The 5 Steps for Creating a Social Media Strategy
You are in for a real treat here, we’ve got a fabulous guest blog about creating your social media strategy by the wonderful Reem Aubdool, the Founder of VM Director.
For most people, when you mention digital marketing, their first thought goes directly to social media! Social media has become an essential tool in building your brand personality, connecting with your target audience, and driving sales! In fact, 90% of social media users have used social media to communicate with a business or brand. That’s a vast number of people. I certainly do it daily.
However, you can’t set out to promote your brand or service on social media without first having a strategy. A strategy is essential in giving your digital marketing an aim, helping you define your goals and have a plan on how to achieve them. This will provide you with a way to measure the return on investment for any campaigns you run and help you improve them.
Yes, it will be time-consuming but well worth it!
Here are five steps to take to create your social media strategy:
STEP 1: Vision and goals
First, you need to define your vision.
Your vision is the overall aim for your business and your life! Where would you like to take your business in the next 12months? Are you looking to grow and hire staff? How much do you need to make in order to live the lifestyle you dream of?
However, your goals are more specific than your vision; they need to be based on how you will use social media to help contribute to reaching your vision. Make sure they are SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-based). Some examples of this would be:
- To increase your website visitors by 10% in the next quarter or
- To increase your LinkedIn connections to 500 by the end of the quarter.
Make sure the goals you set align with your overall aim, so think about why do you need an increase in followers? Is it to align with a lead generation goal?
Don’t stress too much if you don’t reach your targets the first time you do this; as time goes on, you will better understand what targets are realistic for your business. The idea is to give you something
measurable to aim for!
STEP 2: Target audience
Do you know who you’re targeting?
If you have previously worked on your marketing, then you may have defined your target audience.
It’s a good idea to revisit this though if you haven’t done it in a while. You don’t want to be marketing to everyone, as it’s like dropping a penny into the ocean! So, if you haven’t already identified your ideal client profile (ICP), then do it in this step. Make sure you consider Demographics, Psychographics (the way they think and behave), and Media graphics (in other words, where you will find them online and what kind of content they interact with). Consider the following
aspects:
- Their Demographics- age, gender, marital status, occupation, etc.
- Interests – what are their interests? What do they like to do in their free time? Are they foodies? Or maybe they want to be outdoors?
- Behaviours – are they spontaneous? Or are they planners? Do they like to shop online? Where do they hang out online?
You get the idea! If you need some more guidance, then you can download My ideal client workbook here.
STEP 3: Brand identity and messaging
Does your branding align with your business?
You may already have a brand strategy where you have defined your leading brand messaging. If you haven’t done this yet, then it may be the ideal time to do that!
This involves defining your brand identity, who your business is, and what it stands for. Condense this down into a short sentence! This key messaging should form the basis of everything you communicate on social media. It would be best to consider your target audience when deciding on the messaging and the wording you will use. Think about the type of language your target audience would use.
STEP 4: Activities
Are you matching your goals with your activities?
This is about setting out what actions you will take to reach your goals. Do you need to engage with influencers? Will you be trying to drive your followers to your website using a blog? Will you be using video content? Will you share tips for your industry? These are the type of questions you need to ask yourself when making your social media strategy.
It’s best to list out all the activities and then match them to each of your goals to make sure you’re not spending your valuable time doing something that sounds like a good idea but doesn’t help you achieve what you need to for your business. Consider what activity is going to help increase engagement? What action will increase your reach? What activity will drive traffic to your website.
STEP 5: Schedule and create
When and how to post
You now need to decide what marketing activities you will do when. You will need to schedule certain activities for a specific time of year, i.e., black Friday sales or Christmas offers. Identify if your business has any of the critical periods, making sure you look at holidays and decide when to run
particular campaigns. If you have an annual calendar, this is a great thing to use to complete this step.
Now it’s time to create your content. Make sure your content is good quality and gives value to your audience. Remember, if you create content for different platforms, make you adjust the size, formats, captions, etc.
In some cases, you need to consider changing the language you use, i.e., you can be more casual in Instagram posts but may require more formal captions for LinkedIn. You can re-use content for the different platforms with a few tweaks (i.e., I often use the same image for Instagram and LinkedIn but tweak the language).
Once you have your social media strategy, remember…
It’s so important to monitor the performance of your posts and adjust your content if the engagement and reach is low. Don’t simply post content and never recheck it; make sure you check to see what has worked and what hasn’t. Each social media platform has its insight tool that you can use (it’s there for a reason!) but there are also other free tools you can use that look at your social media’s performance in greater depth.
It’s important that you consider each of these steps when doing your social media strategy as it’s crucial in ensuring the success of your social media marketing. Marketing without a plan can be aimless and waste a lot of your business’s time and money. Although a strategy makes take some time initially, in the long run, it would be well worth your time!
About the Writer
Reem Aubdool is a Marketing Strategist, founder of VM Director and a highly qualified marketing expert who has 12 years prior experience leading marketing and sales teams within several small to medium-sized businesses.
She specialises in helping service business owners create a thriving, profitable and streamlined business using a trusted method to refine their internal processes, increase their visibility and in turn their sales.
- Website: www.yourvmdirector.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vmdirector/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reem-aubdool-21506912/