Now that you’ve decided to embrace jumping on the social media bandwagon, you’re going to need a social media marketing strategy. Essentially, it’s a big fancy marketing term for ‘plan of attack’. It will document things like how your company will approach social media, what type of content to post to your newsfeed, who’s responsible for responding to queries, right through to what to do in the case of a complaint or an emergency situation involving your business.
Writing a social media strategy doesn’t have to be a daunting task if you break it down into bite-sized chunks. Before you do anything else, decide on an objective.
Social media objectives
What are you hoping to achieve by being on social media? Is it because you want to interact more with your customers? Perhaps you want to generate more awareness about what your company does? A not-for-profit organisation may want to raise funds for their cause by driving followers to their donate page on their website.Start by writing down your goals. You will probably have more than one.
When setting these goals for your social media network, think about how you plan to measure their success. Will you be basing your results on traffic to your website, the number of shares on each post or the number of new followers on Facebook?
Do your research
Before you plunge headfirst into the depths of social media, take time to look at some of the top performers. Most of the big companies have professional teams that look after their networks. Let them lead by example because whatever they are doing, they are doing it right! Coca Cola, Virgin, McDonalds, even Hamish and Andy have a massive presence on social media. Use their networks for inspiration and adapt ideas for your company.
Plan your content
Awesome and regularly updated content that is share-worthy is crucial to be successful in a social media saturated world. The social media marketing strategy will include a list of who is responsible for researching and generating content, what type of content you will post and how often. This is an important part of the document as it means should anyone suddenly leave or get sick, anyone can pick up the social media marketing strategy and know what to post and when, while keeping within the brand guideline and predetermined brand voice.
Don’t forget to include utilising Lead ads, a relatively new way that simplifies the ways people can subscribe to newsletters, product prices and events from their mobile by submitting a pre-populated form with information they have shared with Facebook.
Track your objectives and goals
Use analytics and insights provided by the social media platforms to evaluate your successes and failures and rejig your social media marketing strategy to reflect your newly learnt understandings.
