Creating a social media strategy for your business. Why bother?

You’ve set up your company’s social profiles and now you’re eager to get started. Do you need a social media strategy or is it better to just go with the flow? This article explains the importance of having a strategy and how it will make sure your social media efforts are not wasted.

Let’s start with the basics: A social media strategy defines how your company will use social media in order to achieve both communication goals and wider business goals.

Social media can be used as a tool for many different things; creating conversations, showcasing your products, showing off your brand’s personality or even just listening to what people are already saying about your brand. Depending on your business, some of these aspects will be more important than others.

Simply put, a social media strategy encourages you to think about what you want to accomplish, helps you plan how to achieve it and ultimately ensures you execute it.

What do you want to say?

The answer will be very different depending on your goals. Your goals might include; increasing your brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, increasing exposure to potential customers or creating conversations with your existing ones.

You are by no means limited to one goal, but a good approach is to have an over-arching focus to your social media strategy, with monthly goals or markers along the way.

The messaging of your strategy is key, as is the timing and placement. Understanding which platforms suit your brand and industry is fundamental to your approach.

At Confab Social, we like to evaluate each social media platform based on the mindset of the consumer. For example, when browsing Twitter — consumed on the go, news source, networking, work-centric, emotionally detached yet politically charged; whereas Facebook — communication tool for friends and family, consumed out of office, emotionally receptive.

Who do you want to talk to?

Getting to know your target audience is something that you should invest some time in to if you haven’t already. The more you know, the more successfully you can market to them.

Given the nature of social media, your efforts will not be (and should not be) limited to such a select group. You should consider influencers, collaborators, partners and peers in your strategy too.

What is going on in your industry?

Your strategy should be multi-dimensional, not limited to ego-centric content. Sharing relevant industry news opens dialogue with your followers and establishes you as a thought leader. Exploring good and bad examples will help you craft your own plan using your company voice.

Make sure to highlight relevant hashtags, forums, groups and publications to utilise within your strategy.

How do you want to be seen?

Map out your mission, vision and values — use these to craft your brand identity and voice for social media.

• Are you creative? Funny? Risque?
• Do you want to be known for your service and your expertise?

Authenticity is key, you need to be true to yourself in order to demonstrate who you are. Write down a few things about your brand — a list of keywords, genre of your clients, characteristics, values — this process will give you some direction as to where your brand should sit on social and the language you should use.

How much time do you have?

Be realistic. Set your goals based on how much time you have. You may want to spend 5 hours per day but that’s probably not feasible if you do everything in-house. Therefore, you need to really sit down and look at the time that you can spend on social media.

You do need at least one hour per day. If you can’t spend long on social media then we recommend you to focus on one or two channels. If you don’t know if it should be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat we have the perfect article for you here. If you want to know more about LinkedIn, then we recommend you to read 5 tips to help you fall in love with LinkedIn.

If you are unsure about what to do, remember that we can help! Social media management takes time, which is why we are here. Just drop us a line to get started!

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