Before you dive right in and publish something on social media, let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture. The first step is to think about your social media strategy.
What are your goals? How can social media help you achieve your business goals? Some businesses use social media for increasing their brand awareness, others use it for driving website traffic and sales. Social media can also help you generate engagement around your brand, create a community, and serve as a customer support channel for your customers.
Which social media platforms do you want to focus on? The major social media platforms, mentioned above, are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat. There are also smaller and up-and-coming platforms, such as Tumblr, Tik Tok, and Anchor, and social messaging platforms, such as Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat. When starting out, it’s better to pick a few platforms that you think your target audience is on than to be on all platforms.
What type of content do you want to share? What type of content will attract your target audience best? Is it images, videos, or links? Is it educational or entertaining content? A good place to start is to create a marketing persona, which will help you answer these questions. And this doesn’t have to be fixed forever; you can always change your strategy according to how your social media posts perform.
To help you create a great social media strategy, here are our long-form, step-by-step guides on creating a social media strategy and social media marketing plan.
Fortune Magazine uses social media to grow its brand.
“The main objective we have is to grow our brand. Social is a place where we can own our brand and promote it.
We pay a lot of attention to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ to promote our content and to break news, basically to get our stuff out there.”
Heather Muse
Franchises and Social Media Editor, Fortune
Engagement is more than just marketing. It’s lending a helping hand when things go awry, keeping the conversation going when problems are solved, and spreading the good word about what we’re up to and where folks can come say hi.
