Navigating social media can be a daunting experience for business owners. The vast array of trends, platforms and viral phenomena often creates pressure to keep up to stay relevant.
Yet, by breaking down the process into manageable steps you can develop a clear, effective social media strategy without overwhelming yourself or your team. Our expert in Digital Communication and Brand Strategy, Claire Dalton from Brandcraft.ie will take us through the key steps in this months blog.
To start, shift your focus from trying to master every trend and platform to understanding your customer. Instead of chasing every new meme or TikTok dance think about who your audience is, what they need, and where they are most likely to spend time online? This will help you create a targeted content plan that aligns with your brand and resonates with your ideal customer.
1) Target Persona - First, think about your potential customer and develop a target persona who you will speak to going forward. Think about their age, lifestyle, family situation, income level etc and also consider their pain points. What problems do they face that your product or service can solve?
Write a clear, detailed paragraph that describes this persona so you have a good picture built of your customer. Once you have a solid picture of your target customer, investigate where they spend time online? Are they active on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn? Find this out by asking existing customers or people who fit your persona, or even check where your competitors are most active.
2) Your message - Once you have put together your target persona and have discovered where they hang out online, the next piece to think about is what you will say to them. This is where your message will come into it. Think about how your business can improve the lives of your customers. Does it save them money? Provide convenience? Prevent costly mistakes?
Summarise your value proposition in a clear paragraph, which will become your guiding message. This will act as your future playbook, so that if you engage someone to do your social media work. Or perhaps have someone internally take care of it you are all working from the same message, and talking to your customers with your content.
3) Keywords - Think about what keywords you can pull from both your target persona and your message. Now, incorporate these into your posts which will work both from a reach and SEO point of view. Then think about what types of content you want to post – are you looking to build brand awareness, foster engagement or drive sales?
Tailoring each post to a specific goal - whether it’s informational, promotional, or community-focused, helps you create purposeful, impactful content.
4) Monitor content and results - The final step is in making time to create your content and monitor the results. Monitoring is an essential part of social media success as it tells you what is working, and more importantly what is not. This gives you the opportunity to tweak either your content or your message so that it resonates better with your audience, to better meet your goals. Schedule time in your routine to develop your content and monitor your work, making it part of your work schedule and not an afterthought.
Developing a social media strategy doesn't need to be complicated. By understanding your customer, honing your message, choosing the right platforms, and making time for regular content creation and monitoring you can build a social media presence that works for you.
Social media is less about being everywhere at once and more about being in the right place, with the right message, at the right time.