Social Media
Research shows social media’s growing popularity. Studies show more and more organisations rely on social media as a marketing channel. As more and more organisations experiment with this form of media, they are finding certain platforms are more effective than others. For example studies show retailers find Facebook and Instagram most effective when communicating with their target audience. However LinkedIn has proven more effective for B2B organisations. Let us now look at how to build a social media strategy that works.
Getting Started
Social media strategy is one of the most powerful tools in any organisations marketing arsenal. One of the key aspects when creating a social media strategy is to determine and understand what you hope to get from the strategy. Define your desirable outcomes from the very start. What is it you are trying to achieve? Are you trying to increase sales, raise awareness or build customer loyalty? Whatever your goals are they should be clearly defined from the outset. Once you have clearly defined what it is you hope to achieve, it is important to form measurable objectives and goals. A S.M.A.R.T strategy is advised when goal setting. S.M.A.R.T is an acronym for specific, measurable attainable, relevant and time based.
Competition
Careful Analysis of the competition can give your company a competitive advantage. Reviewing your competitions social media activity allows an organisation to see where the competition was successful and where it made mistakes. Upon examination of your competitors it would be advised to investigate which social media platforms they appear on and what content they produce.
The importance of Social Media analysis
Many organisations are already analysing social media, even if it is on a minor level. For example examining whether your followers prefer text content compared to images is a form of analysis. Studying the results of your post to better understand when followers are more likely to engage with your post is also a form of analysis. Social media allows for quick and easy insight into the effectiveness of your content. The most valuable metrics in terms of post engagement are likes retweets and shares. These metrics show which people looked at your content and engaged in the content. Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics provide great analytics for these platforms. Analytics provide great insight into which posts are most compelling and engaging. Analytics allows organisations to spot trends that may appear in relation to different posts.
Hashtags
Hashtags play a crucial role in social media marketing. Hashtags are most commonly used on Twitter and Instagram and to a lesser degree on Facebook. Hashtags provide a connection for those interested in your content, to enter into a viral conversation. To put it simply Hashtags make your tweets and posts easy to find. Hashtags allow organisations to reach out beyond their audience and target new followers.
Imagery
Studies show that Images play a crucial role in successful posts. Sharing entertaining or encouraging post that includes an image, leads to greater post reach and visibility. Tweets that include images are retweeted 35% more. Using Tweet cards users can attach images and videos to tweets. This allows users to upload richer content and drive people to their site in greater numbers. As social media has grown in popularity, so to have social feed congestion. Social media users are constantly bombarded with organisations vying for their attention. Now more than ever it has become imperative for organisations to generate powerful graphics to captivate their audience.
Recommendations
I would recommend incorporating these tips into your social media strategy. Over time you will be able to see which tips are most beneficial for your marketing strategy. It is crucial to remember that each platform is unique, and as such should be approached in a unique manner. One size dos not fit all when it comes to social media. Managing content across different platforms can be time consuming. Downloading a management tool such as Hootsuite would be recommended. These tools can help manage social media across various platforms and save time.
