As a business, you probably already know the importance of social media in today’s world. Without a strategy in place, you may find it challenging to navigate the tricky world of social media, which could later be harmful to your business. Your time is precious, and posting random things on social media might not show any effective results for the time you put in. but we can help! This article discusses the best social media strategies for a business and how they may benefit your company.
What is a Social Media Strategy?
A social media strategy is a plan to summarise what you want to do to achieve your goals on social media as a business. It can guide your actions online and help you discover if you are succeeding. Keeping your social media marketing strategy specific makes it more likely to be effective. A winning social media strategy should include social media marketing to promote your brand, product or service through different social media channels.
How Can a Social Media Strategy Help My Business?
Did you start your business with an action plan? This is the most typical way to get your business off the ground. It is a simple way of expressing the actions you need to take place, and it is easy to view your achievements. A social media marketing strategy is the same thing! Just in a technological and algorithmic sense, as is the modern world. Having a plan can help:
- Track performance
- Measure brand sentiment
- Build a social network community
- Increase brand awareness
- Reach a wider audience
- Provide easier customer service
- Advertise your products or services
- Correctly reach your target audience
- Adjust for a larger marketing plan as your business grows
- Drive traffic to your website
What is the Purpose of a Social Media Strategy?
To truly understand why social media strategy is vital in 2022, let’s go through some of the finer details of why you need to get planning!
Presence
Building a presence online is extremely important in technology; word of mouth doesn’t work if you want to go outside the city you are set up in! Many more in the world fit your customer base, but you will not reach them unless you have a solid online presence!
With a social media marketing strategy in place, you can have posts planned in advance, setting them up to post at regular intervals selected by you. At Colorpeak, we understand the algorithms of different social network channels, so your post is more likely to be seen by new people and gain you a more extensive presence online.
Saving Time
Suppose you are spending your time trying to post social media campaigns to no avail. In that case, this is wasting the time you could be putting into other areas of your business. Implementing a social media marketing strategy can help you save time. You will have a direction to go in and a concise list of goals and things to do to reach them.
At Colorpeak, we can aid in your social media marketing. This means no more of your time will be spent trying to develop post ideas! We can design posts to match your branding and stick to a planned content calendar to have all future posts ready to go on necessary dates.
Save yourself a headache and contact us today!
Covering Everything
By having a social media marketing strategy in place, you will have peace of mind in the knowledge that you have all your bases covered. Your social media efforts can be more fruitful.
Luckily, we are experts in this field who have worked with a wide range of different brands! This means we are well-versed in covering all our bases. We are here to listen to your goals and support you in reaching them. We can track your progress by ascertaining the statistics from posts and work on improving them so the work put into social media will pay off in the long run.
Target Audience
If you have an online presence, how do you know it reaches your target audience? You might have plenty of views, but does that translate into more business for your company? A part of a social media marketing strategy is to watch the audience engagement and analyse it thoroughly. It is understandable if you’re too busy to keep on top of that, especially if your business expands. Colorpeak can help maintain your social channels if you want to continue growing your business and ensuring your customer base sees your products or services. Social media is an effective tool for understanding your audience because you have the opportunity to ask questions and create polls. Still, you can only obtain valid results if your actual customer base is involved. There’s no point in listening to those who won’t even buy your product or service!
By reaching your target audience, you will have a large platform to explain what value your business offers, whether through a service or some kind of product.
Superior Content
Even if you have the timing of your social media posts down, are you really providing the right balance of posts? A social media strategy can show you elements, networks, or methods that could work well for your business. Still, it is also essential to show what isn’t working.
Creating engaging content will help draw in your customer base and make them stay! Refining the quality of your material online will show people why they should follow your business and purchase your products or services. You can get creative with posts when you have a specific plan to follow. Having a strategy in place will provide you with information on what you should be doing, but you can decide how to make it shine!
We want every business to realise its potential on social media and aid in understanding why it is crucial. We listen to our clients and inform them when actions are taken in a social media marketing strategy because communication is vital! We have tools to help create more dynamic content for your social channels that can provide better quality content.
