Developing a social media strategy is the first step to creating an effective social media presence. Determining what your goals and objectives are for social media marketing is key. Without a clear objective, and knowing what you want to accomplish online through your various social media platforms, you aren’t able to properly measure your social media effectiveness. When starting with your social media strategy:

• Know your audience and who you are speaking to.
• Determine which social platform is best for your business.
• Understand what your message is. Providing education on your product and offering customer service is key, but mix in some relevant industry news, local news and even behind the scenes of your company to show how your company is unique.
• Create your plan and execute it.
• Have clear, actionable steps.
• Measure your results and tweak if necessary.

If you already have a social media presence, you might only require a few small changes to take your social media to the next level, and see better engagement and connect with prospects for your business. Even if you are already online, it’s important to develop a social media strategy, and constantly review, tweak when necessary, and of course, measure results.

Effective social media is more than just ‘likes’ and reach. Your social media strategy needs to take into consideration content creation, engagement, and sales created from your social media efforts. If you aren’t seeing any return on your investment from social media, it might be time to re-work your social media and marketing strategy.

If you need help to get started, download this Social Media Strategy Overview and work from there.