Social Media Strategy
What is a social media strategy?
With more than 2.5 billion monthly active users on Facebook in 2019*, social media strategies for business have become increasingly important. As with any communications platform that is increasingly accessible to business, it becomes increasingly difficult to compete.
A social media audit considers what’s working and not working across your social media channels (not just Facebook), including:
- If your website is correctly linked to your social media pages.
- If your social media page is verified.
- What your audience want to find on your social media pages.
- How to target the correct people.
Why do I need a social media strategy?
Although it’s clearly much more difficult to cut through the clutter on Facebook, with the volumes of businesses and individuals utilising it, the great news is, with a solid strategy success here is very much achievable. And when this begins to work, the results can be quite remarkable!
What benefits will my business see from using a social media strategy?
Creating an effective social media strategy will allow your brand, product or service to grow exponentially online through your target audience. As with any marketing campaign, word-of-mouth becomes a powerful tool for spreading your message far wider than the audience you initially targeted. The great thing about social are the recommendations peer groups provide each other at the click of a button; with the right strategy and messaging it’s never been easier.
How do I create a social media strategy?
To create an effective strategy we must first consider what we learned from our social media audit:
1. Is your website correctly linked to your social media pages?
From a technical perspective your social media page needs to be linked to your website. This is a ranking factor and providing you’re updating your social media page regularly this will support improvements in Google Search for different keywords.
2. Is your social media page verified and visible to your audience?
Ensure your social media page has been verified. Follow these instructions so Facebook and Google know you’re a reputable company. This in turn will ensure, not only your website ranking better but that your social media posts reach a larger audience.
3. What does your audience want to find on your social media pages?
Through market research you will have identified:
1. Gender (if appropriate)
2. Age or age range
3. Likes and dislikes
4. Hobbies and interests
5. Location
6. And most importantly your how your customers feel
A new hair salon will understand, changing to a different hair stylist can be an anxious decision. To alleviate a potential customers uncertainty and fear, it will be important to showcase not only the range of work they’ve completed for other clients but also a discount for using their services the first time. Otherwise what reason do they have to change?
4. How can you target the correct people?
This is critical and unfortunately a step which isn’t very often utilised correctly. First off, your research must show that people actively use social media in their decision-making process. If they don’t, there may be a better form of marketing communication you can use.
If social media is an appropriate channel, as in the hair salon example above, paid social media marketing will allow you to target your audience effectively through using your market research to reach:
• The correct gender
• The correct age range
• The correct location
• People with a similar range of interests, in relation to the product or service you’re looking to sell.
Facebook’s a power platform for communicating with potential customers but the organic algorithm (non-paid social media marketing) has limited success when targeting the audience you want to reach and in reality it will target a small amount of people, many of who have no interest in your product or service.
The paid algorithm on the other hand, is extremely powerful and provides you with a wide range of options to target your audience with, through the interactions Facebook has recorded from its users online over the last 15 years!
If you would like us to perform a social media audit, along with producing recommendations to improve your sales and lead generation free of charge, get in touch here.
What else do I need to know?
Once you’re talking to your audience through effective targeting and conversing with them around their emotional needs, it’ll be critical to consider what stages of the buying cycle they’re at and how to move them further along in the decision-making process.
Considering the hair salon once more, once they have provided their potential customers with examples of hair-styles and the user has engaged with the post (through liking, sharing, or best of all commenting), how do they ensure that they communicate with the same person to take them further down the buying process?
Easy! Social media remarketing allows you to target people who have previously engaged with your posts. Remember, although marketing can be effective the first time somebody see’s something, more often than not, people take time to make decisions, evaluating their options and needing to see a brand several times to recall it in their minds.
Remarketing allows you to show that same user, more examples of popular hairstyles created, some information about the stylist and then a discount or promotion to encourage them to visit the salon.
At Need to Know Marketing we love providing information for SME’s so they can grow. We also understand this work can be time consuming and difficult to begin with. To assist you, we provide a free of charge one hour consultation, where we have an open discussion about your business objectives and what you’re looking to achieve.
Following the consultation we will provide you with a marketing strategy, advising how we recommend meeting your business objectives through marketing. If you are interested in knowing the cost of our services, you can use our calculator as a guide.
*reference: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/
“Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.”
Walt Disney knew telling a story is always always easier with pictures. It crosses all barriers. The best story tellers are always the best at engaging their audience.