Defining Your Social Media Strategy
Social media definitely evened out the playing field when it comes to promotion and advertising, targeted or general. The flip side is that it becomes too easy to underestimate the seriousness of your marketing endeavour. Social media promotion is quite inexpensive when compared to traditional channels. However, it is still money wasted if it does not bring you measurable results. Your safeguard is having a clearly defined marketing strategy before you even open your browser. Here are the why’s and how’s.
Why you need a strategy
Hashing out a sound social media marketing strategy requires work, but it pays off handsomely later on. Come up with a clear set of measurable goals bound to a time frame! This is your insurance policy against wasting valuable resources and shooting in the dark. With a strategy like that, you have quantifiable goals which keep you on track.
Then break your goals down to milestones! This lets you monitor your implementation’s performance at any given moment. It also allows colleagues to participate in the marketing effort and keeps everyone on the same page, which enables responsibility sharing and quality control.
What makes a successful social media strategy
Rule number 1 is to keep your strategy flexible. Do not shun meaningful revisions based on live data and returns during the campaign’s course! The only “untouchable” portions of your plan are your business mission and your goals. You can dive into tactics only after you define your mission (the “why”) and your goals (the “what”)!
When you think about these two overarching questions, keep in mind the three basic business targets: increase revenue, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. Devise key performance indicators (KPIs) which monitor your campaign’s effects on each goal!
What tools to use
There are many great resources you can rely on for tracking the effectiveness of your marketing campaign, and this is the true blessing of the Internet age and Big Data. From Google Analytics to Hootsuite and Sprout Social, you should pick the social media tool which feels most comfortable. Use the insights it generates to modify and steer your campaign towards growing returns.
