News & Stories

March 2023

Creating a Solid Social Media Strategy That Sticks

In this day and age, social media can be an essential tool for business owners to stay in the game and exponentially grow their business. Your social media strategy will be the master plan for how your business will interact and present itself online, and it should be constantly evolving with our social culture.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when forming an effective social media strategy:

Define who your customers are

By its nature, social media has an endless pool of content for all different types of people, which means you will have a much more effective strategy if you hone your target audience and shoot straight for them. Profile your customers – what key demographics do they fall under? Based on your products, which age groups, genders, and occupations most likely have the needs that your product can meet? Consider your target customers’ daily challenges and what they might be looking to solve. Derive a range of target audiences to which you can tailor your posts and brand voice.

Start small by focusing on a few platforms

If you are just starting out, set yourself up with a manageable load by sticking to just one or two accounts. Pointedly dedicating your strategy to these starting accounts will give you room to assess its effectiveness and tweak as you grow toward more accounts. You will also be focusing your efforts on these channels to build and sustain a community online. Decide which platforms to start out on by tracking who your target audiences are and where they most frequent.

Vary your posts with educational content

Customers are looking to buy from experts that they trust, and curating a social media presence that offers advice and helpful information can establish a trustworthy reputation for your business. Stay mindful about flooding your accounts with promotional offers and sales pitches, as this can drive users away. You can create posts with downloadable and shareable content like e-books, infographics, and videos that address the issues your target customers are facing.

Develop a calendar to schedule your posts

Creating an editorial calendar to keep your posting and engagement schedule on track is a crucial part of any social media strategy. Every platform comes with its own rules for when the peak traffic times to post are, as well as what kind of content performs best. Conduct your research to derive a schedule for yourself specific to your business, and stick to it as best as you can. Your target customers will expect a consistent and reliable social media presence from you, so be sure to engage with customers and post on a daily schedule.

Track your metrics and adapt as you go

Every platform comes with the capability to view your post analytics and track the performance of your content. No matter how sound your starting strategy is, the nature of social media is changing every day so you will want to keep experimenting to find the best combination of platforms and content that works best. Keep in mind that building an audience and engagement takes time, so keep a measurement of how your post views, demographics, and interactions change over time and adjust your strategy as needed. There are also countless dashboard services that offer performance analytic services to save you the time and labor of tracking them manually, like Hootsuite and Sprout Social.