social media strategy requires some serious brainstorming (at first) and a deep look at the long-term business goals.
There are a lot of things you could measure, including engagement, traffic, email signups, brand awareness, but which ones are really meaningful for your over-arching business goals? How do you decide what to keep your eyes on?
Here are five simple steps to help you create an effective social media strategy and stay on track for your business goals.
1) Set Social Media Goals That Are In Alignment With Your Over-Arching Business Goals.
If you want to make the most of your social media activities (and budget), it’s critical that you align your objectives with the overall business goals and brand values. If all parts of your business are moving in different directions, you’re not going to make any progress, you’ll waste time and energy and never meet your goals.
When setting your social media goals, make sure to zoom out and take a look at the overall picture. This is the WHAT phase, where you take your big WHY (e.g. helping people smile freely again) and find the best route to achieve this. Reconnect with the vision you have for your business, the reasons why you got started, the impact you want to make and then zoom in again to set stepping stones for helping you achieve your vision.
2) Break Down Your Goals Into Bite-Size Actionable Tactics.
This is where you take your WHAT (e.g. making sure everybody in your area hears about your practice) and find the HOW to make it happen. List all the specific actions you can take to make the WHAT a reality. The specific tactics depend on your target audience, product / service, location, but the core is always the same: mapping out the steps from the strategy (WHAT) into specific tactical actions (HOW).
3) Tie Everything Into A Plan.
Because every business, no matter how big or small, has limited resources, it’s important to prioritize your tactics and pour them efficiently into a social media marketing plan.
How do you prioritize the things that need to get done? Here are two simple steps:
- Determine how much value each tactic can bring to the business, as well as the effort required for implementation;
- Prioritize the highest value tactics that require the least amount of effort for implementation
The value and execution time for each tactic varies and the best thing is to experiment for 30 days and see what works best for your business.
4) Delegate And Set Deadlines.
Once you’ve prioritized the tactics required to help you carry out your strategy, the next thing you need to do is to assign both a team member (or it could be just you) who will implement each tactic, as well as a deadline for each tactic. This ensures maximum clarity on what needs to be done and by when.
5) Measure And Adapt.
This is the final step of your social media strategy and a crucial ingredient for a successful execution. Once you’ve put all the pieces into place, zooming out to your WHY, deciding on the WHAT and the HOW, it’s time to take a step back and analyze. This is the phase where you measure what’s working, adapting where needed and eliminating the tactics that yield the least amount of value for your business.
Think of this entire strategizing effort as taking a trip across the country. First, you come up with your WHY, the reason you’ve decided to take the trip. Next, you figure out the WHAT will take you from point A to point B (e.g. your car). And last, you set the specific HOW to get there (e.g. how many stops, best routes, etc.). Then, you keep your eyes on the map to make sure you’re heading in the right direction.
What’s Your Way Of Strategizing Social Media?
We’d love to know how you are utilizing social media to stay focused on your business goals and have fun on the way to reaching them. We’re excited to hear your thoughts in the comments below.