06 September 2016 by Caroline Levey

Create an Effective Social Media Strategy Today!

Social media is more than simply posting on Facebook and other online platforms, and hoping for the best. Instead, it’s a marketing platform where a strong and strategic social media presence forms a critical part of the purchase decision-making process. 

Here are 5 steps to help you create an effective social media strategy:

1. Create social media objectives and goals

The first step to any social media strategy is to establish the objectives and goals that you hope to achieve. These goals need to be aligned with your broader marketing strategy so that your social media efforts drive towards your business objectives. A simple way to start your social media marketing plan is by writing down at least three social media goals. This could be anything from wanting to build brand awareness to product promotion.

2. Create a content plan and editorial calendar

Having great content is an important key to social media success. Here, you need to determine what type of content to share and create, ensure your content is SEO friendly, how often you will post content and determine your ideal target audience.

3. Use analytics to measure, report, and optimise

To find out what is working with your social media strategy, you should constantly be tracking your progress through online analytics. At Online Innovations, we use an online tool to track and measure engagement efforts on our social networks and we present this to our clients on a monthly basis.

4. Use social media to feed traffic to your website

Social media is a great platform to redirect people to your website. You can do this by attaching links from your blog articles or products and services offered on your website and share this onto your social networks.

5. Take advantage of paid advertising on social media

Social media offers many benefits one of them being that it is more affordable than traditional advertising. It also provides you with the opportunity to hone in on your audience. This means you’re able to reach a larger, more targeted audience by selecting their age, interests, location, and demographics.

Social media Tools

Buffer or CoSchedule are tools which allow you to write social media posts. They allow you to post ahead of time and then schedule when you want them sent out. Depending on the channel you can use Buffer's  recommends on how often to post:

• Tweet at least 5 times a day.
• Post to Facebook between 5-10 times per week.
• Post to LinkedIn once per day (or at least 20 times per month).

 

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