Social media is now part of many companies’ strategies. We all have a more or less positive idea of social networks, but establishing a better social media strategy is necessary in order to choose the right platforms and set the right objectives to reach your target audience.
Let’s find out together how to create quality content and define an effective and relevant social media strategy.
1. For which media to establish a strategy and how to proceed?
You probably already have accounts on different social networks and applications , but you have not yet defined your social media strategy. The latter is particularly important and must be thought through carefully.
First, study each of your accounts. Social networks provide statistics on clicks, views and shares for each professional page . Comments, opinions, shares and the number of likes will be the main criteria that will enter into your decision-making. Analyze their effectiveness (number of subscribers, likes, your publications VS engagement rate) to take an initial inventory of your online presence. The most important thing is to define the objective and role of your social networks. Do you want to develop your notoriety, generate traffic to your website, build your image? Asking yourself these questions is necessary to get your message across as best as possible, depending on the desired objective .
Depending on your needs and the results of your analysis, you will then have to ask yourself the question: “Which social network best suits my needs?” .
If you are not yet registered on social networks, first look at what your direct competitors are doing . Identify industry leaders. Look at how they do it and what media they position themselves on. Replicating their strategy can be a good way to get started and enter the multitude of networks that exist.
Afterwards, you can of course establish your own strategy. Standing out from the competition on the web can only be positive. To do this, you will need to ask yourself questions. Should you publish the same content on different social networks? Should I hire a community manager ? Should space be left for Internet users’ freedom of expression? The answers to these questions will allow you to make the right strategic choices.
You must keep in mind that the choice of networks on which you position yourself depends above all on your audience. You need to establish a sort of socio-demographic (age, gender, place of residence, income, etc.) and psycho-graphic (center of interest, lifestyle) table of your target clientele. This segmentation will allow you to better understand your target. Once you have determined your typical customer, find out which social networks your business will be most influential on.
To help you in your choice, you will also need to evaluate the strengths of the social media selected to highlight the most relevant and those that are most consistent with your activity. The goal remains to create a closer bond with your prospects in order to make them love your business and ultimately convert them into customers.
Finally, look at the different accounts of brands you like and observe how they manage their social media accounts. Even if it is not the same field of activity as that of your company, take note of their strong points, because they have nevertheless managed to seduce you!
2. Plan the actions of your web strategy
You now have a more precise idea of your use of social networks and that of your competitors. You took a critical look, drew inspiration from their strengths and identified prospects for improvement. Your strategy is established, but now it’s time to look at the more technical side of the process.
Do you want to direct traffic generated by social networks to your own website? Do you want to sell directly on social networks? On the contrary, do you just want to make your business known to your target market? These are questions that you must ask yourself and the c2m team offers you examples of actions.
- Put a link to your site under a posted photo. Traffic is redirected directly to your site. This strategy allows you to gain prospects and build customer loyalty.
- Create Facebook actions by sharing information on the key area of your business. Create an active fan community around your business.
- Make yourself known and benefit from the “buzz” effect on social networks, by creating interactive and fun marketing actions, to create buzz on Twitter for example.
- Telling a story and arousing emotion in your readers is a strategy that pays off. Highlight the entrepreneurial side of your business. Share your expertise and experience through story telling.
All these actions on social networks will allow you to gain customers. Through your presence and constant and interesting publications for the targeted audience, your visibility and your number of sales will increase.
3. Create a process
Your strategy is established and it is now time to create a publishing schedule. Computer tools allow you to plan your publications in advance and publish your posts on several media simultaneously. Buffer, Hootsuite, and many other tools will help you organize your posts and automate the process. It’s important to keep your readers’ attention and cultivate their impatience . Try to post between two and three times a week to build a real connection with your community. The main question you need to think about will be the publication dates of the articles. Regularity will be the key to your popularity on different social networks. Remember that your content must be of quality, because publishing regularly will not be relevant if your content does not attract the attention of your community.
4. Adjust the shot
Once your campaign is launched, you will not have to monitor its progress and its impact, positive or negative. It’s not enough to push lots of articles headlong. You need to analyze your own publications , in the same way that you analyzed those of your competitors in the first step. The ideal will be to periodically evaluate your performance . This can be done weekly, monthly or quarterly. It’s up to you to determine your pace and the quantity of publications published. Analyze reactions, the time at which your posts generate the most interaction and which content is the most popular to be able to correct and develop your presence on social networks. Even if you only have a small audience at the start, gradually adjusting your content and your strategy according to their reactions will allow you to improve your results.
You are self-employed and we know that managing your working time is not easy. Build a working framework by bookmarking the page analysis tools of your social networks and creating an Excel table to record your data will allow you to gain efficiency.
If your posts have very few followers, it may still be time to completely change your media marketing strategy given that your business is quite discreet.
You now know what it takes to implement the strategy that will best suit your business in relation to social media. Above all, don’t forget to stay on top of new trends on the web. We invite you to continue reading with other articles from our blog.
Read More: 7 FALSE THOUGHTS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SELF-ENTREPRENEURS
