For brands using Social Media as an aspect of their web marketing plan, their social media strategy is the driving force behind how they approach their target market in the social media space. Without being redundant, it is important to remember that this strategy is the plan set forth at the initiation of a social media marketing plan detailing the content, networks, timeline and execution meant to gain the attention and response with social media. In other words, your social media strategy notes the Who, What, Why, How, and Where of this portion of your web marketing plan.
Stage 1 – Who
Who is your target market? Who is your brand in the social media space? These are the questions you have to tackle before you write one tweet, join a single group or build one profile in any social media site. Once you delineate the target market you plan to approach with your social media plan, you can do the research necessary to find out where they exist in the social media space.
Tip: Some sites are more B2B than B2C oriented. That being said, just because you are looking towards a B2C target market doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t build a LinkedIn profile for your business, just that you may want to focus your content distribution more heavily on other sites like Facebook or Twitter.
Who is your brand in the social-media sphere? Find out which of your competitors is utilizing the social media space for their brand (chances are many if not all of them are) and see how they’re interacting with your prospects. Build your pages, profiles and content strategy (see “Stage 2, What”) to help your brand stand out from your competition.
Stage 2 – What
What are you going to say to your target market? Your social media content strategy needs to specify the message you want to send to your clients, and that means deciding what products, tools or services you want to share about in your content. Once you know what you want to say, you can decide how you want to say it.
Stage 3 – Why
Why are you using social media in your web marketing plan? What goals to you intend to accomplish with your social media content and networking? Brand awareness, SEO, increased sales, first-level prospect outreach and improvements to customer service are all reasons to make social media an aspect of your web marketing plan.
Stage 4 – How
How you chare out content relates to the form of content you plan to use. Tweets, posts, blogs, articles, press releases, webinars, videos, the form of your content can have a significant effect on the response rate from your prospects and clients. Mix it up and keep the timeline firm so your contacts know when to expect or seek out your next social media shares.
Stage 5 – Where
Understanding where your target market exists within social media sites will drive the aspect of your social media networking and content strategy relating to the sites you plan to use to share out your content. Regular monitoring of response rates will help you see if you need to adjust where you share your social media content for the best ROI, return on investment, within your social media profiles.
When building your social media strategy, follow the Who, What, Why, How and Where process to be sure you use social media to the best advantage for your content and marketing goals.