Social media is a beast that can’t be ignored, and it's safe to say that the same old approach may not last forever. When revamping or creating a new social media strategy for your business, here are some considerations to help guide you through the process.

1. Audit your social media channels in the current day

Before diving in, it’s important to understand how your social media channels are currently performing and at what level your audience is engaging with your brand. Here are a few questions to ask as you review:

Which social platforms receive the highest levels of engagement?
What types of content appear to resonate well with your audience?
How well does your content drive referral traffic back to your site?
Do your customers or audiences from social media turn into conversions?
What are your competitors doing in the space?

2. Define your audience

Evaluating your brand’s current and emerging audiences on a periodic basis is a step that shouldn’t be overlooked. If you have a clear grasp of who you’re reaching, you’ll understand how to tailor your messaging and what opportunities you may have to better reach your ideal audience if you are not doing so already. A few steps you'll want to take when defining your audience:

Think of your ideal audience or customer base...
How large is your audience?
Where is your audience located?
What is your audiences age, gender or demographic?
What are your audience's interests?

3. Determine which social platforms your audience uses

Once you define your audience, you’ll want to understand which social media platforms are most popular with your audience. Though your business may have a presence on social media, take time to evaluate whether each platform is right for your brand. You want to know what content is reaching your audience, and, more importantly, encourage your audience to take some sort of action with your brand.

At Aztek, we recommend our clients focus more effort and time into the platforms that work well for their audience rather than joining several social media sites that may not be as impactful.

4. Lay out your business goals and objectives

Whether it’s replying back to your customers, sharing a blog post, or using a specific hashtag, you’ll want your actions to align with your business goals. Think about the outcomes you’d like to see from your social media efforts and keep them in mind when you take action. A few business goals could include:

Generating more website referral traffic
Increasing the number of followers to your Business Page
Increasing the number of purchases to your brand’s store

5. Determine how you will measure success

Once you have identified your overall business goals, you’ll want to establish how you can measure success so that your efforts work towards a target metric and hold you accountable. Set specific targets you'd like to reach so that you can work to stack up your success each month.

Example: Drive 150-plus visits to company website from Facebook per month.

6. Consider what (quality) content you’ll share

Think about how the content you create will align with your audience’s varying intent on each of the platforms. For instance, a user on Facebook may have higher intent to purchase a product for personal use or share a humorous photo with a friend, but may not be all that interested in an educational post about progressing their career. That approach might be better well-suited for LinkedIn.

Think about the types of content you’d like to see produced and shared by your brand, then compile or formulate the actual content from there.

7. Establish a cadence for sharing content

Publishing content once or multiple times a day on each social platform may not be feasible for your organization or strategically make sense. Think about how often you’d like to post to each of your channels and how this plays into your objectives.

It's helpful to determine the right cadence for each social platform. Create a monthly content calendar that outlines upcoming content ahead of time. This way creating ideas and finding quality content to publish won’t need to be a daily task.

Once a content calendar is finalized, consider taking advantage of a social media scheduling tool. Here at Aztek, we’ve utilized a few social media management tools such as Sendible and Hootsuite.

8. Review your opportunities for paid social advertising

It will be beneficial to consider paid social advertising as another component to your overall social strategy. Not only can paid advertising compliment your organic efforts, but it presents an opportunity to target audiences or consumers that may not already be engaging with your brand and grow your following. You have more control of the audiences your messages will reach and with greater exposure, there's a greater likelihood you'll reach some of your target goals (ex. "X" number of new page followers or "X: number of new subscribers to company blog).

9. Adjust your strategy as changes to the social platforms are ruled out

2018 has already been a busy year filled with updates for a number of leading social media platforms—and more changes are sure to come. It can be hard to stay informed, but keeping up with the latest social media trends and algorithm updates can have an impact on your brand’s visibility to your audience.

A few helpful resources include Social Media Today and Social Media Examiner.

10. Identify what process or tools will work best for you and your team

Coming up with the right strategy can take a little trial and error, but that’s all a part of finding success and what ultimately works best for you. Try out a variety of posts, read up on the latest news, and bounce ideas off your team. The good news is that no strategy needs to be—and shouldn’t be—the same for every brand.

Need help creating a social media strategy for your organization? Aztek can help build and maintain social media marketing campaigns for your business. Contact our team today to learn more.

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10 Tips for Creating a Social Media Strategy