How to Build a Social Media Strategy
Today, the team at echōvo had an opportunity to conduct a social media training at the Colorado State Legislature. We’ve adapted the training for this blog post.
When speaking to a diverse audience with a range of skill sets, it’s sometimes challenging to decide on the best topics cover. We believe people too often focus on daily content sharing and building a big following as priority tactics. Yes — those are important — but they shouldn’t be done at the expense of a larger strategy. Our training instead focused on how to become more strategic about your use of social media.
Is social media relevant?
As modern communications evolves, social media becomes more important everyday. In fact Business Insider reports, “Nearly 20% of total time spent online in the US across both desktop and mobile devices is on social platforms.” The juggernaut Facebook accounts for as much as 14% of time spent.
We believe statistics like this make it obvious that social media is an essential part any communications strategy, but you have to take the time to be thoughtful about it to get the most value. This is especially true for policymakers, thought leaders, celebrities, and small and large businesses.
Objectives
While there’s certainly more we could cover, we focused this training on a basic strategy consisting on four key topics: 1) Get connected, 2) Build an audience, 3) Listen & engage, 4) Mobilize your team.
Get connected
Your first task is to decide which social media channels you need to use to reach your target audience. Top of mind for most people are Facebook and Twitter, but other channels shouldn’t be discounted. Before you decide here are some things to consider:
- How much time do you have? If you can only master one channel, do that instead of trying to use all of them because “that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
- Who is your audience and what are their demographics? Read more — “Pew Research Center Social Media Update 2016”
- What mediums are you working with and which channels convey that medium the best? (Images, videos, blogs, short text, etc.)
- Do you want your content to be public or private?
- Is your content newsworthy or educational?
If you’re not sure what channel to join, do a little research. For example, Lifewire provides a list of what they believe are “The Top 25 Social Networking Sites People Are Using.”
Build an audience
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Not to wax philosophical, but there isn’t much point in sharing content if no one is there to consume it. Here are some primary audiences to consider when building your target audience. (This list was made for legislators, so your list will likely be much longer.)
Listen and Engage
Once you know your audience, use the various tools at your disposal to get connected with them:
- Create lists of their social accounts.
- Know the keywords they use and topics they like to discuss.
- Join their public and private social groups.
- Sponsor their events, attend activities they participate in, join their meetups. Sometimes you need to engage with people in the real world, not just the virtual.
Sometimes you need to engage with people in the real world, not just the virtual.
- Create seminars, webcasts, videos and expert content you can share with them.
Mobilize your team
At echōvo, we spend a lot of time thinking about a concept we call “social mobilization.” We believe social media should be a team effort, which fits into a broader strategy. echōvo is a premium platform designed to make it easy for large, complex teams of people to coordinate their social media efforts.
Social mobilization combines the principles of traditional grassroots organizing with modern social networking and communications strategies. It is an effort to identify members of the community and mobilize them to take action on the core messages and goals of your campaign using social networks. Instead of knocking on doors and making phone calls, the community is proactively engaged through online channels.
Who should be on your team? Consider the following:
- Friends, family and neighbors
- Volunteers, community organizers
- Employees, colleagues, board members
- Thought leaders / influencers
- Businesses, non-profits
So how can you use a tool like echōvo to mobilize your teams? This video provides a quick overview of how it works. For a more in depth review, read “Getting Started in Echovo.”
In closing
Social media is an important part of modern communications, and if done well it can be a valuable part of your overall communications strategy. We certainly haven’t covered everything here, but if you start here, you’ll be in a much better place in the days to come.
Thank you to the Colorado Technology Association for the opportunity to provide this training.
