Take Your Business’s Social Marketing to the Next Level with this Four-Step Social Media Strategy

Does your business have a social media strategy, or does your brand post blindly hoping to grow its social marketing presence?  Most business owners understand that there needs to be a road map – a set of goals and a plan to execute those goals – in order to be successful.  When it comes to social media marketing, however, many of these same business owners neglect to develop a specific strategy.  We’re going to share a simple, four-step process to get you started.

End in Mind

Start with the end in mind by defining an exact goal or set of goals for what you wish to accomplish.  This goal could be to develop brand awareness, create a customer service tool, increase lead-generation or to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.  Setting a goal first is key to establishing a strong foundation to build your social marketing success upon.

Metric System

Next, establish a set of metrics which will determine whether or not your social network strategy is successful.  If you want to understand your ROI, then you need to match your metrics with your defined goal.  These metrics can include: email sign-ups, retweeted tweets, Facebook for business engagement rates, customer sentiment scores, and blog/website traffic referrals

Getting There

Your third step for developing a social media marketing strategy is to determine the tactics you will use on your social networks to reach your goals.  The question of how you allocate your resources will be answered in this step.  For example, if you are B2B business who wants to increase leads and you have a target market of 35 – 65 year-old male sales professionals, then you’ll want to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and very little – if any – on Pinterest.

A Day’s Work

Can you guess the fourth step?  If you guessed step four was to execute your strategy, then you are correct.  Performing the daily activities – posting, commenting, following-up, tweeting, maintaining a social media calendar, etc. – will take you from point A to point B.  The time, effort and resources you allocate day in and day out must be there or you will never see social marketing success.

Bonus Time

Would you like a bonus tip?  After a set amount of time (i.e. every Quarter, after 6 months, etc.), analyse and assess your strategy.  Also, did deep into social analytics to see how your audience is responding to your tactics.  Then, tweak your plan to amplify your successes and weed our your weaknesses.

How does your social media marketing strategy match up to the above four-step plan?  Share your thoughts, ideas, successes and opinions in our comments below.