Developing a Social Media Strategy
Why Should Businesses use Social Media
- To find new customers and have new customers find you.
- Because customers are more likely to trust you if they can find you on social media.
- You might find collaborative partners.
- If you use social media for your business and use it correctly it will help you stand out from the others.
- Using social media will help drive brand building and your brand will become more recognisable.
- It is important to use social media for your business so that you can protect and manage your businesses online reputation.
- You will be able to provide better customer service.
- Using social media for your business will keep customers engaged.
- Using social media will also help drive traffic to your website.
- Social media is a great place to use target marketing to target your advertisments at exactly who your target market is.
- Through social media use you can obtain insights into your customers.
The Social Media Revolution
Steps to Developing a Social Media Strategy
1. Create a Goal
This will ensure the time you invest in social media is well spent.
2. Who is your main target?
Who is your product/service targeted at? What platform is that audience most likely to use?
3. Find the social platforms that suit your business
What platform will you find your target audience on? Which platform can yo use to best get across your business or organisations message.
4. Action Plan
In order to be successful using social media you need a plan of action. Create a list of things that you need to do, start with what is most important and work your way through don’t just jump in and try everything at once.
5. Content Planning
It is so important that you plan the content you are going to share and schedule some posts to go out daily. If you don’t there is a chance that you might get lazy and your pages become dormant.
6. Types of Posts
Keep your audience interested in your posts by stating a benefit, provoking a question, offering useful information, asking for feedback and giving exclusives.
7. Have a strategy for handling feedback
How to respond to feedback can be tricky so it is important you have a strategy for this to prevent making a mistake and damaging your reputation, here are some tips; Define the feedback, if written in a professional manner respond immeadiately, if aggressive and emotional take it offline and send a direct messsage, say thankyou for their feedback and tell them you will look into it and contact them soon directly.
8. Develop a social media use policy for your business
Such as rules and regulations around staffs social media behaviour, online brand reputation and disciplinary procedures.
9. Keep an eye on insights
There are additional features on Facebook and certain websites and apps that allow you to have a look at insights, by keeping an eye on insights you can learn to understand the behaviour of your audience, such as when they are usually online, the percentage of male versus female likers and the sort of content and posts they like best.
And Aways Remember the Rules of Social Media Marketing
- Social Media is about being social, so you don’t need to take yourself too seriously.
- You must have well produced engaging content.
- Social is a two way street so when contacted, respond.
- Always add value to what you share and post, otherwise your audience will loose interest.
