The average person spends nearly two hours on social media every day, according to Social Media Today. If you’re business isn’t taking advantage of this audience, you are definitely missing out. You’re missing out on greater brand awareness, reaching a new audience, and engaging with potential and existing customers, among other things.
Starting a proactive social media program can feel daunting, especially when you aren’t familiar with the platforms or their processes. Before you even step into this world, do two things:
- Understand Your Audience & How They’re Using Platforms
- Consider & Identify Your Goals
Once you’ve worked through and understand these areas, setting a strategy and deciding your next steps will be significantly easier.
Understand Your Audience & How They’re Using Platforms
The first step to planning your social media strategy is identifying what platforms you will spend time and energy on. Conduct research to understand which platforms include your target audience. Once you have identified these platforms, do some research and social listening. Peruse pages of people that fall in your target audience. What do they seem to use the platform for most? What format do they share information in? Do they engage and respond to conversations and information that relates to them? Also, spend some time checking out your partners and your competitors to see how they are using their platforms. Are they posting regularly? Do they respond to engagement opportunities quickly or do they wait days before answering? Are they providing valuable content and insights to their customers? Or, are they selflessly promoting their businesses?
Once you know which platforms you’re going to try out and how your target audience is utilizing these platforms, start your goal setting efforts.
Consider & Identify Goals
“The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.” – Bill Copeland
Let’s not waste all that energy; instead let’s start off on a good path. So, let’s set some goals. Consider what you are wanting out of your social media efforts. Are you looking to create more brand awareness, drive people to your website, engage and gather feedback from your potential or existing customers, or educate or train? There are dozens of goals you could have, and honestly, these all sound pretty good right?
But, narrow your REAL goals down to 2-4. In all of your planning, content development, and execution keep checking back on these goals. Are your efforts in support of these? If so, move on. If not, you need to adjust.
Make sure these goals are really good goals. In our business and with our clients, we talk a lot about setting S.M.A.R.T. goals. Take a peek at our blog, How to Set Good Goals, to find some good information on this process. A key part is to identify a measurable goal. This will be critical to your social media measurement that we talk about later in this book.
In the coming weeks, we’ll share more posts about planning, implementing and measuring your social media strategy. We’ll break it down into manageable pieces. No matter where you are with your social media program, we promise, you’ll find useful insights to implement.
Check Out These Posts Too:
- The Case for Goal Setting
- How to Set Good Goals
- Don't Let These Goal Setting Distractions Get You
- Tools to Get Your Goal Measurement on Track
- Creating User Friendly Content
- 5 Reasons Content is King
Want to learn more about our social media program?
