Ten years ago, there was no such thing as a social media strategy. There were blogs about gardening and navel gazing and embryonic oddities like MySpace where millennials could share indie music and hang out. But social media was just not seen as a business tool. A decade later, the world of social media encompasses a variety of business-focused tools like YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Vine, Google+, Facebook and more. Today, having a social media strategy for your brand is an essential part of doing business.
Recently, Forbes.com compiled this list of the top social media strategies:
1. Have a plan. Where do you begin your social media strategy? With customer and prospect behavior. Discover where they are having conversations and where your business can lend value. Use Google alerts to help you determine this.
2. Don’t worry about perfection. Begin by listening to others. Don’t be afraid to be a newbie!
3. One tool at a time. It is better to use one media tool effectively than to use six tools poorly. Choose your tool based on where most of your customers and prospects are.
4. Show up consistently. If you can only spend one hour a week on social media, then at least be consistent. This is a much better strategy than spending 3 hours one day and then 15 minutes the next week. Tweet daily. Post regularly. Don’t be spotty in your efforts.
5. Use your own voice online. You don’t have tweet like hipster if that is not your brand’s personality. Reflect your company brand.
6. Set a time limit. Every marketing activity, even social media marketing, needs to have a time limit. It is easy to get distracted. But don’t.
7. Turn off notifications. Yep, you heard right. These are giant time interrupters and can decrease your productivity.
8. Schedule new content posts. Try it on a weekly basis to start out with.
9. Review analytics. Every marketing activity needs to have metric. This is no different. Google analytics is great for this and it is free.
10. Demand a return on your investment. Set a goal. If you have a Social Media Agency involved, hold their feet to the fire. If it is just you and an intern doing your social media strategy, hold each other accountable. You may be investing little financially, but you are still investing time and that deserves an ROI.
We are a Dallas Advertising Agency specializing in Digital Media Marketing.
