No matter your business, social media will always play a critical role in getting the word out there about your product or service, in connecting to your customers, and in refining and strengthening your brand as a whole.

Today, there’s more than one “right” way to utilise social media, and depending on your business and target audience, you may need to engage with them on just one or two platforms (for example, Instagram and TikTok), or you may need to be across it all.

Social media marketing enables you to boost your brand awareness, create and communicate with a community that aligns with your business and your brand values, facilitate important dialogue about how you can improve and expand your offer, and most importantly – to sell!

Just as running a successful business requires a detailed business plan, your social media plan should be equally comprehensive, and this Social Media Plan series will take you through the key steps to creating a social media strategy that can be executed by you, or a social media expert that you take on as part of your team.

Social Media Analysis

The first step? Understanding your target market and how they prefer to engage on social media. You might already have a detailed analysis of your audience and customers, but take this opportunity to dive deeper on where they like to spend their time online. This analysis will give you focus and importantly, guide you as to where to spend your valuable social media marketing dollars.

It’s helpful to be able to easily identify your customer ‘avatar’ or ‘persona’, knowing their age range, location, interests and what drives them to engage with you (or your industry in general).

Impulse-buy, buzz-worthy products are always a hit on Instagram, and their shopping feature allows customers to seamlessly browse and buy without leaving the app. Some services or products will thrive on professional social media sites like LinkedIn, and others, Facebook.

Just as important as knowing your customers’ behaviour online, is knowing the metrics from these target social media platforms. Once you have an understanding of where you’d like your social media presence to be focused, pull recent data on who engages with these platforms, how long on average they spend on the app, and even the times of day they are most likely to be online.

Next comes your competitor analysis on social media, and it may be helpful here to create a folder of screenshots to how your direct competitors present themselves. How do they describe themselves in their business bios? How is their engagement (e.g. ratio of followers to comments?), and how do they interact with their customers? It can be just as helpful knowing what to avoid as what to be inspired by – especially if it’s clear that a competitor brand has purchased followers.

While it appears impressive at first glance, avoid the temptation to buy followers or to purchase an existing account with a large following – while more popular to do several years back, consumers are much more savvy to this now, and it only takes seconds to suss out whether their followers are genuine. Ultimately, a smaller but highly engaged following is much more desirable than thousands of silent followers who won’t contribute to your social media channels.

An Authentic Voice

If you’re starting out launching your business, building a following takes time and consistency – patience is required, but ultimately if you’re creating content that people want to share with, comment on and engage with (and that genuinely offers something), your community will grow organically.

In an age where social media is rapidly evolving on a daily basis, genuine and authentic brand voices are valued over distant, aloof logos and faceless services. Bring a human element to your business, and see your social media as an extension of your brand ethos – ultimately, sales and lead generation are the goal, but gone are the days when a hard sell was needed, and customers are just as keen to hear the story and about the people behind the brand as they are to see the offering.

While more businesses are jumping online every day, make a conscious plan for your social media and be guided by what you want your customer to experience at all social media touch points, and how you want to leave them feeling.

Next time, we will discuss creating your social media strategy, and designing a path to reach your audience that brings your brand to life.