Use a Social Media Strategy to Get Results

September 27, 2018 | 3 minute read

As a business in the early days of social media, it was easy get traction and gain followers. But now times have changed: users are flooded with a barrage of social media marketing messages all day, every day. More than ever, businesses need to drill down and create a focused social media strategy to get results. Social media is a powerful way to promote your business and services.

Social media is a way to connect with your current customers and begin building a relationship with prospective ones. It’s like your storefront, but online. What followers and fans experience online with your brand will be vital to the future of your business.

5 Simple Tips for Creating a Strong Social Media Strategy

Identify your goals:
Are you looking for more engagement, an increase in your following? If you are not clear about where you are going, how will you know when you’ve arrived? Keep your goals realistic and always have ways to measure. As much as we all love likes and retweets, they can be almost impossible to equate a monetary value to. Create goals in your social media strategy that are clearly defined and bring measurable value to your business, like leads, website referrals, and conversion rates.
Know your audience:
Create a persona of who your ideal customer is and then begin to take a look at the analytics of real world data, like your current followers on social media platforms. When you're able to identify your ideal customer and see who your current followers are, you will be able to create the kind of awesome content that followers will want to engage with.
Research the market:
Completing a market analysis as part of your social media strategy will give you a clear view of what your competitors, or other businesses in a similar niche, are doing on social media platforms. This is a great opportunity to get inspiration from what is working with your audience.
Social Media Platforms:
You do not need to be on all of them. Make the decision to focus on one platform that makes sense for your business. It can be Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, but pick one to start. Once the first platform is going smoothly with lots of engagement and consistent growth of new followers, add a new platform and begin to repurpose content. When the second platform is good, add a third and so on. Keep in mind, social media platforms are all different; be sure to always repurpose content for the specific platform you are posting on. In other words, how you post on Twitter is not how you would post on Instagram.
Content is still king:
Make it useful for your followers. Write content worthy of a retweet! Revisit each month what people are engaging with. Not just the content topic, but also do your followers respond more to photographs or videos?

By including these 5 tips, you will begin to see a much clearer picture of how better to engage with your followers on the various social media platforms. Being active with your social media will grow your online following, create a trusted relationship with your followers, bring in new ones, and over time will improve your sales.