What is Social Media Strategy and Why do I need one?
If you haven’t been able to think about your social media strategy for your business this year, now it’s a good time to finally think about your business and create one. But what is a social media strategy and why do you need one?
Let’s start with the second part of the question: Why do you need a social media strategy?
The internet has already become an integral part of everyday life for most of the world’s population.
More than 67% of the world now uses a smartphone, most of the world’s web traffic now comes from mobile phones, more than one in five of the world’s population shopped online in the past 30 days.
The number of people in Australia that access the internet has now reached 88% of the population and we have 18 million Australians active on social media. That’s 71% of our total population! What is also growing is the amount of time Australians are spending online: 5 hours and 41 minutes a day on the internet and the time spent on our social media has also increased to almost one hour and 44 minutes. One in 3 minutes online is spent on social media.
You can read more about these stats at the digital report from WeAreSocial.com
Every year there is an increase of active social media users, so you’ll hopefully think about how to attract the attention of some of those users towards your business or your products and services.
If you are one of the business owners that want that, read on:
What is Social Media Strategy?
Social Media Strategy is like a business plan for all your social media activities.
If you are just posting on your Facebook once every few weeks whatever that comes to mind, or you are just scheduling a few promotional posts that redirect people to your website, you need to stop and reflect on how can do this better. It’s not enough to “be active” on social media when you spend hours and hours scrolling away and “liking” random things from what friends or businesses posts that appear in your news feed.
Instead of just posting, linking and retweeting you need to have all your activities planned out and drive towards achieving your main objectives. It doesn’t need to be a very detailed document that you never review. Do whatever you feel is the most beneficial to you and your business.
A strategy is a key ingredient of social media marketing. It requires an understanding of your audience, what they’re looking for, how their needs align with your goals, and ultimately, how you can attract them with an offer that gets them to get on board with your business.
Here are some questions to think about as you begin strategizing on potential social media campaigns:
- Who is your audience?
- How do you want your brand to be perceived?
- What kind of content will you share?
- What social platforms are you going to use?
- What are the goals, or results you want to achieve?
Why do we need a Social Media Strategy?
The majority of people today are no social media sites. We just saw that one in three minutes online is spent on different social media platforms. As a business, you have the chance to communicate with a wider audience. And because of the detailed customers’ insights that all the social media tools offer, you can send a personalized message to existing and potential customers. Not to mention that you can study your audience data for a better understanding of how to create powerful social media campaigns and influence purchase decisions.
Having a social media strategy will allow you to plan out posts in advance and get them scheduled. It will allow you to post consistently ( a key in marketing) and also to save time by posting in bulk.
What should a social media strategy include?
- Objectives: Decide what are your goals and objectives. Use your overall marketing strategy so your social media efforts will help to achieve your broarder marketing goals.
- Social media audit: Review how many followers you have, what content do you currently share, or how often do you post. Look at your competition to see what are they doing and think how can you do better.
- Choose the right social media platform: think what the best platform is in your case so you can use it to engage with your clients and followers. Be clear who your target audience is and research the key demographics of various social media platforms.
- Start with one platform: Focus on quality, not quantity. It’s more important to post regularly than to have 4,5 channels that you don’t monitor. But set up an account on each platform, so your name is reserved (if you decide to use that platform later). Try to have the same name on all the various platforms so it will be easier for your followers to find you.
- How often to post: Consider how often you want to post on each platform and what that content should be. Also, consider any hashtags that you want to use.
- Monitor: think about how you will measure your success. First focus on brand awareness, how you can get followers and have a voice, then focus on how you promote your services or products.
When should I start planning my social media strategy?
They say that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second-best time is NOW. Start the year with a fresh, clean plan of action.
Have you been putting off creating a social media strategy for your business? It really doesn’t have to be daunting and we can help you to focus on your future social media activities. Drop us an email or contact us.
Happy planning!
Dorin
