While social media offers some great opportunities for businesses, it can also be overwhelming. To help you formulate your social media plan, you’ll need to start with your business goals, figuring out what you want to accomplish by creating a social media account for your business.
What you will learn how to;
- Define your social media goals
- Draft out your social media content.
- Market your social media content.
- How to speak to your social media followers.
Are you ready to figure out what you’re going to get out of social media?
If yes then let’s get to it.
Define your Social media goals
The first thing you need to do before creating social media accounts is to determine what you want to get from them. There are lots of social media channels out there, and lots of ways to use them, to achieve lots of different objectives. But before you start signing up and posting all over the place, start with a simpler question. What do you want to accomplish with social media?
- Are you looking for a faster way to respond to customer inquiries?
- Is social media a way for you to reach your existing customers and encourage them to buy from you more often?
- Is it another customer touchpoint you want to develop? Or
- Maybe you’re looking to grow your business by finding new people who could become new customers. (Sales and lead generation)
The above are a few examples of goals you can achieve with social media.
Having a social media account should come with a primary purpose. Just like when building a website, there should be a specific reason why you think you need a social media account, you shouldn’t own one because you feel it’s nice to have one! Remember what you put out there can make or mar your business. Therefore, consider social media accounts as mini websites that can generate tons of leads for your business and it will only perform its wonders if you see them as such.
Keeping this goal in mind will help you map out your next social media move.
Draft out your social media content
After determining what you want to get out of social media, it’s time to draft your content. For starters, you’ll need to have something interesting to say, and you need to find people to say it to. Since you know you’re trying to find people who haven’t heard of you before, think about what they would be interested in or likely to respond to. Maybe you just got some new products, features, or promo you want people to know about or you’re just having a big grand opening sale. There are three things you have to note while drafting out your content.
- Have something specific you want to talk about
- Churn them (Content) out one at a time so you don’t create mixed emotions
- Align your content with your brand tone. If your brand tone is friendly then your social media content should be friendly but try to also align with the social channel tone. Some are friendly like Facebook and Twitter while some are authoritative and professional.
Market your Social media content
Once you’ve got something to say, it’s time to figure out how you’ll find people to say it to.
There are different ways to spread your word on social media, you can decide to run paid ads if you have the money – it’s quite effective, however, there are other ways you can organically grow your social media followers without running paid ads.
How to rapidly grow your social media followers without running paid ads?
Below are the best and most effective ways for businesses with little to no capital to establish themselves on social media
1. Consistency
Be consistent with your social media content. Consistency is key in everything we do. A new business with little to zero footprint on social media can’t post once a week and expect people to start following you, no, it doesn’t work that way. You have to continue to churn out content in your early days and beyond to create massive awareness.
2. Leverage your power base
What do I mean by powerbase?
Your power base is your existing customers, people that already transact with you, they are loyal to your business.
Now, you should reach out to your power base (loyal customers) or even your friends and family and ask them to connect with you on the social channel you choose. As you share with them and they share with their own networks, you’ll start to grow your own connections, and you’ll be achieving your business objective!
Remember, social media isn’t a one-way street. You also have to participate and give back to your new network of friends and followers.
Another fantastic way to grow your brand awareness on social media is to follow trends related to your industry.
3. Engage with posts that relate to your business goal and objective.
Another fantastic way to grow your social media handle is by engaging with your followers. Engage with your followers by re-sharing some of their content, or maybe you can spark some discussion by commenting on other people’s content around current trends in your industry. People love to be listened to; they value quality interaction so you taking advantage of that part of humans will do nothing but good to your business. Doing this will signal to your followers your readiness to solve their problems.
How to speak to your new audience
The last thing you’ll need to plan is how you’re going to speak to the different audiences in the different networks you’re using.
As you already know in the process of choosing a social channel suited for your business that each social channel is known for different things, therefore, how you interact with your audience depends in part on the function of the networks themselves. Nevertheless, there are some things you have to consider to effectively communicate with your new social audience
- Choose the tone of voice you want to use, and the interactions you want to pursue.
Are you going to be professional and authoritative? That might work well if your target audience is formal and professional, or for specific networks like LinkedIn. Or are you going to be light and friendly? That might work better in less formal or personal networks, where you’re interacting with a more casual consumer.
And again, don’t forget your business goals. If you’re looking to attract more people to your networks and your business, then make sure to use an engaging and inviting tone. And if you’re trying to engage your existing customers, make sure you speak to them with gratitude for being your loyal customers.
Conclusion
The world of social media can be broad and complex, but starting out with clearly defined goals will help you figure out which networks to participate in, how to use them, and ultimately, how they’ll help you achieve your objectives.