Competition
Think about it, which company is going to do better? One that is relying on word of mouth with no online presence? Or one with a social media strategy that allows them to reach worldwide for a larger viewership and provide quality content? It seems like a no-brainer when it is worded like this, right? Having a business in 2022 is cut-throat with all of the competition. Even when online, other companies are still vying for people’s attention. It can be overwhelming when trying to build a social media presence because you have discovered more competitors than you ever imagined. It is no longer just your city competitors, but worldwide businesses too. But you shouldn’t be disheartened. You have already reached a milestone by getting your business online (although if you need help with that, we can always help!), now you just need to grow your social media presence, which can be achieved with a solid social media marketing strategy, allowing you to stay ahead of your competitors.
What are the 10 Steps to a Successful Social Media Strategy?
Now you know why a social media strategy is essential. What does it take to make a successful social media strategy? Here is our basic social media strategy template for the beginning of a plan. Remember that yours should be more specific for actual effectiveness tailored to your business.
1 – Marketing Goals
The first step in this social media strategy template is to correctly define your marketing goals for your business. You need to set social media goals to align with your business objectives. Without this, you will struggle to accurately measure how your business is performing online, including your return on investment (R.O.I.). There is an acronym for what your goals should be for your social media marketing plan, and it is called S.M.A.R.T:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
This framework in your social media strategy may be basic, but it has stood the test of time and should guide your actions towards achieving the desired results.
Tracking Metrics
This is a sub-section of your marketing goals and can provide valuable insights. Metrics will track your set social media targets and see how they are going. You can then change things accordingly once analysed. There are click-throughs, conversion rates, and engagement that can provide you with a rich source of information to see how your business is doing online. There is also the ability to check both your ad spend (paid or organic content strategy) and marketing objectives are meeting your social strategy.
2 – Knowing Your Audience
Yes, we’re talking about the target audience yet again! But this really is the most important thing for a business to engage with. How will you get customers when they don’t know you exist? Knowing your audience helps you understand them as a consumer. Then you can target their demographic to know what types of things you should be posting about to gain their trust and custom. Your consumers are more likely to comment on, like, and share your content if they agree with and enjoy what they see, meaning your business brand will spread to others they interact with, probably more of your potential customer base!
You should find out more about your consumers by investigating their:
- Interests
- Age group
- Location
- Income
- Job title
- Relationship status
- Gender
- Challenges
- Future goals
- Time spent online
- Brand loyalty
- Dislikes
There are plenty more areas of investigation that you could take when thinking about your target audience; however, this might be something you are not conveying online at the minute, meaning that your customer base might not be seeing your content. Or, if they are, they do not connect with it – hence, a social strategy is needed!
Some companies make assumptions about their buyers without any meaningful investigation, which is a mistake often manifesting and easily spotted in social media analytics. If you know how to read them, they provide a wealth of knowledge and how you are faring online and if your audience is being reached.
If you need help with marketing techniques, call us today!
3 – Knowing Your Competition
You already know that being online can give you an edge if your competition isn’t. On the other hand, your competition is probably already utilising social media in this modern-day, but this could help you learn from them and better them. Firstly, conduct a competitive analysis to understand more about your competitors. This can also help you identify what they are doing well and what isn’t working for them, allowing you to avoid that tactic or provide a service that fills a void in your industry online. Overall, it can aid you in coming up with the goals for your social media marketing strategy.
Another method to analyse your competition is through what is known as ‘social media listening’. The less formal term for this that you might have heard of is cyber stalking! You can search for your competitors to find out the kind of things they are sharing and what others think of them. You could analyse keywords associated with their business and compare them to your own. This may also help lead you to new social media trends or campaigns that you can utilise on your platforms in different ways.
4 – Auditing Your Social Media
This step only applies to you if you already have social media accounts running but want to improve them. While auditing your social media platforms and what you already have on them, you should be asking specific questions:
- Are these posts engaging my followership?
- Which platforms are most popular for my business?
- How does my social media compare to my competitors?
