Building a successful strategy for social media platforms
Why formulate the strategy?
Many social media, public relations and digital marketing officials go to creating accounts on social media without formulating a clear-cut strategy that enables them to benefit from presence and achieve the desired goal of using digital platforms. One of the most important reasons for the failure of many public and private enterprise accounts on social media is the lack of a clear and written strategy. The strategy for social media is not just about creating accounts or publishing an update and informing the public of a new product or service for sale, but rather an important means that enables sectors and social media managers to interact with the target audience and understand its requirements.
Here are the necessary steps that must be contained in the social media strategy.
Step 1: formulate goals
Goal setting is the first step in creating a social media strategy, and here are some ideas for social media goals that must align with the higher management goals.
- Understand what you want? Where are you going?
- What is the purpose of social media launch?
- Is the goal to raise brand awareness or build identity?
- Is the goal to increase sales?
- Or more visitors on the Internet site?
- Or increase the loyalty and retention of the public or customers?
It is best to identify (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges) using SOWT analysis to know your current reality and how it can be developed.
Step 2: choosing smart goals
For a successful social media strategy, S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound).
For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you need to increase your branding on social media by 50 percent, taking into account the alignment of goals and their relevance to the organization’s goals, that the goal is achievable and not just wishful thinking, and ensure that the goals For example, you need to achieve 50 percent growth in identity awareness within six months. Once you set your goals and make sure that they are measurable. And look for networking analysis tools to track and analyze your goals, and where you got, which helps you discover problems early.
Step 3: Target the audience
The third step in creating a communication strategy is to define the target audience, so you will only succeed in the social media strategy if you target the right people with the right messages, and to understand the audience you must target the age group of 18-35 if you want young technology enthusiasts and social media users. The identification of the audience is one of the most important steps for success on social media, and audiences can be identified through knowledge of:
- Demographics
- Occupations
- Income level
- Social customs
- Activities and interests
- Favorite content
Step 4: search for competitors
When it comes to social media, understanding competitors gives you a lot to know what works and what doesn’t, because competitors target the same customers that you target. And when you ignore competitors ’study, you lose an opportunity to learn from their successes and their mistakes. Studying competitors contributes to developing your message and providing added value.
Searching for competitors includes knowing active social networks, studying their content, the type of sources they use, and how to talk about products and topics that focus on them. By visiting your competitors ’social media accounts and writing answers to the following questions:
- What social networks do they use?
- How do they use communications to increase revenue?
- What are the most popular topics for their audience?
- What strategies do they work with?
- What do they miss?
Step 5: Define the platforms and staff
The fifth step in building a social media strategy is to define digital platforms, and define the priorities and tasks assigned to the work team, and it is best to clarify this next step:
Digital platforms where your audience resides, such as: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, preferably looking for platforms that serve your strategy and do not waste your efforts among all platforms.
Teamwork such as: social network managers, content makers, strategy planners, designers, and data analysts, defining their assignments and how long they should be completed.
Step 6: Create and schedule content
It determines the type of content to be posted on social media such as: visual content, digital ads, or content marketing. In this section of social media strategy, you will document guidelines for your social media content. Begin by creating a guide that explains how you communicate with your followers:
Are you seeking entertainment, media or education?
Will you use humor, inspiration, or data to communicate with your audience?
How will you respond to public complaints?
How do you deal with Internet trolls?
Set policies that your team can follow in order to be consistent with the way your brand communicates on social media. Then choose the types of media you will publish and make sure:
- How will you design your content for each platform, each social network has a distinct personality, and it is better not to republish the same article and messages on each platform.
- Take the time to craft and optimize your captions, photos and videos to fit the platform.
- Include guidelines to ensure your content aligns with your goals.
- Develop policies that explain how your team will schedule your posts.
Step 7: Measuring performance
Here are some key performance indicators that help measure participation, access, and knowledge of return on investment:
- Access
- Reactions
- Likes
- Comments
- Posts
- Clicking on the links
- Video views
- Average watch time