Ask SCORE: How do I create an effective social media strategy for my business?
Social media can be a double-edged sword for small businesses. On one hand, it represents a free and effective way to reach out to your audience and expand your reach. But on the other, it can take up a lot of time, fail to help you connect and—in a worst-case scenario—alienate potential customers.
Whether you end up finding social media a help or a hindrance depends in large part on the social media strategy you’ve set up for your business. Social is a vast and never-ending universe of interactions taking place on a wide variety of platforms that reach audiences around the globe.
Only jump into this ocean of content if you know where you’re going and why. Here are some tips to help you swim, not sink, in your use of social media.
Set realistic goals
Why do you want to use social media? Think the answer through by identifying specific outcomes you’re looking for, such as increased brand awareness, engagement with customers or new leads (or all three). Be realistic with your expectations when setting your goals. It may take months of daily posting and engagement to gain traction with your audience or generate a single new lead from social. Setting goals that are too ambitious can lead you to get discouraged when you’re actually doing fine.
Target a few social channels
If you try to maintain a presence on every single social channel out there, you’ll soon be spending every minute of your day posting on, engaging with and monitoring social media. Do some research on your audience to find out which channels they use most and focus on those avenues for your social engagement. Maintaining a more targeted social presence gives you the bandwidth to customize your content for the audience and format of each platform, leading to more effective communication and engagement.
Establish metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs)
Part of setting realistic goals is being specific and figuring out how you’ll measure success. Figure out which metrics and KPIs you’ll track for each platform you will engage with. These might include the number of unique users who engaged with your post, how many people click on or interact with your content, how the hashtags you use perform or the nature of comments on your content. Once you can measure your progress, you can know where to change your tactics.
Publish good social content
The success of your social media marketing strategy depends in large part on the quality of the content you post. Audiences appreciate content that speaks to them—that is, material that is creative, insightful, engaging, funny, moving or thought-provoking. Good content can look like a single sentence on Twitter or a professionally designed video on YouTube—in either case what makes it good is not the production value but the authenticity and meaning. While you can benefit from referencing trending topics and strategically using the latest hashtags, make sure your content can always stand on its own.
Engage with your audience
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is treating social media like a bulletin board on which to post outgoing messages while neglecting to take advantage of its unique benefit—the opportunity to engage with customers in real time. Your audience wants to feel like there is someone on the other end of the line when they’re interacting with your brand on social. Take time to strategically reply to your followers’ comments and share others’ content. Also be alert that shoppers increasingly expect prompt answers to questions they ask over social media.
Assess, tweak and continue
As you progress in building up your social channels and engaging with your audience on each one, make sure to monitor the metrics and KPIs you established at the beginning of the process. See what’s working and what isn’t, and discern how you can improve. Sometimes how to improve won’t be obvious, so in that case simply contact an expert like a SCORE mentor. This will lead you toward the strategy that works best for your business. And no matter what, just keep on going—be the tortoise, not the hare. Slow and steady wins the race.
SCORE offers resources and mentorship to help guide you through your small business journey. Visit score.org/stlouis to learn more.
