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8 August 2017

The Ingredients of a Great Social Media Strategy

Choose your channel and purpose

To be able to choose which of the major social media platforms you should be investing your time and resources on, first learn the needs of your target audience. You do this by creating buyer personas which answers questions like what the percentage of time your audience uses Facebook for example and what they use it for. Having this knowledge is vital so that you can not only know where to channel your content but also the type of content that they digest on that particular platform. Keep to your goals and objectives of your social media strategy when pushing content but keep within the practices of the platform.

Delegate roles and responsibilities

It’s important to make sure that everyone in the tam has a specific role and responsibility towards overall social media strategy. Whether it be on the creative or editorial side or the promotional side maybe –  dividing these roles effectively will make sure that campaigns run both smoothly and effectively. It may well be worth creating and editorial calendar and placing it somewhere where everybody can see and refer to when necessary. Tools such as Basecamp and Trello can help you manage your team and the tasks.

The Ingredients of a Great Social Media Strategy

Competitive analysis

Keeping a close eye on competitors activities can help you integrate successful strategies into your own campaigns that you may not be currently using. Here are a few steps to help with competitor analysis:

  • Compile a list of at least 3-5 main competitors
  • Find out which social networks they are using
  • Examine their content strategy
  • Observe the number of fans/followers, posting frequency and time of day
  • What type of content are they posting?
  • What is the tone (fun, promotional)?

Business Goals

You must align your social media strategy with your business goals. Whether it is using social media to raise brand awareness, drive retention or increase advocacy – make sure to never keep your eye of these targets. It’s advisable to not create too many goals as this may reduce the overall effectiveness. Instead concentrate on a couple of main goals and set ou to achieve them.

Resources

When setting out your social media strategy and budget, you will need to examine the tactics you have chosen in order to reach your goals and objectives. No doubt you will need tools and people in order to execute the tactics. Tools such as email providers, CRM, automation or people such as graphic designers video producers and editors. Try to as best as you can to estimate how much you would need for your resources and prioritize throughout the campaign – use the tactics with the fastest ROI first as these will generate profits that can be reinvested into the campaign.