Define Your Plan
- Goals What do you hope to achieve? Brand awareness, lead generation and customer engagement are just a few goals you can consider when nailing down your strategy.
- Audit You can get tons of information and ideas by looking at big brand websites along with competitors. See what content they’re producing and how followers are interacting. What’s working and what isn’t? This information can help craft your unique strategy.
- Calendar Develop a social media calendar to schedule content and post times. SmallBizTrends has an easy-to-use template available in Word, Excel or a PDF document for a free download here: Social Media Calendar Template for Small Business
- Evaluate and Adjust It’s important to evaluate and test how your efforts are paying off. Social Media experts SproutSocial have developed a comprehensive guide to help you gauge how you’re doing: The Ultimate Social Media Testing Guide
Create Your Content
- Add Videos Images and Visuals It’s no secret that visually appealing posts will get attention. After all, people go on social media to be entertained. Use images, videos, GIFs and memes to engage your audience. These days, you can even snap a high quality photo on your phone and quickly upload it to a social media platform. Get inspired by taking a look at brands that have caught your eye to learn how they are successfully (or unsuccessfully) using visuals. Take a look at how this pet product company is using eye-catching visuals to engage their audience: EarthDog Instagram
- Quality over Quantity Posting constantly, posting the same message over or posting irrelevant content can cause follower fatigue. In a battle between quality and quantity, quality wins. As you build your online community, post relevant content. You’ll likely see an increase in views, likes and shares. Ask yourself if it’s helpful information and relevant to what the audience is looking for. No matter what you’re posting, check the analytics to determine which posts are most successful.
Social Media Management
"It takes discipline not to let social media steal your time." These words of wisdom are from Alexis Ohanian, an Internet entrepreneur who co-founded the social news website Reddit.
Business owners are busy enough without getting tangled up in social media management. Some entrepreneurs might have the bandwidth to handle the ins and outs. If not, don’t give up. Task a person on your team with social media responsibilities or hire an outside professional. To help you find the right fit, review this article from the SmartBiz Blog: How to Hire a Social Media Strategist