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Social Media 101: Developing a Strategy

Before jumping into anything, it’s important to come up with a plan, or in the case, a strategy. For businesses, a social media strategy is very important. It’s a confusing world out there, so diving right in might be a little too overwhelming. Before developing a social media strategy, here are some things to think about:

Identify Your Objective

First and foremost, clarify your purpose. Evaluate who you are, what you’re going to be using social media for, what you want to gain and why you’re doing this.

Target Your Audience

Who is your target demographic? Are you trying to connect with leaders in your industry, the mommy bloggers in your local area or potential customers that you want to introduce your product to? From there, determine your audience’s needs, wants and challenges. Learn their behaviors: what websites they use the most, when they’re online, etc. Try and uncover anything and everything you can about your audience. This will help you now and in the future.

Choose Your Theme

What do you want your audience to do? Why are you doing this? Is it for awareness? Are you trying to sell more product?(s) Is it to build loyalty amongst your customers?

Review Your Metrics

How are you going to measure the success of your strategy? Depending on your objective, audience and theme, this variable could be measures differently. If you’re looking for brand awareness, you want to focus on the growth and engagement amongst your fans and followers. Measure the sharability, likes and subscribers. Sales is numbers. Compare you clicks to eCommerce sales and conversion rates. Loyalty measurement also includes engagement but incorporates influence; how have your fans influenced others?

Before metrics, you should define your KPIs (key performance indicators). What are you goals? Which milestones would you like to reach? What certain measurements do you want to be sure to monitor?

After developing your strategy, you’re ready to implement. Well, almost. After you build your pages, develop a content calendar and assign responsibilities.