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Creating a Simple Social Media Strategy

Move your business forward, without moving mountains.

By Francis MilliganPublished 6 years ago 5 min read
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With social media usage on the rise every day and more ways for people to connect with each other, share their lives' little tidbits and be exposed to by many companies, what can be done to ensure that your social media output can take off to help you grow?

Here are 10 basic steps on how to create a simple social media strategy that’ll help any campaign have an online presence.

  1. Firstly, the easiest part of all—grab yourself a cup of coffee… a HUGE cup of coffee! (They're not all that simple.)
  2. The first real thing you should do is create some objectives. Without objectives, you’re not working towards anything. These objectives can be anything at all but make sure that your objectives are SMART (Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time). Having specific objectives that can be measured due to having a realistic goal making them achievable within a suitable time frame means your campaign can be evaluated afterward. Evaluation is key... you'll see later!
  3. This part is perhaps the most key first stepping stone. Without it, you’ll be throwing your social media presence everywhere, anywhere, and in all the wrong places. Identify your target market; be very specific with this and make sure you do your market research properly. If you communicate with the wrong demographic and psychographic then your conversion rates will be incredibly low. Three key points to identifying your target market are simple points but must be done in depth. i) Who do you want to communicate to? ii) Who are your perfect customers? iii) Where are they physically? Knowing these things will benefit you greatly when you begin to put yourself out there on social media. Creating audiences on certain platforms is super simple these days.
  4. Get creative, generate content, and document. The idea of generating content and not creating it is crucial for the current digital landscape. I wrote something similar to this article four years ago, and I constantly spoke about making beautiful content. Creating content is time-consuming, documenting your business happenings is not. Be creative when you post but also share all those other parts of your business process, your thoughts, your feelings, your methods. Don't give away company secrets, just get your audience engaged.
  5. Sharing, not selling. Nobody wants to be met with a bunch of shouty ads that are the same bullshit you see elsewhere. "You can buy this for £X" or "buy now" buttons splashed across your feed. You're telling them a story. You're sharing your products or services in a manner that makes them valuable to the audience, not in a way that makes them slide by your post as they know it's an attempt to sell. Get creative with it.
  6. Now that you have a large enough fan base/community and you know which of your social networks work best, you can determine which ones to focus mostly upon in order to maintain your community. This one is an on-going process, but it's super important. 10 years ago, nobody thought about vlogging as a mainstream communication tool. Now there are vloggers joining us every single day... but not all of them should be. I write because I'm good at it; put me in front of a camera... you start to feel a little less interested. Find what works for you and your audience.
  7. Optimize your website and all other marketing efforts (whether that be online or offline) to include link and references to your social media sites. It is a simple step but can have massive amounts of success for increasing your online reach and presence. Your 13.5 million impressions on your site are great, but are they missing our daily posts on Facebook?
  8. Engage and build relationships with your audience! Keep your community entertained. What are a few direct posts here and there? Keep the consumer happy; it's simple to do. Content leads to conversation > conversation leads to relationships > relationships lead to business > business lead to ROI. It all goes down in the DM's.
  9. Develop a daily activity plan to guide your posting frequency, engagement activity, community growth, and relationship building. A simple chart can be made for a weekly basis or a new one each day—I suggest you get a spreadsheet for this, much easier. The chart can include engagement sessions with community, posts, generating content, really whatever you feel like is right for that time and will benefit you. The main point is just to keep your campaign moving and know you're focusing on what you’re sharing and when to share it.
  10. Now the finish. You’ve run your campaign, it's come to its end date… but how have you done? Evaluation is the final point of any campaign and if anyone feels otherwise then I strongly disagree. Evaluating your campaign allows you to check if you met those all-important objectives (remember point number 2?). If yes, then what worked best? And if you didn’t meet them, what went wrong? Evaluating this allows you to keep up the good work or fix it for the next time around!

Bonus point! Post campaign, don’t let the heat disappear. Keep boiling away and continue to grow your audience. Don’t stop documenting because your campaign is over.

Well, those are the 10 simple steps to creating your campaign. Take it or leave it, add to it or remove from it; however, this is the foundation for building something great.

“There is no reason why you can’t talk to the world, it doesn’t need to be your thoughts or feelings all the time.” - Gary Vaynerchuk
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About the Creator

Francis Milligan

28. Glasgow, UK.

Social Media Lead. Agency Owner. Marketing Lecturer.

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