Building a Social Media Strategy
We recently wrote about three common statistics you should focus on when developing your social media strategy but then it dawned on us – we should probably mention HOW you can build a strategy to guide your organization’s social presence.
Whether you’re a small business, large organization, or non-profit, if you go through the process of answering these three questions you should be well on your way to developing a solid social media strategy.
What should our voice be?
The type of organization you are will help shape this but choosing a voice is the first step you should take – it sets the tone for how you interact with customers and what you will share with them.
How can you shape your voice? Ask yourself:
- What do people like about your organization?
- Why do people come back?
- What do people say about you?
- What do you WANT people to say about you?
What channels should we use?
This one is pretty straightforward. Make a decision on which channels you want to use. Be strategic though – i.e. don’t join because EVERYONE else is. Join because it will help your business.
Our recommendation: start with one or two and try to do them really well rather than do everything and do it poorly.
How do you choose where you company should be? Think about these factors:
- What is the age/demographic of your audience?
- Do you target businesses or individuals?
- How much of your own content do you have to share?
Not sure where your audience hangs out? Check out this research from PEW.
How will this help us?
Before you invest the time into creating social media accounts you need to ask yourself how and why it will benefit your company/organization – and your reason shouldn’t be because everybody else is on Facebook and Twitter.
Ask yourself:
- Will this improve our customer service?
- Will this help increase sales?
- Are we missing opportunities by not being on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram etc.?