Simply posting on social media is not a defined social media strategy. Many small businesses appear on social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn on a weekly basis, and to no benefit other than a little more administrative work. With a defined social media strategy, small businesses can utilise social media to create increased brand awareness, lead generation, and sales.
What is a Social Media Strategy?
A social media strategy is the plan that sits behind everything you post. It defines what platforms are actually worth your time, who you’re trying to reach and why, what content will resonate, and how you measure success. It’s the difference between posting because “you have to” and posting so that each piece of content has a clear objective.
Any good strategy will address:
- Which platforms are worthy of your investment in terms of time and money
- Who your audience is on each platform and what they are looking for
- The combination of content types and themes that will keep them interested
- When and how you will post
- What “working” means for your business
Importance of a social media strategy
A business’s social media presence is usually one of the most noticeable parts of its marketing, but is often managed poorly. When businesses don’t have a strategy, they repeatedly make the same mistakes:
- Poorly managed presence across too many platforms
- Inconsistent posting, and then complaining about stalled growth
- Off-brand content that fails to resonate with the desired audience
- Inability to determine whether social media is actually benefitting the business
These issues can be resolved with a concentrated approach. Each post can be created with a unique objective and with the strategy in place, activity can be maintained, social media engagement can be more easily sustained, and goals can be achieved.
Our method of developing social media strategies
We create social strategies based on what is achievable for your team and your business, not strategies that are only viable on paper.
Goals and audience — To start, we define what you want your social media to achieve, be it brand awareness, leads, community, or sales support, and then we consider the audience you need to reach to achieve this.
Selecting the appropriate channels — Instead of being everywhere, we research to find out where your audience actually spends their time and where your type of content works well. For many businesses, maximising engagement on two channels takes precedence over mediocre engagement on five channels.
Creating content that exemplifies your brand — We devise brand-appropriate content pillars and themes so that you have a structure to work with and therefore you won’t have to start from scratch each week. This may mean educational content, behind-the-scenes stories, or industry insights, depending on what your audience needs.
Establishing a sustainable cadence — We design a posting cadence and workflow that your team can actually adhere to because a strategy that is perfect on paper but fails in a matter of weeks is of minimal value.
Understanding what counts — We identify the metrics that reflect actual success for your firm instead of vanity metrics and we progress the strategy towards them, adapting it based on regularly scheduled reviews.
The effect
You’re left with social media accounts that reflect purpose, tone and consistency. Instead of wondering what to post next you have a plan that makes the entire process more efficient and decreases the time spent on it.
If your social media feels like a chore, it’s time to make it something that adds value to your business. Contact us, we’d love to discuss it further.