If you are a business owner then you know that you have to have social media strategy to promote and market yourself.
You know this is a non-negotiable and necessary aspect of your marketing plan.
However big or small you may be.
And now 366 million new people started using social media in the past year?
That’s an awful lot of eyeballs!
But how do you manage your social media when you have so many other things to do, like run your business for example?
Here is my six-point strategy on how you can do that.
Share The Love…Get The Team Involved With Your Social Media Strategy
First of all, while larger businesses often have a Social Media Manager, no one in your company should ‘own’ the strategy.
If you have a team decide who will be involved, and include your sales, customer service, and marketing.
Everyone will be able to contribute and also help build a great picture of who you are as a business and what you do.
Pick Your Poison…Focus On Why You Are Using Your Social Media
Of course social media does many things – gets you exposure, establishes relationships with potential customers. Affirms your identity, can even sell stuff if you have enough followers.
But try and stay narrow on what you are using it for.
Are you using it for awareness? Or for sales?
Is it to get loyalty? Choose one and stick to it.
Listen to Your Competitors And Your Clients
So many businesses don’t actually listen to what their clients want. Or check out what their competitors are doing.
These people can give you a brilliant guide as to what is working and what isn’t.
If you delve into what is sparking the interest of your audience, you can speak directly to them. This can also help you choose the right channels to communicate with them on.
For example, if your potential clients and customers aren’t on Twitter, but love Facebook, don’t waste your time and energy Tweeting away into the great unknown. Get on the Facebook Live instead!
To be honest there isn’t really a right or a wrong answer to which channel to use.
However rule of thumb is Instagram is usually a younger demographic than Facebook, and Pinterest is predominantly women.
However there are lots of examples of brands and blogs that carve out engaged audiences on the most unlikely social networks.
It’s really about how you deliver your content to the audience you’re targeting.
Get Your Demos Sorted
So now you have listened to your audience and you know where they are, do you have information on their demos?
This is great information for making sure you are building the right audience.
What are their psychographic characteristics?
How does this change your approach to what you should try on social media?
If you look at your audience personas, their online behavior, as well as their values and challenges, it will help your conversations.
Don’t go speaking French to an Italian!
Don’t Lose Heart…It’s A Marathon Not A Sprint
So you have been tweeting, and posting and Instagramming…and nothing. Where are all those followers? How is this translating into cold hard cash in your wallet?
Social media is a marathon not a sprint. Seriously it takes time to build up a loyal audience of people who love you.
It’s a bit like dating; you don’t decide to marry someone 10 minutes after you’ve met them!
Things can be slow at the beginning and it can feel like you’re running in circles.
You have to give yourself at least three months before you start seeing results.
Have a strategy and stick to it – even if it feels like you’re going nowhere. Just stay focused and know there is a prize at the end of it!
Be Different
There’s a lot of noise in social media, so you want to ensure that your posts stand out from the crowd.
Consistency is the absolute key – and that is about the amount you post as well as what you post.
You can choose to stand out from the crowd with imagery, or delivering helpful advice.
And if you want to see what the competition is doing, there is a feature called Pages to Watch on Facebook.
Go to your Facebook page and click on the Insights tab at the top.
Then scroll down to the bottom of the Overview page and you’ll see a section where you can add pages.
This feature means you can check on the growth of your competitors’ followers, see how many times they’ve posted each week, what their engagement score is, and also find out if one of their posts has had a lot of shares.
As a platform Facebook is harder to grow your organic followers, so invest in some boosted posts, which will get more eyeballs on your content.
You can use your personal contacts and invite them to your business page to get the ball rolling.
Then once you’ve got a few likes on the page, run some advertising through to audiences with interests relevant to your niche.
Go for less than 100,000 people so you can keep it as targeted as possible and drive down the cost per click.
You can also create a call-to-action across your blog posts so it gets people to like your Facebook page.
If you liked reading this blog post, then check out this one, which is all about writing SEO friendly copy and why it is important to your website.
And if you want even more handy tips – check out the Media Content Guru Facebook Page and my Instagram – @theoriginalzoenauman.
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