- What are the least engaging posts on my networks?
Once you answer these questions, it should inform you of where to go next with your platforms to improve. Your social media strategy should implement potential fixes for any problems you found in your audit so you can address them.
An audit of your social media can also yield other things outside of reaching your target buyers. Many bots and trolls are floating around online, leading to fake accounts being created using your business as a front for scams. It can be very harmful to your brand when this occurs. They may lead people to have a negative opinion about your business. If they are good at scamming people, they are basically stealing your audience! In this case, report them immediately. You could also try to be verified on the different social media platforms you have to inspire trust in people and prove you are the real deal.
If, after auditing your social media, you discover that your online presence is doing poorly, there are some straightforward methods to improve it straight away, which include:
- Using consistent brandings such as logos and images
- Including keywords in your ‘about me’ sections
- Filling out all available fields on your profile
- Using recommended image sizes with high-resolution images
5 – Improving Your Profiles
Again, this only applies if you already have some social media platforms set up, but you should keep it in mind when creating them too. Your social media account should only be there if it serves a purpose for your business. What is the point of having it and investing time creating posts for the platform?
To decide whether specific platforms are worth keeping, you can also ask yourself these questions:
- Does this account help me achieve my goals in the long run?
- Does my customer base use this social media platform?
- How is my target audience using this particular platform?
An extra word of advice: writing out individual goals for each social media platform in your strategy will help you focus on the specifics when you begin to improve your online networks.
6 – Finding Inspiration
We briefly mentioned this in step 3, but finding inspiration for your business isn’t bad. Keeping your brand unique and not copying others is essential, but looking at their business is great for drawing inspiration! Social media is about being social. Therefore, many of your posts will see your posts, including competitors. How do trends happen without others taking inspiration from somebody who started it? You can hop on trends and draw inspiration from other businesses, but you need to make it fit your business. You are trying to show how you are different from your competitors and why you are the better choice for your customer base. You can do this by adding that necessary twist on inspiration and trends.
If you are an avid social media user, you can even take inspiration from creators you enjoy. Look at:
- Popular brands on social media (and not just in your industry)
- What compels people to engage with others’ content online?
- Who do you admire on social media? Why?
Another simple way of gaining inspiration for your social media posts is by simply asking the followers you already have (if you have already set up accounts). Consumers can have valuable insight that is often linked to their demographic. What are they talking about online? Who else do they follow? You can ask them questions about what they like on your social media and what you should change. Simply ask them what they want to see! If you follow through on their suggestions, they are more likely to engage and enjoy more of your content. Having more engagement can bring more of your consumers to your platform, and it should grow organically.
7 – Creating a Content Calendar
Once you have your data on your target audience and competitors, you should be ready to significantly improve your platforms!
The best way to keep track of the posts you create and post is to have an organised social media content calendar. Your social media strategy should include an action plan to implement this and stick to it religiously to keep in the algorithms’ good books. The calendar should also track the amount of time you spend interacting with your social media followers (and customers) online and whether it translates to more business for you – it’s a brilliant social media management tool. You might get sick of hearing us say how critical engagement is… but it is true nevertheless!
Setting Your Posting Schedule
An important sub-step in creating a social media content calendar is setting the posting schedule. Whether you want weekly or daily posts, having this set will let you know how many posts need to be created and when you are running out of new content on each social media platform. You can schedule all the dates and times for your posts to be released online. At Colorpeak, we analyse the best times to post content to different platforms as it can be challenging to keep track of. The algorithm is constantly changing and developing. It has been doing it even more in 2022 because the platforms are vying for social media users to come to their networks.
By having a content calendar, you can also monitor and plan your social media activities; these can include (but aren’t limited to):
- Blog posts
- Videos
- Link sharing
- Image posts
- User-generated content
- Re-shares
Having a content management system such as a calendar allows you to also monitor how spaced out your posts are and when it is appropriate to publish them. Those businesses that do not adhere to a content calendar may not realise how often or how little they are actually posting. According to the different platforms ‘ algorithms, they may not be posting at the best times, which will not aid their business as much.
