Why You Need a Business Strategy, BEFORE a Social Media Strategy
You need your prospects and customers to achieve their Business Goals! These goals shape the path to take for achieving their objective. Once these things are clearly defined, then you can bring social media into the conversation.
Each business strategy has different steps to achieve each goal.
- Traffic
- Brand
- Money.
First, consider your business objectives. What are your biggest goals?
It could be awareness – Branding., Lead generation – Traffic., Engagement with industry partners. – Money. What actions do you need your prospects and customers to take to achieve those goals? Once these things are clearly defined, you can add social media to achieve these specific objectives.
The business strategy and its goals should drive of all social efforts. For example, improving customer sales service might require one set of tools and resources, while changing brand perceptions and building brand awareness may require a completely different set of tools, tactics, and resources. you may want to invest in a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to better monitor conversations involving your brand or industry.
Make sure you match your tool to your goal rather than the other way around. Twitter points to brands to show how hashtags, events, and promoted Tweets can drive traffic and awareness. Pinterest is excellent for Branding purposes. See my optin on social media for a free report.
Social as a Support Business System
Social media is not a means to an end. It is just one tool in the marketing mix that can be used to help you support business priorities. The goal is not to be good at social media. Your goal is to be good at business because of social media.
Being crystal clear here, social media is valuable, and businesses should participate. Use – when, where, why, and how to firmly anchor your businesses’ priorities. Make sure your social activity maps use your buyer personas. If you’re a B2B brand, you’re likely going to be spending a lot of time on LinkedIn. If you’re a lifestyle brand, it’s probably going to be more Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram.
As a Certified Social Media Campaign Specialist, I use the three objectives for your business and then create a mindmap with all the potential for your business using Social Media. Contact me for a chat on Facebook. See my “About Me” page.