Every social media campaign should have a strategy. These are our top tips on how to construct a social media strategy.
The evolution of social media has created a power shift from the company to the consumer, where consumers can engage with you now more than ever before. Social media used as a tool for business, provides a way to build relationships with your current customers and reach new potential customers.
If you are marketing your business online it is important to develop a strategy that ensures you will work efficiently and have an effective campaign. Here are a few steps you can take to help develop a strategy and identify exactly why and how your business should be involved in social media.
1. Define your goals
Decide on your objectives for example to increase sales, market research, brand awareness. These should be measurable and be reflective of your business goals. Think about what your long and short term business goals are and how social media can help you to achieve these.
2. Develop your approach
Which form of social media will most effectively help you achieve your goals? Think about your target market, which social media platforms they use and why, and how they use them. What are the opportunities and customer expectations with each platform? Match these with your objectives.
- Create a calendar that outlines your social marketing plan. Review and update the plan regularly and allow time to respond to feedback and adapt to changes in the online space.
- As with all marketing campaigns, create a budget. While social media marketing itself can be low cost, be prepared to devote time and resources to the cause.
- It helps to have support from throughout your organisation. Encourage your staff to contribute, ‘like’ your Facebook posts, or ‘follow’ you on Twitter.
- Develop and implement rules of engagement for posting on social media sites on behalf of your company.
3. Measure your success
There is no point using social media and creating a plan, if you don’t know how successful it is and whether it should be continued in your business. Measuring your success means you have the ability to adjust future online campaigns to be more successful, and to gauge what works, and what doesn’t, for your specified target market.
Take advantage of free online tools to help with measuring online campaigns. Google Analytics will help you measure overall website visitors, referral traffic to your site, sales, or enquiries as a direct response from social media. Survey Monkey allows you to create questionnaires and gather customer feedback if your objectives are around brand, or particular product awareness. Individual social media channels have their own insights data, providing information on post reach, engagement, and fan numbers. You can also look at statistics such as your sales figures during the time of running, or immediately after your social media campaign.
Keep in mind there are many variables when operating a social media campaign, including choice of platform, post content, objectives, target market, and budget or resource allocation. If your first campaign is unsuccessful, try again using different parameters, undertake some research, or gain some professional advice as to why social media may not be working for you and your brand.
Social media has proven to be effective for businesses in New Zealand and around the globe, take your first steps to being part of the social media revolution.
Author: Dubzz Digital Marketing