An extra word of advice: your content mix should reflect your mission statement on your social media strategy, so they support your overall business goals.
8 – Creating the Social Media Content
Your social media content strategy should include information about compelling content you can post. In step five, we discussed how your profiles need a purpose. One way to destroy the meaning of any social media platform is to post mediocre content. You need engaging content that relates to your business, engages with your audience, and follows your social media marketing strategy goals set out from the beginning.
Also, keep in mind that each platform might have a different purpose (also discussed in step five). Therefore, you need to tailor your social media content strategy to your specific goals for each network. Suppose Instagram is for showing off your service or product. In that case, you will not post complex industry posts that a general audience wouldn’t understand. You could save those kinds of posts for a social media channel such as LinkedIn, where you can connect with other businesses in a more formal environment. You might use Twitter as your platform for customer support. Therefore, you wouldn’t answer the majority of your F.A.Q.s on Instagram.
It can be a tricky balancing act, so contact us at Colorpeak if you struggle with your social media marketing plan.
Things to Remember:
- Two platforms can have the same purpose in content, but they may have a different customer base you want to approach.
- It might take time to figure out which content is best for each social platform.
- Analyse the statistics collected from posts to aid in deciding whether certain types of posts are performing well to decide whether to continue with them.
- Update your content calendar according to what you discover from your analysis.
9 – Tracking Performance
Leading on from the last point, it is important to consistently check your analytics on each social media platform. It’s improbable you will get your content right on the first try as there are too many factors involved to focus on all at once. It is a long game you want to play to grow your audience organically and gain more consumers for your products or services.
By tracking your performances on posts, you will find out what is doing well and what isn’t. You shouldn’t assume these things as it is often the case that results go unexpectedly in the opposite direction. Some posts might do better than expected, while others might leave you slightly disappointed.
There is also an opportunity to implement previous advice by simply asking your audience. Surveys are good for tracking your performance online, whether you accomplish this through social media messaging, a post, or an email list.
10 – Finalising Your Social Media Strategy
This tip is actually a little misleading. The truth is, the strategy will never indeed be final. The reasons behind this are multiple:
- Your business will change
- Networks will emerge and develop
- Social media algorithms constantly change
- Demographics will shift
Your strategy needs to develop through time as other factors change for your business to stay on track and align with your target market. Making these changes can reflect your goals and plans so your business continues to grow in the long term.
What are the Different Types of Social Media Strategy?
There are many ways to tackle your social media strategy that does not entirely align with the ten steps listed above. At Colorpeak, there are certain services we can provide to kickstart your social media marketing strategy and maintain your social media platforms if you don’t have the time to continue running the social media presence of your business. We offer services to cover the different types of social media strategies, such as:
- Creating content
- Advertising
- Long-term social media management
- Paid media (P.P.C.)
- Building an organic following
- Reviews
- Influencer marketing
- Forum contribution
- Plus many more!
How Much for a Social Media Strategy?
Now you know how much must go into a thorough social media strategy to gain success online for your business. You might see your business snowball after being busy with other tasks already! This doesn’t even include other marketing efforts offline! At Colorpeak, we want to help your business grow. We know how busy bosses get when changing to juggle all of the necessary functions in a company. You don’t want one part of your business to suffer because you’re too busy with another part. We offer plenty of services to do with marketing, and this doesn’t just include social media strategies.
We also offer:
All of the above are partly involved in a solid social media marketing strategy because they are all interlinked when attracting customers online.
Colorpeak has no hidden fees for our marketing services! You can choose a pricing plan that suits your business and the goals you want to achieve. It might be as simple as you not having enough time to run everything online. If you are gaining more customers, it might be time to consider bringing in others that can help (like us!)
You can delegate all of your business’s social media marketing activities to us and we will stick to your business objectives. At the same time, you continue growing your business and making customers happy! We can keep your website and social media channels running and secure and give you a makeover for a modern look as time goes on if that’s what you want.
Contact us today to discuss how we can help you grow your business!
