Social media is a crucial part of modern marketing in which all businesses should invest. Social media marketing is important for developing brand awareness, customer service, and increasingly, direct sales. Most businesses know they need to be on social media if they want to stay competitive. But though you might set up a personal social media account with little thought and update it on an ad hoc basis—for a business, that won’t cut it.
A social strategy is a holistic plan, aligned with your business goals, that sets out your brand’s approach to social media. You should have an understanding of the content you will share and how you will engage with followers, and a plan for how you will monitor, review and optimise your social media performance. Done well, it should build an audience of active and informed followers, boost sales and ultimately improve your bottom line.
Steps to get started
HONE YOUR MESSAGING
Clarify your value proposition, and ensure you communicate it clearly and consistently in your social media communications.
ESTABLISH YOUR BUSINESS GOALS
Your social media strategy should serve your broader business goals. Who are you targeting? What action are you trying to get customers to take? These answers should be aligned with your broader business strategy. Examples of social media marketing goals are to increase brand awareness, increase website traffic, generate leads, boost conversions, improve community engagement or customer service, manage brand reputation or gain market insights with social listening.
SET KPIS TO BENCHMARK YOUR SUCCESS
Once you have established your goals, you need metrics you can use to measure your success and provide targets for teams to shoot for. KPIs might include impressions, web traffic, clicks, shares, mentions, conversions, and issues resolved. The great thing about social media marketing is the wealth of data available, and these insights give you the chance to learn a lot about your audience which can help inform organisational decisions.
OBSERVE YOUR COMPETITORS
A competitor analysis helps you understand how your digital presence currently compares to the rest of the market. By seeing how your competitors market themselves on social media, you can see what kind of content and platforms competitors opt for, you can help differentiate your own messaging.
CREATE ORIGINAL CONTENT AND SHARE IT
Consumers expect useful content from firms that brings them value. This can be written posts and blogs, longer form written content, infographics or videos. When you first create your strategy, you should indicate what content and assets you need, and build in the time and resources for content creation. You should also create a simple content calendar so that your output is consistent, with the messaging and balance of content types.
USE THE RIGHT CHANNELS AND PLATFORMS
Different platforms lend themselves to different industries and consumer groups. For instance, many business services have a strong LinkedIn following, and if you want to appeal to Gen Z, you should use TikTok. Ensure your content is right for the platform you are sharing it on. Try to ensure you are making the most of pre-existing channels for your audience, and maximise your reach by posting across multiple platforms.
ENGAGE WITH YOUR FOLLOWING
The clue is in the name, social media should be sociable. Research clearly shows that though organic reach has been dropping on major social media platforms in recent years, accounts with higher social media engagement are the least affected. People don’t use social networks for a one-way experience. They’re seeking connections — with people and with brands. Good engagement on your end means engaging in relevant discussions and providing prompt responses and customer support. The quality of this engagement has a bearing on brand awareness and customer loyalty.
SHOW OFF YOUR COMPANY CULTURE
Social media is not just for advertisements. People opt for social media because they want to see your human side. Photos, internal news, your personal touch—these posts help convey your company culture. This rounds out your brand building, helps cultivate customer loyalty, and supports reputation management activities. As consumers, particularly Gen Z, look for corporate responsibility to inform their purchasing decisions, communicating your company culture and values authentically is ever more important for growing your business.
BE CONSISTENT
Nothing is more off-putting to a consumer than a ghost business account. If your last post was half a year ago, customers that find you won’t know whether they should bother to follow you, let alone engage with you, in case they are left shouting into the void. This can leave a bad impression, particularly if your details and messaging are out of date, or there are inconsistencies with details on your website. Unanswered messages or requests for customer support send an even worse message about your customer care.
Even if your page is correct but static, social media algorithms reward consistency and infrequent posting are unlikely to get you the visibility you need to grow brand awareness. Posting randomly without a plan or testing also fails to make good use of social media analytics and optimise your efforts. The best way to ensure consistency is to create social media checklists to action on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. It’s important to regularly review your channels and check your strategy is optimal, and that your details and messaging are up-to-date.
TEST, MEASURE, OPTIMISE
Always be optimising. One of the great strengths of social media marketing is the wealth of information it gives you about your customer base and the wider market. Social media listening can provide you with insights into customer thoughts, needs and preferences, and wider discussions taking place in your industry. Monitoring your social media and analytics can tell you a lot about your customer’s experience with your brand and the success of your strategies.
Test posting at different times and sharing different content types, monitor your analytics and revise your strategy according to results. Make good use of your analytics to inform further decisions, and optimise your social media strategy.
YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CHECKLISTS
Once you’ve set up your social media accounts and set your strategy into motion, it doesn’t end there. Social media needs ongoing management. However, if you prepare for this with a social media checklist, you can streamline the work of keeping your social media accounts managed and up-to-date.
How often you choose to do certain tasks depends on your individual business and goals. Depending on the nature of your business and the speed of your content cycle, it might make more sense for you to create and curate content daily, or create your content weekly and schedule posts ahead of time. Or your company might have their own cycles and timelines for reviewing internal strategies. However, it would be a good idea to assign tasks to a daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly checklist.
You will want to incorporate the following actions in your checklist:
How we can help
In the digital age, social media is a crucial way of communicating with current and prospective customers. As digital marketing experts, we can help you understand the opportunities to be found on social media and get you on your way to engage with your online audience.
If you need any further guidance or would just like to chat with one of our social media specialists, contact us to learn more.
