6 Step For A Best Social Media Strategy For Improving Your Business

Developing a social media strategy for your business is not a simple thing. But, it is vital for growth and reaching your goals. 

Figuring out how to market across the different platforms, how to manage your social media, and the importance of social media can be tricky. Thankfully, there is help out there.

Below is a step-by-step guide on how to develop and implement a comprehensive social media strategy for your business.

Conduct External Research

Every good strategy begins with external research. – Developing a social media marketing strategy is no exception.

External research regarding social media takes two main forms. Researching general social media principles is the first. Analysing competitors’ use of social media and how different platforms can translate in your industry is the second.

Before starting, there are some general principles and rules that you need to understand when it comes to social media. Particularly, regarding the regularity of posting and the type of content that works on different platforms.

You will find that imagery is the norm on Instagram, whereas Facebook is a much better platform for longer text. As such, you wouldn’t want to post a lengthy caption under an Instagram post as most users won’t respond.

Understanding principles such as these, you will be able to build a solid foundation for developing a social media strategy.

But where to start?

Some Good Places to Start

• Social Media Today

• Mashable’s Social Media Section

• Social Media Examiner

• HubSpot’s Marketing Blog

• TED Talks on Social Media

• Statista Statistics on Social Media

• Hootsuite’s Social Media Marketing Research

The second form of external research is that which involves looking at competitors and other businesses’ use of social media. This can in turn inform the type of approach your business wants to take.

Analysing what you like and don’t like from other accounts is possibly the best method to develop your approach.

If you want your social media marketing strategy to be successful, then it only makes sense that you should learn from other companies who possess the level of success you aspire to.

External research is essential for ascertaining what methods you are going to implement in your strategy. However, it is also important to work out what resources you have at your disposal. This can be advertising budgets or social media skills.

Social media marketing can be carried out at a range of different budgets. As such, the level of commitment to the use of social media needs to be evaluated. This allows you to gauge what can and can’t really be done within your means.

It is also important to find out what your company is looking to get out of social media. This can be increased brand awareness, more sales, or developing brand loyalty.

This will impact the kind of posts you are making.

On top of this, you need to see what skills people in your company have with regards to social media.

Do you have someone who is tech-savvy and can run all of your platforms?

Or would utilising a digital marketing agency who are experts in their field such as Shape The Market be a more effective approach to getting the most out of your social media platforms?

All of these questions are essential to ascertain how you are going to approach social media.

Identify Your Business Goals

As part of your research, your goals need to be worked out so you can target your social media accordingly.

This will help guide how you are going to utilise social media. Also, it gives you measurable targets that can help keep you on track. This helps you remain motivated with your social media strategy.

Translate Your Goals into Social Media

If your social media approach doesn’t align with your business goals then it will provide little return. So, you must get this stage right and align your goals and methods effectively.

Within your overall business goals, you need to align them with social media-specific targets. Then, formulate strategies on how to implement them.

For example, say you want to increase revenue. This translates into the more specific social media goal of increasing online sales. Your social media strategy you implement based on these goals would be to promote your products or services on social media. This can be done through posts, ads, and links to your website.

Campaigns involving sales or discount codes provided on these social media posts can make it easier to achieve your overall goal through social media.

Taking a targeted approach with measurable goals is the most effective way to maximise your social media strategy.

Generate a Social Media Plan

Now, you have an idea of the goals you want to achieve and the methods you can use to actualise these goals. Next, it’s time to work out a concrete plan that incorporates multiple goals into a practical social media plan.

It’s important to strike a good balance between sales posts that your customers will find engaging and also converting your following into sales and revenue.

You should set guidelines such as the number of products or posts you advertise per week. This makes it much simpler to implement your strategy.

Firstly, and obviously, you need to implement the plans you have made. Remember to keep consistent across platforms to maintain growth and get closer to your goals.

But how do you do this?

An effective way to boost your social media strategy is through the use of campaigns throughout the year. These provide more direction to your use of social media.

Plan Your Social Media Campaigns for the Year

Campaigns are usually run once a month or quarterly to chip away at one of your overall goals.

For example, say one of your business objectives for the year is to generate 100 new customers. You could then have four quarterly campaigns over the year with each goal being to draw in 25 customers.

Campaigns can be an effective tool in focusing your overall goals. By breaking them down into smaller time periods, you ensure that you maintain application throughout the year.

By artificially marking out different periods, you also increase the range of people you will reach. As such, this will increase your chance of reaching your goals.

Different methods will resonate with different factions of your audience, and so you need to ensure that you have marketing campaigns that will appeal to them all.

Think of your campaigns as mini-strategies which have their own methods and goals to reach the main goals.

Once you have your campaigns sorted out you need to work out the details of each campaign. This will help you understand what specific tools and tactics will accompany these.

Keeping with the same example of generating 25 new customers, you need to work backward from that main goal to identify the steps needed to reach it.

Here are some of the questions that will help you work out what approach you need to take:

• Who is our demographic within this campaign to reach the goal of 25 or more customers?

• What social media metrics (impressions, reach, click-through rate, conversions, etc). Do we need to track to guide our campaign?

• How many posts will we need to make to reach our goal and maximise our exposure and maintain relevance?

• What format should our content predominantly take (text, images, video, etc). How do we tailor this to our target demographic?

• What kind of messages do you need to be sharing to get the desired result from your audience?

• Which social platform(s) are best suited to deliver these things you have set out? Which one targets your demographic best, which one is most useful to the format of the post you have decided upon?

Answering these questions and thinking through specific tactics, tools, and ideas, will allow you to map out the steps needed to reach your goal for each campaign and develop an overall social media strategy.

Your social marketing spend will be primarily focused on two things – ads and labour.

Labour could come in several forms. This can be an existing employee who will spend their time working on your social media strategy or hiring someone full time. Or, you can employ the use of a digital marketing agency like Shape The Market.

Making use of an agency is often the best option as they are already experienced in what makes a great social media strategy. They can help make the most of your platforms without you having to worry about all the complexities.

Whilst many people may be cautious in spending a considerable amount on social media advertising, if done correctly, they can be a very effective tool in achieving growth. They can prove a good investment when combined with a good social media strategy.

Again, this is where the experts come in use as they can guide you on how to maximise your advertising and best spend your budget.

The metrics you choose to measure will depend on your goals and the measures discussed earlier.

If you’re looking to generate more customers then click-through rate and conversion may be of most importance, whereas if you’re trying to increase brand awareness, reach and impression will likely be the main concern.

Many platforms also offer an analytics section that will track all of the metrics for you on each post without any fuss.

A good example of this is Instagram Insights which is easily accessible from your profile page if you have a business account.

These tools can be useful not only in determining the general trend of your social media presence and the effectiveness of your campaign, but you can also analyse what type of posts are most successful for your goals.

Maybe videos get the highest rate of conversions – and so your next campaign might want to put more of a focus on video.

By taking a little bit of time to learn what is working and what isn’t, you can quickly improve your social media strategy.

The adaptation is possibly the most important part of the strategy as it will be the quickest way you improve your results if done correctly.

We hope this gave you a good insight into the steps you need to take to make a good social media strategy.

Whilst this certainly cannot be achieved in a matter of minutes, the results you will see once you take the time to master your approach will be considerably improved.

If you want to maximise the impact of your social media channels, then contact Shape The Market today to find out how we can help you reach your business goals.