Social media is an important part of our lives, so social media marketing is not something you can ignore when thinking about your digital marketing strategy.

However, simply having social media accounts for your business is not enough on its own; you will need a solid strategy for your social media.

The Goal

What is your goal for your social media? Do you want to increase brand awareness, sales, and reach; educate people about your product or services; or something else? There are a lot of different goals you can set for this task, and you can always set multiple goals.

If you have trouble deciding what your goal is, think about what types of content you would like to share on your social media accounts. Then, you may be able to determine what your goals are, based on that. You can also enlist the help of a digital marketing agency; they have trained specialists who can help you determine what goals you may have for your social media and how to go about achieving those goals.

The Type of Content You Share

Once you know what your goals are, you need to decide what kind of content you will be sharing. Do you have products to share? Blogs you wrote? Articles written by others that are relevant to your brand? Behind the scenes footage? How-to tutorials? The possibilities are truly endless.

To help you figure out what you want to share, sit down and write out all the types of content you can think of that fit with your organization. Once you have everything written down, think about what your audience might enjoy, and focus on that. You can always try different types of content too, to see what kind of response you get from your audience. You may find yourself surprised to discover some of the things they find engaging.

Deciding on Content

Once you have decided what kinds of content you want to share, you can start finding it. This is another list you can put together. Come up with different categories to put everything into, then sort from there. Some examples of possible themes are product information, guides, news, podcasts, and announcements.

After you have everything in categories, begin going through content and determining what things fit together the best. Decide how you can turn these into a narrative that your audience will find interesting. You can always reach out to a digital marketing agency to help you with your social media content strategy.

What Platforms are Best for Your Business

Every social media platform has different demographics, so that is something important to keep in mind. Take some time to research each social media platform to determine where you need to focus your efforts. For example, if you are trying to reach an older crowd, Facebook is likely going to be your best bet, but if you were trying to reach Gen Z, TikTok would be more worthwhile for you than Facebook.

Brand Voice

Once you determine who your audience is, you can decide what type of voice to use on your social media posts. Should you sound like an authority on your subject, or have a more casual tone? Will you be using “gonna” or “kinda” instead of “going to” or “kind of?” Are you going to be peppering your posts with emojis?

These depend on who your intended audience is. You will need to spend some time thinking about what style of tone your audience will respond best to. Whatever you decide, be sure you remain consistent in your voice; if you change it, you will end up sounding unauthentic to your audience and possibly lose credibility with them.

This can also help you determine what kind of content to post; the types of content people want to see on specific platforms is also something to keep in mind. Just because something is popular on Facebook does not mean that your Instagram or LinkedIn followers will enjoy it, and vice versa.

Engage with Your Followers

You need to do more with your social media accounts than simply posting a few things a week and responding to the occasional comment or message. Being on social media means anyone with an internet connection can reach out to you. Before you get started on your social media, determine how your brand will respond to things.

You will get questions from customers, complaints, reviews, tags from customers showing off your product, and more. Will you respond to every message, comment, review, and complaint you receive? How will you respond to the negative comments? Take the time to determine how you will handle these and more. The best way for your brand to gain awareness is to engage with your followers.

Study the Competition

Your competitors are probably already using social media, so take a look at what they are doing. If they are only focused on one or two platforms, look into why. Are they neglecting an audience base by ignoring that platform, or is your target audience simply not on that platform much? The platform they are ignoring might be an opportunity for you to grow.

Look at the content they are sharing and examine the responses they seem to be getting from it. Is any of the content they are or are not sharing in your current plan? If they are neglecting certain areas of the content types you had in mind, those may be an opportunity for you. The content they are sharing that is on your plan can also be an opportunity for you; you may be able to sharpen up your plan based on your competition.

Conclusion

These tips can help you get started on planning your social media strategy for your organization. With the right social media plan, your brand can flourish on social media. For more in-depth help, contact Seattle Digital Marketing today, and our agency can help get you started.