Social media has become one of the most effective branding and marketing tools of the current time. Proper utilization of social media tools can lead to a stronger relationship and connection between businesses and their clients. Many businesses have however failed to realize the importance of creating a clear, distinctive social media strategy before diving into it. Working without a plan can only lead to wastage of resources or even worse, negative results on business relations. To help you achieve an effective and beneficial social media experience, here is guide to creating a strategy that will positively impact your brand identity.
Create Measurable Objectives
Social media can achieve a wide range of different business objectives. Specify the goals that need to be realized, whether it is customer loyally, retention, awareness etc. To achieve more than one objective, it is better to initially focus on one and then move to the rest in a systematic manner.
Define how to Measure Progress
Like any other project, it is vital to keep your social media strategy in check every other time. Are they making a difference? How do you know when they are making a positive impact on the business and when they are not? There should be a promise for return on investment.
Spread Social Goals and Impacts Across the Organization
While there should be a specific team that conceives and operates the strategy, everyone in the organization should be aware of its existence. Some of the other members could occasionally come up with ideas that are unique and great selling points for social media public relations. Social media should not be owned by a single person.
Analyze the Target Audience
It is important for an organization to know their target audience they want to interact with. What are their locations, ages, gender, financial and social bracket etc. Different types of audiences might need different approaches to interaction on social media.
Create personas for each target audience, if you have more than one. It should be a detailed profile of the current clients or prospective clients. It should include a name for each persona, their likes and dislikes, what is likely to motivate them and other relevant qualities.
Assess the Competition
Your competition tries to achieve the same things as your organization. It is important to take advantage of their successes and failures to better your situation. The things they do that don’t work are a sign of what or how it should not be done, and vice versa.
Pick a few of your competitors, the biggest ones. Study their approach to social media, the networks they choose, their type of content, their tone, whether or not they talk about their product etc. From there you can go ahead and decide what yours should look like.
Plan for Specific Channels
Using Facebook is not the same as using Instagram or Tumblr, Twitter and the others. It is recommended to make a decision to use specific channels that are mostly used by the target audience and then create plans for each. It would be worthless to have an account on all social media channels in the world and not be effective in any of them. Your plan should be concrete enough to explain why the channels are preferred and what tactics are to be employed on each.
Develop a Content Plan
Engaging material keeps users around; it’s why people spend lots of time in social media. The content should be in agreement with the general image of the company and the basic rules that define what is appropriate for the channel. Use different types of content; images, audio, animations, video, infographics and any other engaging media. Content should be posted on a regular basis to ensure your continuous presence in channel is felt. It is not compulsory that all content be created by you, sometimes sharing relevant, great content generated by your clients and other users is just as effective.
Be unique and at the Same Time Socially Appealing
Products features and statistical values do not create a passion and do not touch the hearts of social media users. It is important to find a way to appeal to the audience as an organization that is more than just products, be an organization that is also about inspiring people. Some companies will package themselves as being those who inspire innovation, others as sport enthusiasts, dream chasers, believers in magic, just what relates to the peoples’ social aspects.