Oh, social media. We all have a marmite relationship with it, right? It's definitely an on/off love/hate situation, but let's face it... we all know that we need it in some form for our small biz.
So, this week I want to talk about strategizing your socials.
On a basic level, a social media strategy is a game plan, fused within your marketing strategy, on how to connect with your audience over socials. It is the what, when, how, and why for all the content you post on your business’s social pages.
This plan has to consider who you are targeting your content to, what content you are posting, when you're posting it and why you want to share it.
Let's go through it step by step...
1. Who is your target audience?
The first thing to consider before doing anything else is to know exactly who you want to target and what they want to see. You want to know exactly what social media channels your target customer is using and what sort of content they're engaging with,
To give you an example, it might be that your customer is on Instagram, Pinterest and Tiktok. So there is no point in you putting time and energy into posting on LinkedIn and Twitter because they're not looking there.
Knowing this will be invaluable so take some time to do the research, it will be the most important part of your social media strategy.
2. What are your content pillars?
This is the next, also super important, part of your plan. What are you going to share on social media?
Content pillars are the fundamental principles of your content strategy. They provide a purpose for your content, ensuring your social media is clearly marketed toward your target audience.
Your content needs to be varied, providing a range of offerings to your audience. Each pillar provides a different aspect for your customer, but also provides you with a base from which to work when creating your content. The pillars should be a mix of promotional, educational, personal and social, and you can decide how often you want to share content based on each pillar.
3. When are we going to share this content?
Once you have your plan in place and you know what you want to share, it can be super beneficial to create a content calendar.
Plan out in advance, either a week or a month at a time, everything you want to share over that course of time and target it to times that your customer will be responsive to that particular type of content.
Look at the days and times that your customer is active online, when will they be looking at social media? What do they want to do at that specific time? Bear in mind things like working days, weekends, and bank holidays.
Creating a content calendar in advance can also take the pressure off having to be consistently active on social media, which we all know can take up waaaay too much time.
4. The fine details
Once you've figured out the who, what, and when, it can be super beneficial to just go that one step further and add the icing on the cake.
Create a hashtag strategy to help gain new attention to your posts. You want to be using hashtags that are relevant to your target audience.
Look at your engagement as a strategy. What is the best way for you to show up online to represent your business? You want to let your followers know where you’ll be and when, if you remain consistent, so will they.
Think about your captions. The goal of a caption is to keep your audience involved with your content for longer, or to lead them to an external site to engage with you there!
Struggling to keep up with your social media presence? I can provide social media management tailored to your business requirements across Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Give yourself the time to elevate your business and I'll sort out your socials ✨ get in touch with me here.
L x
Laura Mackenzie
Creative Virtual Assistant at Kelp Collective