Building a social media strategy is crucial in expanding your brand. When building your business’ online presence, it’s important to be strategic, educated on your audience (or target audience) and consistent. Every business is different and there is no “one size fits all” of social media strategies.
First, you want to identify your audience, or the audience you’re trying to get. What age are they? Does your product/service aim at a certain gender? What does your audience do in their free time? What is the best way to interact with them? Are they on the internet from their mobile devices or desktops? When is their free time? – These questions may seem exhaustive, but these are all important factors in creating your social media strategy. There are a couple of ways to find this information out. Sending out surveys to your subscribers/followers/clients, looking at censuses, analytics, studies and general research on the people who are following you already are all great ways to find out who your audience is, what they do and how they act online. Once you find this information out, you can create a plan tailored to them.
Different demographics use social media differently. Knowing how your audience behaves online is important in being strategic in your posts. If your target audience is 30 to 45-year-old professionals, you want to consider when and where they are spending their free time. If they are professionals, they are more likely to be on LinkedIn than say an 18-year-old. Again, professionals usually are working 9-5 type jobs. So posting early in the morning, before they go to work, or after they are off work and at home may be the best time to get their attention on social media. This demonstrates why it is so important to know your audience because every single demographic is different. While posting to every social media platform throughout the entire day can work (the ‘casting a wide net’ approach), it is not always efficient. Save your time and energy and be resourceful in your planning and posting.
If you are trying to grow your existing audience, dive right into the social media posts. Post articles, original and links from your website, daily. Keep these posts consistent. Try to post at least one or two articles every week day. Engage with the followers you do have. If someone comments or shares a post of yours, comment on it. You want to create an open communication relationship with your consumers.
Gaining new followers can take a little more time. You still want to be consistent in your posting to your social media accounts but there are also a few other things you can do that have the potential to help grow your audience. Using hashtags and tagging relevant people/pages is a simple way to start.
Say you work for a small accounting firm. It can be very difficult to compete with large firms and companies for clients when you just simply don’t have the advertising budget that can compete with a large company. Your small firm posts an article to their Twitter called, “The 5 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Filing Their Own Taxes,” this article would only be seen by those who follow your Twitter or who happen to run across your page. Adding a hashtag or tag can make your post more visible. So instead you could post, “The 5 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Filing Their Own #Taxes by @JohnDoe from @JohnDoeAccountingFirm #TaxSeason.” The use of hashtagging things like ‘taxes’ or ‘tax season’ will allow people who are on Twitter looking at tax-related posts to see your post. These are people looking for either tax advice or news and those are the people who are more likely to click on your post, follow your accounts or better yet, call you for their own tax needs. Tagging the authors, firms and related businesses or people is a great way to get other people to promote your posts (and your brand) for you. John Doe could share (or retweet for the purposes of our example) your article, allowing his followers to see the post. Same idea applies to John Doe Accounting Firm. These two accounts retweeting your article will allow a huge group of new and potential clients/followers to have access to your account. Even if they don’t try to gain your services, they will have seen your name/logo/website link and this name recognition can also build followers over time. Officially having an online presence.
Arguably the three most important things to remember when creating your social media strategy is identifying your audience (or target audience), being consistent in your posts (so don’t post every four weeks, but close to every day) and be efficient in your approach (use your time wisely and be strategic to find the best way to reach your target audience). These three things, while they can take time, is a simple, free way to build your online presence and grow your business.
For more tips on social media management, content sharing and media strategies, follow Mollie Macklin on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.