How to Design Social Media Strategy

15 Nov 2019
Articles

Whether large or small, your business could benefit from the effective use of social media marketing. However, in order to make best use of the available platforms, and the vast audiences they can reach, it’s vital that you have a solid social media strategy.

1: Review your existing social media presence

Before building your new social strategy, the first step is to examine where you are already. Answer and record the following:

On which platforms are you active?
Are your social media profiles optimized?
Which platforms are currently bringing the best value?
Have a look at the profiles of your competitors. How does yours compare?

2: Consider, who is your perfect client?

When identifying your target market, it helps to be as specific as possible. For example, targeting women in Texas, that’s a great start, but targeting women in Texas, between the ages of 40 and 50, and who are vegetarian, would allow you to be more successful. The more niche you can be in deciding on your target market, the better.

In deciding who to target, it can be helpful to ask yourself the following questions:

How old are they?
Where do they live?
What is their income level?
What is their job?
Which social media platform do they use the most?

3: Decide on a social media mission statement

This statement will describe the purpose of your social media channels. It’s very important that it is conducive with your brand identity. For example, “to use social media to inform existing and potential clients about organic farming methods.” Remember your target market when creating this statement. Once you’ve decided on the final wording, you’ll find it simpler to decide what sort of content to post.

4: Create and Curate Engaging Content

Many companies make the mistake of focusing on this step before the previous three, and it’s the reason why many do not reap the full benefits of social media. However, assuming you’ve followed these steps in order, you will now be certain about what you are marketing and who you are marketing to. It’s time to create some content. Examples of such content include:

Blog Posts
Company News
Images
Infographics
Interviews
Videos
eBooks

Be sure to concentrate on the types of content that support your mission statement. To make the most of the social media, it’s vital to create interesting, high-quality content for your channels. Put together a schedule that lists what you will post when, and to which platform. Alternatively, enlist the help of a company such as Caffeine Marketing, who can run your strategy for you.

5: Track, analyze and optimize

This step may be the most important of all. It may seem obvious, but tracking your results of each social media channel is crucial in order to know what is working well and what needs changing or further optimization. It’s unusual to put together a social media marketing strategy that works perfectly the first time. Rather, companies will probably need to revisit all of the above steps several times to get it just right for you and your business.