Do you have a successful social media strategy for your start-up? No? Don’t worry! You are not alone. Around 50% of businesses don’t have a social media strategy. However, without having a strategy, it is like gambling with your social media presence. Having a planned and purposeful strategy helps you win the social media game.
To help you create an insightful strategy, we have created a simple step-by-step guide that will let you build an effective plan.
Choose the right social media platform to invest your time, effort, and resources to create an effective strategy for your start-up.
So, how will you select the right social media platform?
The answer lies in knowing your target audience. The more you know your audience, the more effective plan you can make to reach them.
Here are some key questions that will help you know your targeted audience:
Here, are some key steps in finding out the answers to the above questions:
Once you know your targeted audience, it is time to set your goal. Creating a goal is key to unlocking an effective social media strategy. After all, if you don’t know what you want to achieve, how will you measure your performance?
How will you set your social media goal?
It should be something like an acronym of SMART:
Depending on your industry, you can aim for a mixture of the following goals in your social media marketing strategy:
Some businesses set different goals for different channels, which is also a good practice.
Next, you need to assess where you stand and what is the current status of your brand in the realm of social media platforms.
To do it, you should go through some simple steps:
Also, you can perform a social media audit of your brand compared to your competitors. You can compare types of content, audience size, engagement, frequency, video use, visuals, activity, tone, and other significant actions to figure out what is working, and what is not.
Keeping your friends close, and foes closer is a wise way to stay ahead and alive in the competition.
Now, you need to figure out the key success metrics to measure the effectiveness of your social media marketing plan.
Here, the key is to look for simple and straightforward metrics such as:
Not all of these metrics can work for you. You need to choose the metrics that are aligned with your business goals. For instance, if your aim is to increase brand awareness, focus on referral to your website and subsequent sentiment.
Creating a successful content strategy is essential for the effectiveness of your social media marketing plan. Without having a clear content strategy, definite direction, and distribution plan, you will be distracted. Having a clear definition of your desired state will help you to create engaging content that will eventually take you to your destination.
Craft a content plan based on these questions:
Find out the answers to these questions, and it will be fun and easy for you to create and curate content. Here are a few examples of content you could create:
Content is what fuels social media. Hence, I strongly suggest you create a content calendar that outlines what to post and when to post to each network.
The boom of video content does not seem to stop anytime soon. Both short-term and long-term videos continue to rule social media platforms. Regularly producing and publishing video ads to social space across all channels is a key to achieve your set goal. Hence, you should not shy away from the video strategy, especially with the wealth of video creators and tools out there.
You are putting all your efforts, time, and resources to dominate social space across all channels. But how will you know if your efforts and investment are working and paying off?
You need to take stock of your efforts so far. Figure out the following questions:
Find the answers to these questions, and then tweak your plan accordingly for optimal success.
What’s next? It is time to put your plan into action.
Follow this step-by-step guide to create a triumphant Social Media Strategy for your start-up. Remember that there is no shortcut to success. Using these highly helpful tips will help you reach your target sooner and more easily.
Pulse Project