chance to see your update?)
- Sentiment (how engaging is your content?)
- Total shares (how eager are your fans in sharing your content?)
- Brand mentions (do your followers mention your brand independently?)
- Clickthrough Rate (what % of social fans click through to your site?)
- Conversion Rate (what % of your social fans clicking through turn into actual buyers?)
Step 5 - Curate And Produce Original Content To Engage Your Customers
Too many businesses fail with social media marketing because they skip the earlier steps above. You can’t go straight to content creation or curation; if you do, chances are you’ll end up barking up the wrong tree. You can’t show truly engaging content if you haven’t bothered to identify your ideal audience!
You don’t have to use all 100% original content. You can curate (share other social media accounts’ content with a link back to them) the bulk of your content while mixing in a few original content pieces that link back to your site or carry your brand’s logo.
Keep in mind that you’re curating and sharing original content because you want to build brand familiarity, drive engagement, drive traffic, and boost conversions. That’s quite a tall order; this is why you need to actively monitor your content’s success metrics so you can make adjustments which would lead to better conversion rates.
You can choose from a wide range of content formats when looking to curate or produce original content: Interviews, Images, eBooks, Videos, Company News, Blog Posts, and Infographics
Set up a content management calendar, so you know which types of content to produce or curate on a certain date and which platforms to share it on.
Step 6 - Automate Your Social Media Presence
Use a social presence automation solution like Social Media Planners so you can schedule your content ahead of time. You don’t have to manually upload content to your social media accounts; you can set your content calendar up in advance by utilizing our services.
Some tools also help you find places to share your content on the social media platforms you’re targeting. For example, you can use keywords related to your business’ niche to find Facebook groups and pages and then posts to the locations you select.
Step 7 - Stay On Top Of Your Campaign’s Performance
Don’t just set and forget your social media content. Track the results of your content posts. Make adjustments to see if these lead to better performance. Once you figure out an adjustment that leads to better conversions, scale these up and apply them to all your content.
Follow the seven steps above to end your social marketing struggles. Your business can earn more money through social media marketing. All you need is the step by step road map above!
