Plan a Winning Social Media Strategy

Social Media is important for marketing an organization of any size in today’s digital era. The question “Why should we use social media for our business” has quickly shifted to “How should we use social media for our business”. Whether your business is 24 hours old or 24 years old, creating a strong online presence is mission-critical to your success. To accomplish that, you first need a solid strategy for managing your social media marketing. Here’s how it’s done:

1. Set your Social Media Objectives & Goals

What exactly should you be aiming for? Do you want brand awareness for your small business? Customer engagement or increased downloads for a mobile app? Or, do you need better sales conversions for an online store? There are different strategies for all these goals, so decide what you want from your audience. If you want brand awareness, then focus on attracting more and more unique visitors to your website. If you aim for customer engagement, then your focus should be getting more comments & likes on your social media posts. Keep your goals clear in your mind before planning your strategy.

Typical online goals for businesses and organization to grow include:

1. Positive brand awareness
2. Customer engagement and loyalty
3. Lead generation
4. Generate additional revenue
5. Signups or newsletter subscribers
6. Build a community
7. More traffic to your website
8. Increase press mentions

2. Audit your current Social Presence

Before you start with your plan, figure out where your social presence stands currently:

1. Determine which social media channels your organization is currently using
2. Decide these are the best social media channels to meet your business goals. Not all social media platforms work for all kind of businesses
3. Tally your current follower count for each active platform
4. Compare your profile with your competitors’ profile, and see what areas you could improve

3. Find your Ideal Customer

Really be specific with this part. If the audience you’re targeting doesn’t equate to potential customers, then there’s no point of all investing time and energy into planning. Even the best business marketing strategies fail miserably if they target the wrong audience. Carefully pick out your customer from the crowd, and speak their language to make your strategies work and ultimately achieve your goals.

4. Keep an eye on your Competitors

Your competitors can tell you a lot about what strategies to pick. After all, they’re targeting the same customers you are! Much can be learned from their successes and mistakes, to better guide you while planning your own strategies. Pick some of your top competitors, stalk their social media pages, and take note on which posts get more engagement.

5. Plan Your Content Carefully to Delight Your Audience

Always focus on providing attractive and engaging content, in order to keep your audience captivated and engaged. If the social media content you post isn’t worth reading, clicking, or liking, you may even lose your current followers. No business wants that! Deliver fresh, interesting content consistently and regularly to get more visibility from new visitors and retain existing followers.

Content types that you can share include:

1. Blog posts and product tips
2. Videos
3. Product images and funny memes
4. Infographics
5. Company news and press releases
6. Customer testimonials
7. E-books

Invest in the Right Tools

When focusing on social media, investing in good social media management tools is very important. The main feature benefit is to schedule future posts, so you never miss your deadline. Some tools we’ve used at B2 Web Studios are HootSuite, Sprout Social, Buffer, and Social Oomph.

Track, Analyze & Optimize

Marketing is solely based on trial & error. Always monitor, measure and optimize your social media and digital marketing campaigns to improve your chances of success.