Okay, first things first. You know your business needs a social media strategy, but you haven’t a clue how or where to get started.
By definition, the word Strategy means ‘A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.’
In the first of three articles on creating a social media strategy, we’ll cover the all-important starting point of any strategy…
PLANNING!
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Set your goals
Know exactly what you want to achieve. How can you measure success if you have not planned and set realistic targets? To help, why not look at your competitors and see what they have achieved? That way, you can plan how you are going to do it better.
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Know your target market
What does your ideal customer look like? Are they male or female? Do they live local to your business or are they spread across the country or indeed the world? What interests do they have? What level of disposable income do they have. Imagine you are painting a picture of your ideal customer and their life – including as many details as possible. If you know who you are looking to attract – it will be a whole lot easier to find them!
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Research & define the best social media channels for achieving this
Fish where the fish are ! There are literally thousands of social media platforms out there. Are you best off blogging as you already have a busy website? Should your focus be LinkedIn and the business community? Would Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube be more relevant …… Should you be looking at the many niche social media community sites. In order to decide which is the best one for your business, you need to find out where your target market spend their time online. It’s pretty easy to get up to date, user profile statistics on most of the social media sites via Google, so choose the one that is right for meeting your objectives.
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Integrate your Marketing
List your current marketing activities (both online and offline) and plan how best to integrate your social media activities e.g. add your Twitter handle or LinkedIn profile to your business cards, exhibition banners and emails. A modern day marketing strategy should be fully integrated, blending both online and offline marketing activities.
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Decide on your main message
This should be firmly linked to your goals. By all means have lots of messages (you’ll need them when you start using social media) – but you should have one, clear message that is the foundation of your campaign.
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Spread the word
Share this information with other members of your company. You’ll be amazed at how many business owners do not share the social media strategy with all of the team – what a missed opportunity. If you are a sole trader, you may have lots of people connected to the business who could perform the the role of a brand advocate for you. For example, if you network, let everyone know in your networking group your social media profile details so they can follow you, share and support in your activities.
The second part of this article will be posted in the next few days – we hope you come back for more.
In the meantime, if you’d like to discuss the social media marketing needs of your business, or are in need of social media training please have a chat with our friendly team on 01992 582 824 or simply email us and we’ll be in touch.
