How to Create a Social Media Strategy
Social media is a huge tool that businesses use to grow these days and it is becoming the most popular tool for advertising. Before creating a social media account for a business there are 7 components that need to be thought about:
1. Identify Business Goals
This is definitely the first thing a business should do before they create a social media account on any platform. You need to know what you want to achieve as you can’t move forward if you don’t know what you’re working towards. The main business goals that should be thought about when creating a social media account are; increasing brand awareness, reducing marketing costs and retaining customers.
2. Identify Your Target Audience
If you have already established yourself on any social media platform and your engagement is low then you really need to consider whether you are targeting the correct audience on the correct platform. For example at Oracle we were using Facebook to sell our digital services and it really wasnt working and we were getting very little engagement so we decided to create an instagram account to see if that works better and so far our engagement on Instagram has been much better. Finding your target audience on the correct platform is the most important factor to think about if your engagement is very low.
3. Set Marketing Objectives
Following on from identifying business goals, you should set clear marketing objectives that you want to achieve. This could include you want to increase business leads by 30% or you want to gain 500 more followers. Having clear but achievable goals can increase motivation.
4. Research Competition
When it comes to social media marketing, researching your competition not only keeps you up to date of their activity, it gives you an idea of what’s working so you can integrate those successful tactics into your own efforts. Start by compiling a list of at least 3-5 main competitors. Search which social networks they’re using and analyse their content strategy. Look at their number of followers, posting frequency and time of day. Also pay attention to the type of content they’re posting and its context and how they’re responding to their customers.
5. Choose the Correct Platform
Many businesses create accounts on the most popular social media platforms including Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok and Snapchat without researching which platform is best for their business. You don’t want to waste your time by creating an account and putting effort into a platform that essentially won’t bring anything in for you. If your engagement is still low but you’re on the correct platform for your business you could think about investing in the ad services the platform could offer you e.g. Facebook Ads.
6. Create a Content Strategy
Once you have considered all of the above you really need to think about the type of content you are going to post. To grab people’s attention you will need to have something colourful and unique as, if people see a blank poster they’re not even going to give it a read as it wont even grab their eye. You will also need to post frequently enough so people get your brand in their head, you need that constant branding so people remember you.
7. Create a Reporting Plan
To track all your data, creating a data report would be a great way for you to keep track of all your data. By doing this you will be able to see what aspects are working and which aren’t. You will be able to see which posts of yours are performing the best so you can change the ones that are not performing as well.
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