Investing time and money in the social media exposure of your business has become an essential ingredient in the marketing strategy of many businesses today and those who are not involved will be surpassed by their competitors who have already developed their presence online.
However, developing a social media strategy should be thoughtfully planned so as to be able to identify your successes along the way, and to prevent any resource drain on the company.
Proper implementation of a strategy for social media marketing should allow a business to keep track of its efforts and achievements along the way so that the initial effort does not fall by the wayside and the project stall after creating a blog here and a profile there.
When that happens, a visitor to such a business site will see posts that were last added a year or more earlier, and that is tantamount to an offline brick and mortar store whose windows and doors are completely covered with cobwebs.
Steps to Developing a Social Media Strategy
- Set Realistic Goals – The goals and objectives for the business presence on the social media platforms should be clearly spelled out. A clear understanding of what a business is doing on the social media sites, and why, is imperative and will boost its chances for success.
- The goals should be measurable, specific, realistic, achievable, and also timely. Look at what you are hoping the business will achieve and how it will benefit the general business plan. Many companies develop an online presence for reasons other than to just increase the sales on their websites.
- They may be trying to develop an expert persona, or to provide customer service in a very visible manner, or they may be seeking to raise a greater awareness for its brand. All and any of these important business goals may be reasons for your business presence online on the social media sites.
- Create Attractive Design – In social media, the look and feel of a site or page that has a wow factor will also draw the attention of visitors and will make it stand out from those of its competitors. It is important to provide a consistency between these social media sites and pages with the business’ website.
- This can be achieved by using the same color schemes, and using the company logo. This helps to create a brand recognition that will immediately benefit the business.
- Locate Your Target Audience – Research should be done to provide a detailed profile of the business’ target audience. Identify if they frequent the social media sites and if so which ones. You may find them on blogs, Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn or on a combination of these media.
- Once you identify where they hang out, you will need to devise a plan to include one or more of these sites and then put together techniques that will allow you to build relationships with them by joining the conversations they are already engaged in – and that relate to the products the business promotes.
- Integrate Social Media Strategy with Offline Efforts – The marketing plan of any business should work on developing a consistency between its online tactics and its offline techniques. This will help attract potential offline customers to the business sites as well.
- Consistency should also be practiced in the business postings on its sites. These should be regular and should carry a consistent tone and message.
Developing a social media strategy is an important first step for any business considering creating a presence on these sites to connect with its targeted audience. A strategy will move the business closer to its goal or any end results it desires. With a strategy thought out, the action steps to complete the plan can then be put together.
Tags: Developing a Social Media Strategy, facebook, marketing strategy, social medis