Identify Business Goals<\/h3>\n

Every piece of your social media strategy serves the goals you set. You simply can\u2019t move forward without knowing what you\u2019re working toward.<\/p>\n

Look closely at your company\u2019s overall needs<\/strong>\u00a0and decide how you want to\u00a0use social media to contribute to reaching them<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll undoubtedly come up with several personalized goals, but there are a few that all companies should include in their strategy\u2014increasing brand awareness, retaining customers and reducing marketing costs are relevant to everyone.<\/p>\n

Set Marketing Objectives<\/h3>\n

Goals aren\u2019t terribly useful if you don\u2019t\u00a0have specific parameters that define when each is achieved<\/strong>. For example, if one of your primary goals is generating leads and sales, how many leads and sales do you have to generate before you consider that goal a success?<\/p>\n

Using our previous example, if your goal is to generate leads and sales, a specific marketing objective may be to increase leads by 50%. In order to measure your progress,\u00a0choose which analytics and tracking tools you need to have in place<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Setting yourself up for failure is never a good idea. If you set an objective of increasing sales by 1,000%, it\u2019s doubtful you\u2019ll meet it.\u00a0Choose objectives you can achieve<\/strong>, given the resources you have.<\/p>\n

Research Competition<\/h3>\n

When it comes to social media marketing,\u00a0researching your competition\u00a0not only keeps you apprised of their activity, it gives you an idea of what\u2019s working so you can integrate those successful tactics into your own efforts.<\/p>\n

Start by compiling a list of at least 3-5 main competitors<\/strong>.\u00a0Search which social networks they\u2019re using and analyze their content strategy<\/strong>. Look at their number of fans or followers, posting frequency and time of day.<\/p>\n

Also\u00a0pay attention to the type of content they\u2019re posting and its context<\/strong>\u00a0(humorous, promotional, etc.) and how they\u2019re responding to their fans.<\/p>\n

The most important activity to look at is engagement. Even though page admins are the only ones who can calculate engagement rate on a particular update, you can get a good idea of what they\u2019re seeing.<\/p>\n

Choose Channels and Tactics<\/h3>\n

Many businesses create accounts on every popular social network without researching which platform will bring the most return. You can\u00a0avoid wasting your time in the wrong place<\/strong>\u00a0by using the information from your buyer personas to\u00a0determine which platform is best for you.<\/p>\n

If your prospects or customers tell you they spend 40% of their online time on\u00a0Facebook and 20% on\u00a0Twitter, you\u00a0know which primary and secondary social networks you should focus on<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

When your customers are using a specific network, that\u2019s where you need to be\u2014not everywhere else.<\/p>\n

Create a Content Strategy<\/h3>\n

Content and social media\u00a0have a symbiotic relationship: Without great content social media is meaningless and without social media nobody will know about your content. Use them together to reach and convert your prospects.<\/p>\n

There are three main components to any\u00a0successful social media content strategy: type of content, time of posting and frequency of posting.<\/p>\n

Allocate Budget and Resources<\/h3>\n

To budget for social media marketing,\u00a0look at the tactics you\u2019ve chosen to achieve your business goals and objectives<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Make a comprehensive list of the tools you need<\/strong>\u00a0(e.g., social media monitoring, email marketing and CRM), services you\u2019ll outsource (e.g., graphic design or video production) and any\u00a0advertising\u00a0you\u2019ll purchase. Next to each,\u00a0include the annual projected cost<\/strong>\u00a0so you can have a high-level view of what you\u2019re investing in and how it affects your marketing budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Identify Business Goals Every piece of your social media strategy serves the goals you set. You simply can\u2019t move forward without knowing what you\u2019re working toward. Look closely at your company\u2019s overall needs\u00a0and decide how you want to\u00a0use social media to contribute to reaching them. You\u2019ll undoubtedly come up with several personalized goals, but there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30,21,28,27,20],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":653,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions\/653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}