If you’re reading this article it is probably because you would like to improve your Social Media presence or you are thinking about building one. And yes you’re right, designing the right Social Media strategy can help you with your business success. But how do you prepare a Social Media Strategy?
There are just a few steps you need to follow:
1.Know yourself
To start your Social Media Strategy, Know Your Business. You must promote your business’ strengths through the services and products you provide to your customers.
1.1.Business goals
After a deep analysis of your business, it is essential to know where to focus in order to go a step further. So choosing the right business goal it is essential.
- Build awareness
- Influence consideration
- Improve sales process
- Reposition brand
- Grow loyalty
1.2.Brand Style Guide
In order to create a brand, it is important to be consistent and recognisable in each of the actions we take and all of the content we share. For this reason, having a brand style guide is a must. Have a look at “How to Write a Style Guide for Your Brand”. http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/05/write-style-guide-brand/
1.3.Know your Audience and choose the right channels
Who is the perfect client/customer you’re trying to attract? And where are they online? Do you want to target potential, existing or loyal customers/clients?
Social Media Daily Usage – August 2017
Source: https://www.ipsos.com/en-ie/social-networking-aug-2017
Irish Social Media stats
Source: http://connector.ie/infographic/
2. Audit your Social Media presence
The second thing to do is analyse your Social Media presence:
- In which Social Media channels are you present?
- Is your profile set up with the right information?
- How many followers do you have?
- Are your followers interacting and engaging with your content?
- How frequently do you post?
- How much traffic are those Social Media channels bringing to your site?
- Does the content follow your brand guidelines?
- Do you have any strategy in place?
- …
Also, it is important to know what your competitors are doing and how you perform in comparison to them.
3.Define your Social Media Objectives
Your Social Media objectives need to be aligned with your business goals. Think always of the big picture.
Customer Journey
- Awareness
- Engagement
- Evaluation
- Acquisition
- Loyalty / Repeat Purchase
- Advocacy
Customer Experience
- Customer Service
- Customer Satisfaction
HR / Recruiting
- Employee Engagement
- Recruiting
Moreover, your Social Media objectives need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely). As an example, a Social Media objective which follows a brand awareness goal can be to “increase Facebook followers by 30% over the next 6 months”. You can check some case studies on Facebook for this same purpose.
4.Plan Social Media Activities
The next step is planning actions for each of the chosen Social Media channels.
4.1.Type of Content
Which type of content are we going to produce?
Try to produce specialised content for each of the Social Media channels and even if you publish the same content in all your Social Media channels, try to adapt it for each of them. Each Social Media channel has its own personality and audience.
Some resources to help you decide.
And also remember the power of storytelling when creating content.
4.2.Content Calendar
When are you going to publish/share this content? Create a content calendar.
4.3.Integrate your Social Media Strategy with your overall Marketing Strategy
To have the best results out of our strategy all our actions needs to be working together to achieve the same goal.
4.4.How many times and when to post
Although there are many studies on when to post on each of the Social Media channels it is best to experiment and have your own decisions.
4.5.Interact
And last but not least, interact with your audience, always be honest and try to solve the issues that your target market might have.
It is important to know how you handle negative reactions.
5.Test, measure and improve
Measure your results based on the chosen KPIs and review your strategy as needed.
Customer Journey
- Awareness: Impressions, followers, mentions, etc.
- Engagement: likes, comments, retweets, etc.
- Evaluation: click through rate, website visits, etc.
- Acquisition: download, transactions, etc.
- Loyalty / Repeat Purchase: repeated transactions, etc.
- Advocacy: positive sentiment, likes, shares, comments, etc.
Customer Experience
- Customer Service: issues resolved on Social Media channel, reduction of phone calls, etc.
- Customer Satisfaction: increase on positive sentiment (survey)
HR / Recruiting
- Employee Engagement: employee satisfaction, shares, mentions, etc.
- Recruiting: applicants engaging via social media channels
So the key points to write a Social Media Strategy are:
- Know yourself
- Audit your Social Media presence
- Define your Social Media objectives
- Plan your Social Media activities
- Test, measure and improve
Now that you know where to start, you can have a look at some of the templates that Hootsuite has put together to help you with your Social Media strategy.
Thanks for reading us one more time. At The Web Centre, we can assist you with the management of your social media channels and to be prepared for the New Year ahead.
