Social media is a leading instrument for marketing. As large companies have embraced social media by adopting its usage across all of its divisions, it was only a matter of time that small businesses realized the importance of social media in the marketing environment. It has indeed become a core to business success, escalating sales, soaring profits and above all to the marketing arena.
Thus, social media is truly a very strong and influential tool which provides the platform to promote and voice your brand. However, social media was not always taken this seriously by marketers. When, social media was first incepted, the marketing directors used to toss off the management of social media to the junior employees so that they could focus on ‘more important’ things. However, this is not the case anymore. Social media marketing is much more complex now and needs to be handled properly and shown its due regard.
Apart from social media network being much more intricate and refined today, the audience is also quite mature and wise than ever. Social media is no longer a standalone domain for marketing agents; rather it needs to be blended with the rest of your marketing approach, in order to avoid repercussions and ensure a winning strategy.
If you still take social media marketing lightly, then it’s time for you to rethink your strategy. Every business that wishes to succeed needs to have a compelling social media presence which is effective and contributes to the greater good of your business. Here are 6 simple steps to set you on the road to create and plan an impressive social media strategy.
Spell out what makes your company distinctive from the rest in the industry
Having a unique and distinctive quality to your company and the product you offer is extremely important. Sounds familiar? That’s right, you probably have heard about the Unique selling proposition (USP) in your basic Business Management 101 lecture.
Every business owner and marketing director is aware of the importance of having a distinct quality that sets them apart from their competitors. But, not everyone is able to figure it out.
Ask your management team the following questions which will help you understand the reasons that give you an edge over the competition.
Are you aware why your customers come back to you?
Is it because your product pricing is low?
Is your marketing strategy phenomenal?
Or perhaps your competitors suck?
Discovering answers to these and various other questions is important in order to identify what your company is doing better than the others in the industry. Keep in mind though, that whatever USP you have cannot be adopted and replicated by your competitors, otherwise it will entirely negate its value.
Thus, figuring out your distinct qualities and then spelling it out to your customers is central to any business strategy, and consequently the first step to an effective social media strategy. After all it is a building block on which the rest of your company’s structure and strength rests upon.
Make sure that your culture is compatible and supportive of social media
Not all businesses have the culture, company culture as well as social culture that support social media. Already, having to adapt to social media strategies is a tough and bumpy ride, but if the culture is incompatible and does not back your social media strategy then it is bound for a failure.
Irrespective of the fact that you have the required budget, ample content and the necessary motivation level – it is certainly not sufficient enough to make your social media strategy a winner. Even though you can implement your social media strategy, it is not going to continue to survive if the culture is inconsistent.
Thus, it is an important step to prepare and modify your company’s culture into something that is supportive and allows the social media strategies to thrive and flourish. Whether you post online on the company’s Facebook page, twitter account or the blogs, you are likely to face as much or even more negative criticism and abuse as you get positive comments.
You can ensure that social media fits in your company culture by doing the following:
Funnel the social media platforms that fit your company practices.
Educate and train your employees on the right usage of social media channels like Facebook, twitter and other forums like Amazon, Quora.
Set clear goals for your social media strategies like entertaining and informing potential customers.
Analyze your customers and competitors
Perhaps the central point of all business strategies, analyzing and studying your competitors is a focal point for your social media strategy as well. This will help determine the social media channel that you ought to use for substantial and far reaching results.
For your social media strategy to be effective and successful, it is important that you target the right audience. Finding out which social media site is frequented by them and what type of posts or content do they respond to can be extremely beneficial. This can be done by studying your current and potential customers by surveying and observing previous trends that led to considerable traffic to your profile page, as well as comments and shares to your posts. Their demographic and psychological characteristics should also be accounted for.
Competitors are also a major component in your social media strategy. Since your competitors are in the same industry as you and are targeting the same audience, they provide you with a really good opportunity to learn from their success and failure. By closely studying your competition and their strategies like which social medium they are using, you can assess if they are working and follow suit with some modification. On the other hand if their social media strategies fail, you can take steps to avoid them.
After you have studied your competition and prospective customers closely, the next step is to devise a strategy that makes your business or company to stand out.
Devise a content strategy
Since now that you get the idea on how and what your company’s current and prospective customers will find appealing, it is time that you come up with a content strategy and the social media channel that you are going to use to post that content.
Content strategy consists of the message you are to develop and how and when to post it. Your content should be such that it is meaningful and adds value. Many marketing directors claim to have created superb content, but what they often forget is that audience prefers a personalized content which tends to humanize your brand in the audience’s eyes.
Apart from written content like blogs, content also includes video, podcasts etc. Whichever type of content you go for, visuals, satire and humor are key to terrific content. Make sure that your content is readable, understandable as well as shareable.
Content strategy is also about how frequently you tweet or update Facebook status. Figuring out the time you ought to post and how often is extremely important. There is no predetermined number of posts for a day that you can follow as it depends on the nature of business and its targeted audience. However a company should at least post once a day on its Facebook and twitter pages and have a regular stream of blogs on its webpage. Consistency is the key!
Choose an appropriate channel
Having a content strategy is not enough. Your next step to a successful social media strategy is to choose the appropriate social media channel to air your content. Once you have decided the ‘when’ and ‘how often’, it is time to decide where you ought to publish or post your content.
There are so many social media platforms available today such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Tumblr and so on and so forth. Choosing the right platform could be quite daunting and challenging. Usually, companies prefer to build their s social media presence where their targeted customers are. After all, the primary objective of social media strategy is to increase their visibility and reach to potential customers and current customers alike.
However, companies can choose different strategies as well. For instance they can choose a channel which is expected to have a boost in its growth in the near future like Pinterest.
Prior to selecting a particular channel for your social media strategy, make sure that you are aware of its usage. Your selected c channel should be such that it further boasts your strength, not something that backfires. You don’t have to stick to one social media platform; you are allowed to use multiple platforms as long as they are in line with your set goals and deliver success.
Finally, execute your strategy
The final step for your social media strategy is to implement it and put it into practice. Before moving forward, let us recap the first 5 steps.
Firstly, compared to any other business strategy, you need to develop and identify what makes your business stands out from the rest. Then one needs to take steps so that their company culture is consistent to social media transformation, followed by studying the customers and competitors. After these three steps, marketing analytics should define their content strategy and choose the most fitting social media platform to upload that content.
But, social media strategy doesn’t end here. Since there are continued innovations in the online environment, it is only natural that businesses continue to revise and make alterations to their strategies accordingly. Furthermore, marketing analytics shall measure their success through social media monitoring with respect to how they envision success. Frequent reports and statistics of social media activities should be produced and crosschecked with your initial expectations and goals. These reports will guide you if your social media strategy is found lacking in some way.
Execution of the strategy involves the blend of all of the steps mentioned. It is relatively easy to plan the strategy and make the list on paper, but actually implementing is the real work.
During the past few years, social media has seen an increased growth in its popularity among both, users and businesses. Thus, it is only practical to develop a successful social media strategy.
A successful social media strategy can have quite an impact on your business. The real challenge faced by marketers is that social media is constantly evolving. Keeping up with the changes and constantly adapting to them can be difficult. Adapting to a social media strategy requires major changes to be made across all the divisions of the business. It needs to be well integrated with all the other strategies and not operated as standalone.
One should keep in mind that social media strategy varies for each and every business, company and organization. You cannot replicate another business’s strategy and implement it. Customers are different, products vary, and company values are distinct.
About The Author
