How to Build a Social Media Strategy

“You are the result of 3.8 billions years of evolutionary success. Act like it”.

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The type of marketing medium chosen is the key to success. Even though the traditional mediums have their benefits, the modern ones, like Websites or Social Media can be powerful business tools. For several years it has been demonstrated that Social Media is the fastest growing marketing trend with a reported 9 out of 10 businesses employing some form of marketing campaign on Social Media. Here are some benefits of using Social Media:

• Awareness

• Engagement

• Promoting

• Selling

• Tracking

To do this, many marketers choose to utilize a Social Media strategy. A Social Media strategy is a summary of what a company plans to do and hopes to achieve on Social Media. It’s quite easy to create a Social Media strategy, and the process can be broken down into the following five steps:

1. Stop Imitating

According to some strategy and business experts, imitating other people’s social media strategy model is an epic failure. Some people think that if this model worked for them, they won’t bother to reinvent the wheel.

More than that, people who follow other people’s Social Media strategy model will end up loosing their voice and their audience. Not only they compete with that company, they also keep being someone they aren’t.

Tell your story

Companies should know that they are cool enough, experienced enough to tell their story and people will listen to what they have to say. A good marketer comes from having a wealth of insight about a broad of things – not j just just marketing.

2. Goals

There are nine media goals that companies can have:

1. Increase brand awareness

2. Drive traffic to your website

3. Generate new leads

4. Grow revenue

5. Boost brand engagement

6. Build a community around your business

7. Provide social customer service

8. Increase mentions in the press

9. Listen to conversation about your brand

Generally, it’s great to focus on a handful of goals unless you have a team, where different people or groups within the team can take on different goals.

3. The Right Social Media

There are a lot of popular Social Media platforms with their benefits and costs, which need to be weighed up depending on certain factors:

AUDIENCE (research their habits to see which platform they are most responsive to or interact with more)

MESSAGE (it should fulfill the audience’s needs and wants, therefore companies should analyze which platform will best engage with their target consumers)

BUDGET (each platform has a different cost and each platform can be effective, depending on who your audience is and what message you are trying to promote.

4. The Content

The content shared on Social Media should be a mixture of informative and entertaining items, with a small percentage of promotional material added in. Also, the content should resonate with the target audience.

Companies should consider the following questions:

• What goals and challenges do they have?

• How can you help solve them?

5. Working with Influencers

The influencers have a solid reputation online and have a large number of followers. Companies should consider working with them for a new chance to reach a new audience, who hopefully will have an interest in their business and its products.

In conclusion, companies should consider a serious makeover:

• a Social Media presence

Resources like hosting and email won’t be enough for success.

• invest in some help in certain areas of your business

A Social Media consulting team is a very useful tool that will save time and will bring a faster growth of the business.