Creating a social media strategy is one of the most important yet challenging things you need to do to make sure your business is an online success. To help you succeed online, here are 10 easy to follow steps to create your social media marketing strategy.
1. Do Your Site Research
Facebook and Twitter seem like the obvious choice when it comes to focusing your efforts on two/three social networks but think again. What works for one company on Facebook won’t work for another. Just because there are over 1 Billion users on Facebook, it doesn’t mean that’s the most effective way of communicating with potential customers.
2. Know Your Customer
Just like step one, not only do you need to know which social networks you are going to focus on, you also need to know where your customers are hanging out. You also need to listen to what they are asking from. We are now in a semantic web era where it’s all about the customers.
3. Content Quality over Quantity
Content is always going to be key. Never, ever post anything that isn’t related to your business or isn’t quality content. Posting for the sake of posting will never work and that’s why you need to make sure your content strategy is of high quality otherwise your potential consumers will not listen to what you have to say.
4. Know WHY You Are Using Social Media
Using social media because “you know you have to” or your competitors are is not a good enough reason. When creating your social media strategy you need to define WHY you are using social media and what you want to achieve.
5. Evaluate Effectiveness
The only way you know if your social media strategy is actually successful, is to measure it. Evaluating how effective your strategy is, is the best way to know how to improve the way you communicate with potential customers.
6. Think About Customer Service
Social media is the best kind of customer service you can give. People don’t pick up the phones or even have the time to send an email anymore. People are already using social media from their smartphones so they ARE going to tweet you if they have a problem. Be aware of this when creating your strategy.
7. Know Your USP
When creating your social media “tagline” to use for every social network so people can see exactly what your business does in 140 characters or less, you need to know what your unique selling point is that makes you different from your competitors.
8. Humanise Your Strategy
People only connect to a business if they don’t act like one. It may sound ridiculous but social media is about people, not logo’s. Remember than when creating your strategy and make sure you are not just a robot and actually show personality through your social media.
9. Inter-Connect Your Social Channels
What most people forget to do when they create their social media strategy is to make sure that all networks being used inter-connect. By this I mean giving the option to your Facebook fans to follow you on Twitter and so forth. You want to make sure you have a strong community inside of each social network that is engaging.
10. Be Ready to Change
Social media is constantly evolving and because of this, your social media strategy will as well. As soon as there is a new feature within one of the social networks you are using, you need to update your strategy to include this.
How has your social media strategy worked for your business?
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