Do you have a social media strategy?
Do you have one… but you have never looked at it since the day it was created?
Let me tell you, you’re not alone!
According to Social Media Examiner, 86% of marketers believe that social media is important for their business. This is huge!
When getting started with social media for business, most people’s first instincts are to jump right in and get going.
After a month or so, their tweets and Facebook updates start to dwindle until they stop.
This is the point where they either stop and state it’s a waste of time, or they create a strategy.
This strategy normally spurs the life of social media for another 6 months to a year, but again it starts to drop off.
Is this sounding familiar?
Then let me ask you another question, when did you last look at your strategy?
I know you’re fully aware of what content is within the document (you did create it after all), but does the strategy still apply?
Can it be amended or changed at all?
A social media strategy needs to be a living document.
Yes, create the strategy that’s going to outline where you want to be in 6 months, but let’s face it, you’re probably not going to look at it again until that 6 months is up.
Instead, you need to create yourself monthly strategies – don’t panic, this isn’t as much work as it sounds.
You need to be creating a document that outlines what networks you are posting too, monthly goals for each of those networks, and content outlines.
If you can reduce those monthly targets to weekly or fortnightly targets then that’s even better! – Social Media does move very fast after all!
How’s the short term strategy going to help?
That’s simple really. By having short term targets and strategies, you know exactly what you need to be doing this month.
That will make you more efficient (in every aspect) with your time on social media.
If you can identify what events, releases, things of interest, topics etcetera up front, then you have just taken out all of the worry and headache of thinking of content.
It also means you can do themes for that strategic month! – Which makes your time on social media more interesting!
These short term strategies allow you to identify whether you are on track or not to your overall strategy.
As you have monthly targets, you can identify whether you are meeting them or not.
Your Short Term Strategy template:
Start date:
End date:
#1 – Which social network are we using?
Just pick one here, you can repeat this template for each individual network
#2 – What is the goal for this social network this month?
Could be:
- Increase the number of followers / likes / +’s etc by 500
- Increase the traffic back to the website from social media by 500 unique visitors
- Answer 200 peoples questions on our products
Don’t over stretch yourself here; it is only a month’s period, so keep things as realistic as possible.
#3 – What events / news / features / products etc are being pushed this month?
Short description here of each item that can be used within your marketing – think of themes that you can base your content around.
#4 – Who is going to be posting the content, and when?
This section might not change depending on the size of your team, but it’s important to identify who is in charge of what, and when. This will allow you to decide who is responsible for specific aspects of the social network, and when they would be expected to monitor, reply and post to them.
That’s it!
Nice and easy strategy, should take you no more than 30 minutes to make and will keep you on track month to month.
This will not only spur some life back into your social media efforts, it will also give it direction and measurable results!
So what are you waiting for? There’s no time better than the present.
