With millions of people using social media for their own personal lives each day, it can be easy to assume that doing social for business is just as simple. Your friends might have even referred to it as “just tweeting and playing on Facebook all day” at some point. However, like a house without a solid foundation and construction blueprint, if there’s no strategy to your company’s social media, it won’t take long before one of the beams comes crashing down.
It’s important to keep in mind that once something is on the internet, it’s there forever, including any of your marketing mistakes.
At this point, you’ve likely signed up your business for it’s social networks of choice including Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Whether it’s your first time or you’re a few months in, here’s what you need to do next.
Step 1: Set your Goals
At the start of any venture, online or otherwise, it’s best to have a destination so that you can find a few ways of getting there and how to know if you’re on the right route. Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter so you need to know what people are looking for to get them looking to you.
Hint: Preferred social targets of today’s community managers include metrics like generated leads, driven traffic and conversion.
Step 2: Audit your Actions
Audits of your taxes, bad. Audits of your online activity, good. If you’ve already been using social media as a method of marketing, it’s time to figure out what’s working and what’s not, who’s connecting, who’s not and why not. If something’s not going how you expected, don’t just toss it, tinker with it.
Hint: Find not only which networks your target markets are using but also what they share, who attracts them already (ie. competition) and why!
Step 3: Get Inspired
The internet can be a harsh mistress and she has flocks of users ready to jump at any opportunity to chirp louder than the Twitter bird at the first sign of a problem. Look to industry leaders, influencers and even your biggest rivals for ideas on what to do, or what not to do, next. Don’t be afraid to hit that follow button, it’s not weird, we promise.
You just never know where the next best advice or epiphany might come from.
Step 4: Still lost?
Hire an agency, we know a great one.