Focus Your Social Media Marketing Efforts Like a Laser Beam
Do you keep your Facebook page updated, and tweet your followers regularly? We bet you post photos to Instagram when you take an awesome selfie, too. Shouldn’t that be enough? If you’re lucky, flying by the seat of your pants might get you enough followers to maintain your business, but more than likely, you won’t see the growth you want. Without a social media marketing strategy, the effort you put into social media might as well be dust in the wind.
When you don’t have a social media marketing strategy, you can spend a lot of time creating posts and crafting social media messages people either will not see or will not respond to the way you’d hoped. Social media marketing strategy allows you to be proactive rather than reactive about how you are perceived online and the messages you want to spread. It also focuses your effort on high-value campaigns and activities rather than relying on one-off social media successes.
Embrace the Strategic Process
So, what is a social media marketing strategy, exactly? Here are a few steps toward creating a viable plan for your social media marketing. Whether you are working with digital marketing experts or not, here’s what to expect.
- Decide what your goals are for your business for the next three months, one year, five years, and 10 years. This helps provide milestones and goals to keep you on track.
- Identify the desired audience for your messages. Are you reaching who you want to reach already? Do you want to expand to other markets? Do you have different messages, services, or products for different audiences?
- Understand your audience. Where does your target audience hang out? What interests them? What do they already know about you? What do they need to know?
- Match social media venues (e.g., Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat) with your audience. Choose where you spend your time based on where your audience spends theirs. Do you need all of the channels? Most likely no. How do you determine which ones you should focus on?
- Develop a calendar of goals and the social media marketing projects that will help you reach those goals. We target combinations of social media platforms with complementary messaging that all point toward actions for your customers.
- Craft messages that make sense for the targeted audience, venue, and overall social media marketing plan. Not all messages work the same everywhere, and messaging on different platforms needs to link together and nudge your audience toward the offerings you know they will respond to.
Amplify What You Already Know About Social Media
Even if you have an in-depth understanding of social media platforms, you can miss opportunities if you don’t plan a coordinated effort that capitalizes on the combined power of multiple platforms and media outlets. Creating a comprehensive social media marketing strategy means you will be prepared weeks and months in advance for key opportunities when your particular audience is most likely to respond to your business and take action.
Having a social media marketing strategy helps you examine trends and craft content in advance that can connect those trends with what you have to offer. We all intend to get ahead on our marketing efforts, but we rarely do unless we have a plan we can stick to.
Get Expert Help to Take Your Social to the Next Level
Mad Hat Maven knows how social media works backwards and forwards. We can help bring a variety of platforms together at the right time and for the right audience. Our social media experts have experience analyzing users and scheduling campaigns that will help grow your business.
Don’t stay where you are. Get where you want to go. Contact us today.
