Creating A Winning Social Media Strategy
So how exactly do you develop this strategy ?
Step 1: Listen
As mentioned in a previous post an introduction to social media strategy, you need to know what people are already talking about before your company can be part of the conversation so you can work out how best you can contribute.
When conducting research you must remember to be as specific as possible so that your searches return fewer results that are more relevant to your brand. Remember all this takes time its not just going to fall into your lap! After a while you will begin to discover keywords that yield the results your are looking for, revealing blogs, twitter profiles and content relevant to your industry.
Create a list of social media sites, blogs and forums where you can potentially engage with people. The list will most likely start off with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, however go beyond these and try and find industry relevant blogs and forums.
Check out each of the social media sites on your list and do additional research to determine relevancy by searching for your brand name, your competitors, and your target keywords. Listen to what’s out there, identify, and understand your target audience
Step 2: Plan
Social media platforms perform best when helping facilitate B2C conversations rather than B2B. When targeting other business through social media, alternative strategies are required that are not covered in this article.
Social media consist of many different platforms. Rather than trying to participate them all, begin with just one or two that seem to have an audience most relevant to your target market.
Creating a engagement strategy will help determine the amount of time employees will be required to devote to social media, and the focus areas for engagement.
What’s important is to understand your social media goals and objectives and how they tie into your overall company goals.
Keep it Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic/Relevant, and Timely (aka be SMART!).
Step 3: Engage
This is where the fun starts it’s time to start making use of all the research you’ve done. Start joining the conversation on your chosen social outlets by posting comments on blogs and forums, answering questions on Yahoo! and LinkedIn, joining groups related to your industry and joining Twitter chats.
Now you should start to develop relationships by following and friending influences and those in your industry. Its good to remember that its not only to focus on people with thousands of followers that; its surprising the value that someone with only a couple of hundred followers can provides.
Although social media is a great way to engage and audience of millions it’s easy to get sucked in and hide behind your avatar, we need to remember that face-to-face is still incredibly powerful. More people are now realizing how underrated the in-person interaction really is due to the recent success of social media, by allowing so many people to “hide.”
Attend offline events related to your industry—not only to strengthen your knowledge base but also to network and strengthen relationships with those you might have conversed with via social media but never met in person.
Step4: Measure, Analyze, Adapt, and Improve
Measuring social media success begins by asking more questions:
- Did we learn something about our customers that we didn’t know before?
- Did our customers learn something about us?
- Were we able to engage our customers in new conversations?
- Do our employees have an effective new tool for external feedback and reputation management?
Social media strategy doesn’t end with measurement; it goes beyond that. You need to analyze your social media campaigns, adapt any new findings into your current processes, and improve your efforts.
Testing and experimentation will help you perfect social media efforts.
The dive you deeper into the never-ending pool of social media, you’ll quickly understand what works and what doesn’t.
More specifically, you will develop favorite tools and realize certain days and times don’t pay to be active in social media. It’s a exciting new world that is constantly growing and changing and I hope many of you become as thrilled and emerged in it as I am.