Best Steps Implementation on Social Media Strategy
One of the biggest challenges in implementing an effective social media marketing strategy is time.
When I ask people about their social media strategy for their company, I often get responses like:
- “Oh yes, we have a Facebook account, but we don’t really post on it.”
- “I think we created an Instagram account last year?”
- “We created an account and started posting, but no one had time to post afterwards.”
If you have a similar answer, you are by no means the only one. That said, implementing an effective social media marketing strategy can be easier and less time-consuming than you think.
It’s all about efficiency and breaking through step by step.
In this post I will describe nine important steps you must follow to ensure that you cover your bases and maximize your marketing efforts for social media.
Step 1: “Do You Even Need Social Media?”
I hear things like this all the time – “Well, I know we have to be on social media, we just didn’t get there.”
Take a step back and look at the bigger picture. What are your business goals for one year, three years, in five years? What is the marketing and sales plan to get you there? What resources can you use to get you there? What tactics do you implement to get you there? Will social media be one of those tactics?
If you have limited resources and your customers do not plan to purchase your product or service when they are on the aforementioned social media platform, it is wise to invest those resources in more lucrative channels.
Step 2: Which Channels Should You be on?
You must evaluate who your target group is and where they spend their time.
In which groups do they participate? Which platforms do they use? And crucially, where do they conduct their research before they make a purchase?
Step 3: Set a Goal (and write it down)
So many people skip this step and immediately jump into posting.
I strongly support that you should not start a marketing project without having a goal or result in mind. For this you must consider what you use every social platform for.
Do you want to increase brand awareness? Do you improve lead generation efforts? How are you going to measure the relative success of brand awareness or the lead generation process?
Step 4: Make a Strategy
Now that you have a goal, or goals, in mind, how do you achieve them?
How will you ensure that people interact with your brand on social media?
You must make a plan for the types of content you will post, when you post messages, copy guidelines, guidelines for images, etc. Etc.
Note each of these elements as well.
Step 5: Delegate
You have done the hard work – setting goals and developing a strategy that is so important – and so underestimated. Having a strategy document is like a North Star with which you can keep coming back and / or can lead people.
The next step is to give someone the lead on implementing that strategy.
Here you can become creative with your resources. Of course you can outsource to another company, but frankly, the content will not be as sincere and honest as when it is posted by someone who is part of your daily business activities.
If you have the option of hiring a marketing representative, great – but you don’t necessarily have to. If you strictly follow someone’s steps, you should be able to implement an effective social media strategy in a few hours a week, including time for daily engagement.
Step 6: Create a Library with Content
I suggest doing this once a month. The person responsible for implementing the social strategy must also be responsible for collecting content.
Photos are everything. You need intriguing, quality image and (ideally) video items to have an apparent strategy on social media.
If you have a professional photographer who takes photos for your product or service, have them collect their photos in one place to take them off. If not, have someone collect a day or two of photos / videos to add to the library.
In addition to photos, you collect all of your written content items. Ideally, most of this is content that you have created, but you can also use content from the internet that is relevant to your brand.
Step 7: Plan it Out
I suggest planning two weeks of content at a time – take an hour to map different visuals, content, and captions that you will be sharing in the coming weeks.
Make sure you adhere to the guidelines that you have now drawn up. Once your content has been created (and approved if necessary), you can plan the two-week content through a tool such as Buffer.
Step 8: Take 15 Minutes a Day
Once your content has been scheduled for two weeks, the person responsible for implementing your social media strategy is free to participate daily in real time.
This is important. Your guidelines for contacting your contacts must also be described in your strategy. Let your social person spend 15 minutes a day searching for contacts to get to work actively.
Step 9: Evaluate
Goals are great, but if you don’t measure whether or not you meet them, what’s the point?
Make sure your person creates monthly reports on social media that identify highlights, lowlights and statistics that can help you measure your progress towards your goal (s).
It Really is That Simple.
The most important thing to remember about creating a social media strategy is always to be sincere. Social media are, in name and nature, ‘social’ – it is a medium that people use to get in touch with each other. It is a place to be real, raw and honest. It is not a place to push your business agenda or to use too aggressive promotional tactics.
As people we make decisions based on feelings and to evoke feelings, you have to be real. I cannot emphasize this enough.
If you can do that, you should easily follow these steps. It is important to be organized, to create a structure and to delegate.
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