Build A Foundation For Your Social Media Marketing
“Developing a strategy before marketing your business is as important as developing blueprints before building a house.” Randy Brososky, Group Of Rogues
You need a strategy in place in order to see success with social media marketing. Without one, you’ll miss leads, attract the wrong clients, and experience frustration. Like a drafting a set of blueprints, you must be clear about what you want to achieve, start building the foundation, measure and refine it.
How do you start? By asking yourself a lot of questions! Depending on how much you’ve invested in drawing up your business plans, these may be more or less difficult. (They’ll be a breeze then, right?)
1) What are your objectives?
The best place to start is to review your business objectives. These will lay down a foundation for your marketing efforts. What are your short and long term goals? What are your financial goals versus your non-financial goals? These goals will inform what you will measure to determine if social media is helping you succeed.
2) What’s your story?
Maybe you’ve heard the word “transparency” floating around the social media space? People want to know about you and your business. So, the next step is to write your story. Do not undermine the importance of this step: it is key to forming an emotional connection between your brand and your customers. How did you get started? Where are you going? And, what are you up to right now? As an aside, these elements tie into your unique value proposition, which helps you develop your online tone.
3) Who are you targeting?
Knowing who you are selling your products and services to is the next step in developing your strategy. Who is your “ideal customer?” What do they do? How do they feel, and how do your products or services solve their problems? In B2C you will determine facts such as gender, age, lifestyle, and life-stage. In B2B, you will consider industry, size of the company, average revenue, and location etc..
4) Industry Research
From here, it’s important to start looking at what’s going on around you. What are other people in your industry doing in the online space? Researching what is happening within your industry is great for leveraging strategies that are working and what isn’t. Down the road, establishing who your competitors are will also help you measure your success.
The above steps are the foundation for your social media strategy. These are essential questions that must be clear before you say, “Let’s build a Facebook Page!” From here it’s easier to determine where you will start your social media efforts, what content you need to build, and how much time you will need to invest.
Do you have a well-defined social media strategy? If so, what was your process? If you don’t, are you going to dedicate the time to draft one? Give me shout if you have questions about building your social media strategy. I’m here to help you!