How to Plan Your Social Strategy

Whether your company is already social media savvy or you are just starting to look into what you can do, having a planned social strategy can help you better understand the needs of your customers. Your social media strategy is just one part of your bigger marketing campaign, but to get the most out of it you’ll need to have a plan. Here are the steps to get started.

targetSet a Specific Goal

Before you can create a plan for your social media strategy, you want to have a specific goal in mind. This goal should also help your business move your overall marketing strategies forward.

If this is your first social media strategy plan, you can start small. What works best for most businesses is focusing on consistency. If that means making sure you post at least three social media posts per week, then you can measure the difference over time. Businesses that have social strategies in place but want to enhance them can set goals in terms of how many likes, shares or comments they receive on each post.

Evaluating Your Social Media

Once you have a goal in mind, you will want to evaluate your current social media efforts to make sure what has been posted will help your goals moving forward. If your company has been posting a bunch of ads or posts that have no engagement, evaluating what is working and what isn’t will help you craft meaningful steps to move forward with your social media goal.

Create a Plan with Milestones and Deadlines

The company has a goal and has completed an evaluation of the current social strategy. The next step in creating a good social media plan is to create milestones that you want to meet. Each milestone should have a deadline by which each on needs to be met. This way you can see if the actions you are taking are working towards your goal.

Finger with popular social media logos printed on paper.Don’t Skimp on the Profile

A majority of what happens on social media is directly related to individual posts, but that doesn’t mean your company should neglect the important aspect of having a complete and professional social media profile. Although the profile section of your accounts on each platform may not play an active role in your social media strategy, it can improve it if done correctly.

The photo for your profile should be consistent across all social media platforms and provide a way for current customers and potential customers to recognize your brand.

The About or Bio section of your profile should also be completed, providing fans and followers with a concise description of what your company does and what they stand for. A good way to also get the most out of this profile section is to optimize it with SEO strategies so your keywords and phrases appear within your company description.

Keep It Flexible

No single social media strategy will work for every business. Even with a lot of research and evaluation, you may not start out with a strategy that works for the type of audience you are trying to communicate with. Make sure that your plan is flexible enough that if you find that some actions are not working as well as others, you can shift your plan to include more of what is working to meet your goals.

Social media is a constantly changing environment. If you are not sure where to start, you can look for professionals to help you with your social media strategy. Please contact us for more information about social strategies for businesses.