Developing a Social Media Strategy for your Business

It’s no secret, social media marketing is part of doing business in the modern market. But it’s not as simple as opening up pages and posting occasionally, or even daily. We’ve put together a few tips for developing your social media strategy.

#1 Increase Brand Awareness
Start with taking a look at your social media metrics. Each platform has analytics built in to help you evaluate your page traffic. If you’re starting from scratch, it can take some time to see relevant and useful metrics develop, but if you’ve already established a presence, you can take a look at your post reach and follower demographics to get started.
This is not the time to focus on self-promotion. Rather, focus on posts that educate, entertain, inspire and inform. These posts are far more engaging to followers, and create a familiarity between your followers (and potential customers) and your brand. This is a good time to develop campaigns that focus on specific subject matter that you can relate to your brand, without being overtly self-promotional.
For example, if your product is pet related, a campaign that focus on rescue pets may be up your alley.

#2 Drive Traffic
Develop campaigns that involve a call to action and drive traffic back to your website. Offering free samples, free trials or some other incentive, can be incredibly helpful for this avenue.
While running these campaigns, utilize your website analytics to evaluate the effectiveness of your posts. Effective analytic capabilities are crucial in this venture. It may be worthwhile to invest in a comprehensive analytics service, like Stellar Analytics, to help you track and evaluate the effectiveness of targeted campaigns.
Link back to your website whenever possible. Provide links within your social media profile bios and biographical posts, branded posts, and any relevant branded content.
Invest in social media ads, particularly on Facebook, where your content is seen by as little as 1% of your page followers. Paid advertisements on Facebook give you an opportunity to target specific audiences based on everything from location to age and individual interests. The costs are minimal compared to more traditional advertising- at least for now- and an effective ad campaign can be run for as little as $50-100 a month.

#3 Create a Sense of Community
Social media brings businesses closer and more accessible to customers and potential customers. Creative content engages users and familiarizes them with your brand as something more personal and easy to be a part of. Your branded content gives customers and potential customers an opportunity to interact with your brand.
Social media presence opens up new channels of customer service and its efficiency as consumers use private messaging, tagging and direct posting as a form of communication with brands.
Utilize influencers and brand ambassadors. These are often unpaid, or inexpensively compensated voices on social media that speak on behalf of your brand.

#4 Listen to Your Consumers
Your consumers are your best influencers. Happy consumers tag and mention your brand. Interact with them! Thank them, share reviews, and respond to any complaints immediately and professionally.
This is your chance to identify with your consumers and connect with them in a familiar way that creates a largely emotional response in the consumer to trust your brand over competitors when they feel listened to and appreciated.

Want more information on implementing an effective social media strategy? Check out our upcoming three part workshop series on Facebook for Business this September, or let our experts handle it and contact us today.