How To Plan a Social Media Strategy in 5 Steps

The importance of social media cannot be overemphasized. On the one hand, the number of social media users is set to continue increasing across the world shortly. As more people tend to use social media platforms, it becomes necessary for businesses to take advantage of the numbers and try to engage with their existing and new clients on social media platforms. On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that many young people nowadays favor communicating with business organizations on social media platforms. As such, it is essential for you to have a prominent and compelling strategy to engage with your public effectively.

1. Define your audience

Defining your target audience is one of the most important things that you need to do as part of the process of developing your social media strategy. In practice, it does not make sense to attempt to engage with the general population on social media platforms. You need to have an apparent target audience that you would like to communicate on social media platforms. For you to do this, you must start by defining the personas of the individuals who you would want to engage with on social media. Make a list of their character traits, fears, and aspirations so that you have a clear picture of where you can get the individuals.

2. Set your goals

Any good social media strategy have very clearly defined goals or objectives. There are many kinds of goals that you can use in your social media strategy. For example, you may focus on increasing the level of awareness of your brand on social media platforms. Alternatively, you may be committed to improving the level of engagement that people on social media have with your brand. In such a case, you may focus on building the number of people who like your page on Facebook or follow you on Twitter. Regardless of the social media network that you use, the bottom line is that for you to have a successful strategy, you must develop an apparent goal.

3. Choose platforms

The platforms that you use largely determine the level of success of your social media campaign. For example, if you would like to market your business on Facebook, then you need to decide whether all the audience that you need to communicate to are on that platform. Similarly, if you would like to engage with people who regularly use Instagram, then you must focus on that social media platform. Therefore, it is necessary to choose the right social media platform.

4. Tract the right metrics

Metrics are indicators of the things that you are interested in when engaging with the target audience on social media. If you fail to get your metrics right, the chances are that you may not achieve your goals. However, if you have the correct parameters and you track them over the course of time, then you may easily monitor your performance on social media. Therefore, make sure that you have the right metrics when developing a social media campaign strategy. It is essential to define some of the things that you intend to measure even before you start engaging with people on social media.

5. Carry out competitor analysis

You need to understand your competition for various reasons. In the first place, conducting a comprehensive competitor analysis helps you to identify some of the most effective strategies that work for your competitors. Also, when you do a detailed analysis of some of the best-performing sites in your niche, you can benchmark your performance to that of your competitors. Thus, it is easy to identify your strengths and weaknesses when you analyze what your competitors are doing.

In summary, you should base your social media strategy on the kind of objectives that you would like to achieve, the most appropriate audience and the things that your competitors are doing. Also, you must decide on the right metrics to track for you to tell how you are performing in your social media campaigns. For more information on how to develop and execute social media strategies for your business, please visit sharedcount.com