A social media strategy is basically your master plan of what you plan to do on your social media platforms to achieve the goals that you want to get out of it . Whether it is building awareness or creating revenue streams out of your social media, you are creating social media goals and figuring out the steps that it takes to get to you to accomplish those goals.
Some businesses instantly dive into social media marketing to promote businesses without actually having a specific plan. While this might work for some, it is greatly recommended that entrepreneurs take time in developing social media plans. This would ultimately help you with attaining the goals you have for your business and create a continuous stream of customer interaction and sales growth through social media.
Pay Attention to Your Behaviour
This is a missed step a lot of the time. We usually just mindlessly scroll, mindlessly watching videos and consuming content without paying attention to what makes us laugh, what makes us click share, what made me send this to my friend, what made me engage. This is something that is really important because you can use that information and start implementing those strategies into your own social media plan.
As a business owner, you have to be very aware and alert with your own behavior on social media because it can help you with your own strategies. Try to look through that lens when you’re consuming content and how you can begin to fold some of that information that you’re gathering into your own content.
Understanding Your Own Goals
Let’s take an interior design firm for example. If this firm is trying to raise awareness as their main goal, they could post content that shows behind the scenes of them working with a client, them renovating a space, before and after shots, or even some design inspiration that they draw from. If their goal, on the other hand, is to educate their audience, they could post things like home decor techniques, different design tools and other things that could really educate their audience on how they can implement these tips themselves.
If the main goal of this interior design firm is to start building trust and converting their audience, they’re gonna start to not just have before and after shots but also let their customers speak on their experience working with them as a designer through testimonials.
These can all be either going on at the same time or they can be goals that you set for each quarter. It is not necessary to just pick one goal forever for your social media. However, it is recommended that raising awareness should be the top goal for starting businesses since your initial main goal is to build your businesses visibility.
Experiment with Your Content
There are a ton of different types of content that you can create. You have Instagram that has stories, live, feed, IGTV, IG reels and the list could possibly go on. There are so many things you can do on just one platform. Then you’ve got YouTube which has long format content, YouTube Live and the community page. There really are a lot of platforms and a lot of ways that you can create content that is very successful for your audience.
You’re going to want to start experimenting with different types of content and see which one works best for you. You don’t necessarily have to be everywhere at once. You can determine which platform is most appealing to you or where you think your target market is more active at. For example, if you want to produce content that is short, engaging and fast-paced then maybe you’d want to do Instagram stories or Snapchat. Or if you want content that is long form, high value and packed with information then maybe YouTube or podcasting would be a perfect fit. There are just so many different types of content formats and platforms that you can experiment with. That being said, once you’ve found the types of content that would suit you would want to market your brand, it is also important to select a main platform where you can focus most of your efforts on. You can be on other platforms as well, but it is more feasible and easier for business to have a main platform where all of your main content will be on.
Audit Your Social Media
This is applicable for businesses that are currently on social media but are feeling a little stuck. When this happens, you’re going to want to look at what you posted and check what seems to work or not.
It is important to check the analytics and figure out what you did right and what you did wrong. From that point, you can disregard posting strategies that may not have worked and focus on creating new types of posts or content, as well as boosting the type of posts that were effective for your business. Always assess the things that you are currently doing and look at what seems to be getting more engagement and interaction from your audience.
Master your Quality, Quantity and Format
It is important to first make sure that your content is of high quality. Your content should not just be visually appealing or informative but should, more importantly, add value to your audience. Try thinking about how your content makes your audience feel – did they feel emotional when they saw this inspirational video that you posted? Did they get excited when you posted your sale announcement? Keep in mind that your content quality should allow your potential customers to interact with your brand and possibly convert their attention to sales.
This is actually where market research can come in. Aside from metrics you can use to measure which type of content works for you, you can also explore other unconventional means to find out what your target market is talking about, what they are into, what they want, etc. Communities and groups would be a good place to start gathering information and also interacting with potential customers. You can even explore Usenet newsgroups where there are very niche discussions that you may find very useful for your business. These approaches would help you create quality content that your social media audience would enjoy and engage with.
You also have to make sure that your quantity is there. This refers to how frequently you want to be present and active on your social media platforms to be able to hit the goals that you have. You need to make sure that your frequency still allows your quality to be optimal. You don’t want to overkill on the frequency to the point where your quality starts to come down. That being said, you have to figure out where quantity and quality can happily meet.
Lastly, you have to master your content format. You need to know what type of format works for you. As mentioned previously, initially you can experiment with different types of format but after experimentation you will likely find a format that works best for you in terms of what you can best execute and what best appeals to your target market.
There really isn’t any one size fits all type of strategy that all businesses can use to succeed in social media marketing. It is simply about experimentation and seeing what works and what doesn’t and ultimately finding your own place on social media.