Creating a Social Media Strategy 101

When most people hear the terms social media strategy and social media campaign, they often think that the two are the same thing, are they? I hope you said no because they are two very different things. These two terms have been used interchangeably quite a bit but they are complementary, so before we look at how to come up with a social media strategy, let’s first look at the difference between the two.

To start with, a social media campaign is short term, comes after the social media strategy and its main aim is to promote a product or a service. Also, it aims at increasing page views and increasing sales for the product or service.

 On the other hand, a social media strategy is a summary of everything you want to do on social media and what you hope to achieve from the same.  Basically, everything you post on social media has a purpose and a social media strategy acts as a reference point that you can use to measure your success or failure. It is long term and includes specific objectives, a clear analysis of your audience and maps and plans on how to allocate resources. Now let’s see at the steps you need to follow to come up with a social media strategy.

The first things you need are SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time- bound). These goals will guide your actions and make sure you get good results. For example, you can have goals such as to increase brand awareness, to drive traffic to your website, to generate new leads or to boost engagement.

 The second thing you need to do is to understand your audience. Knowing your audience and their needs is key. This will help you to come up with content that is customer-specific, that they will like, comment on and share.  Avoid making assumptions about your audience, you should do your research. Social media analytics can also provide a lot of important demographics about your audience; who your followers are, where they live, which languages they speak, and how they interact with your brand on social. This kind of understanding will allow you to perfect your strategy.  In addition you will also need to research on your competitors and know what kind of strategies they are using, this enables you adapt you strategy accordingly.

Third, you will need to identify key success metrics. It is said that if you cannot measure you cannot improve it.  Here you need to come up with tactics in that will help determine whether your social media efforts are successful. Some of the metrics to consider measuring are clicks, reach,  conversion rates, time spent on website, brand mentions and total shares.

After you have done research on your audience and what they want, the fourth step you need to take is to create engaging content.

Finally, you will need to assess what is working for you and what is not; having a bird’s eye view of your social media will go a long way in putting things into perspective. It is important that you adapt your strategy as time goes by  because in the social world, things change fast. New networks emerge, while others go through major changes. This means that your social media strategy should be a living document that you look at regularly and adjust as needed. Refer to it often to keep you on track, but don’t be afraid to make changes so that it better reflects new goals, tools, or plans.