Alright Pack, we’ve written, spoke, and shared a lot of content about Social Media Strategy as of late. We’ve covered the why, now lets dig into the how.
I wrote some similar information a few weeks ago. This post will be more focused on the social media marketing strategy itself.
There is no best one way to do this that will work for everyone and every company. There are many methods, templates, examples, and advice out there. My suggestion is to play around with your strategy a bit until you find what works best for you. Test different aspects of your strategy with multiple variations. We’re going to delve into a few steps that are a good course to follow.
Know your business, who you are, and what you represent.
You need to know clearly who you are to develop a strategy that is going to work best for you. What is your mission statement? Your businesses values? What are your business goals? When you can clearly define this then you are able to define social media goals that align with and will help you achieve your business goals. Perhaps that is more revenue; how can your use social media to drive more traffic to your ecommerce store?
I’m just going to sit this right here:
You may or may not have heard of S.M.A.R.T. goals before but you need to make sure your social media goals are S.M.A.R.T. Just to be clear:
- Specific – clearly define your goals.
- Measurable – You need one or more metrics to measure your goals by.
- Attainable – Make sure the goal is possible.
- Relevant – Your social goals are relevant to your business goals.
- Time-bound – What is your time frame to achieve said goal?
Know your target audience (target customer).
We won’t get into the various ways to define your target audience just yet (great idea for a later post!). Different demographics have larger presences on different social media channels. If your target audience is professionals, then LinkedIn will be your channel of choice. DIYers? Then you may want to focus on Pinterest. Instrgam is a great place to reach millennials: 59% of internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 use Instagram (stat from Omnicore).
one channel is not the only location for your target but you need to know where to speak from to best reach your audience.
Know your competition.
This is a great tool. As you’re developing your social media strategy, research your competition. What social channels are they using? How many followers or connections do they have on those channels? Where are they seeing the most engagement? What type of content is working for them and what seems like it tends to be a flop? Where are they paying for advertisements? Are they affiliated with any influencers? There’s so much good information we can gather and utilize here!
Once you clearly define your audience, decide what social channels you will use.
This goes in line with the section from knowing your audience. Once you know who your target audience is, do you research. What demographics are on particular social channels and what channels line up best for your social strategy? There are many ways in which researching your competition can help you and here’s one of the ways: where does your competition have it’s largest following?
Create a Content Calendar.
Now that you know what and how many channels you’ll be utilizing, you need to plan what content you’ll be sharing. This is where a content calendar comes in. Plan your week or month out on a calendar. What articles you’ll be sharing on which channels and when, when will you create you own content and when you’ll share it.
I had to work at this, starting with a week and a time and working out towards a month. I keep my content calendar rather fluid as well so when something new comes up that I’d like to share or I get an idea for a new post, I can easily fit it in; this “fluid” content is around 40% of my calendar.
There is still more!
We’ve but scratched the surface here. In the upcoming weeks, we will add to and delve deeper into each of these key areas.
What do you prioritize when considering your social media marketing strategy? What works for you? What would you like us to explore in addition to these? Let’s talk!
Keep smiling.
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