The need to invest in social media for business is no longer a question of, should we? I often talk to business owners and decision-makers who continue to sound off with, 'I don't like social media.', 'Social Media didn't work for us.', 'Spacebook (sic), pfft'.
At the beginning of 2010, I would take the time to share the benefits of early adoption with these social media' haters'.
Ten years on, we have experience, data, and examples to share that social media does have measurable benefits for the vast majority of businesses.
Without even scratching the surface we know that Facebook continues to grow despite its critics, 90% of the one billion monthly Instagram users follow companies and brands, plus new social media channels such as TikTok continue to pop up and experience fast growth.
If you're not strategically using social media for business, you will fall behind. Doing it well is the key, and that comes down to strategy, implementation, learning, and innovation.
If you plan for nothing, you get nothing, and at The Marketing Bungalow, we see this time and time again. It's often not intentional or anyone's fault either. Time, resources, lack of experience, and overwhelm all contribute to social media getting a bad rap and being scrapped from the marketing mix. Six months on you start to notice your competitors and customers are leveraging social and you're behind the eight ball. Or, the industry-specific platform you've depended on for traction incorporates social media channels into the algorithm for search, and you've now got catching up to do. Awkward.
So how do you overcome this predicament and get serious about social? It's like most things, get a plan and make it happen. If this means outsourcing the task to an agency, freelancer or hiring a new recruit to drive this for you, seriously consider it.
As a marketer, I struggled for the first three years in business when it came to BAS statements and bookkeeping. I was always behind, and it took hours (sometimes days) to get a BAS complete. It was a ridiculous waste of my time and therefore, money. So, the first thing I outsourced in my business was bookkeeping and accounts. The money I invested in getting the experts to do it for me saved my business thousands of dollars and hundreds and hours. Seven years on, I haven't touched a BAS statement other than to review and approve it. Business bliss!
Letting an expert do the social media work for you allows you to focus your existing resources on what is most productive and profitable. An experienced social media supplier or recruit will identify your objectives, build a strategy, implement, measure and improve the plan giving you regular reports on the way.
If you're not ready to invest and want to give do-it-yourself social media strategy a go here are the essential pieces of the puzzle you need to consider.
1. What are your objectives? For example,
Leads
Website Traffic
Engagement
Audience Growth
Customer Insights
2. Target Audience
3. Channel Strategy
4. Voice and Persona
5. Mood Board
6. Organic Content Strategy
7. Content Pillars
8. Paid Strategy
9. Paid Objectives
10. Paid Campaign Rollout
11. Hashtag Strategy
12. Reporting
13. Action Steps
Want to chat social media strategy in more detail? Get in touch HERE.