-
-
Published on
16/06/2018
by Any Business.Com.Au
Plan, Produce, Execute: social media strategy for small business
It is important to have a social media plan before you start using social media tools and websites in your business.
Taking the time to write a social media plan is essential to ensure that using social media is beneficial in meeting your business and marketing objectives.
A social media plan can:
• encourage you to consider the risks and benefits of each tool before investing your time (and money) in managing social media
• help you determine how many employees will be needed to manage each tool and the skills and training required for each employee
• ensure you document the milestones and what you expect success will look like in the future
• form part of your overall marketing and communications strategy and link into your marketing plan
When deciding to use social media in your business, you need a measured and carefully planned strategy. To help you get started, below are six steps to developing a social media plan.
1. Conduct your analysis
Writing your social media plan will be much easier once you know what you are dealing with.
Some useful areas to analyse include:
Analyse the channels
Which social media channels best suit your business? To find the answer, it might be useful to register a personal account on a few channels and have a look around. Always check the terms and conditions carefully so you know your rights and obligations before you start. Once you become familiar with the channel, you can decide which ones you can see your business using and benefiting from.
Analyse your business
Once you know a little bit about social media, it's time to analyse your business. Find out if social media is suited to your business, its key goals and whether you have the knowledge and capacity to launch an online social media presence. Once you know which channels suit your needs, only choose the ones you have time to develop and maintain. Remember it's not enough to only have a presence on these channels. Using and maintaining them is where the work lies.
Analyse your customers
If you have analysed your business and you think social media is well suited to your business goals, go online and do some research on your potential and current customers. Find out if they are already online and if they are using social media. If so, find out which social media tools your customers are using and what they are saying about your business and industry.
Analyse your competitors
Next, find out if your competitors are online and using social media. If they are, look at your competitors' social media pages and find out how they use it and how their customers interact with them. Going online before you get started can help you learn from your competitors and discover how they have succeeded or where they could have improved.
2. Develop your social media strategies
To develop a social media strategy, it's important to revisit your business plan and look at your main business goals and strategies. Then, try to determine if and how social media can help you achieve them. You may consider developing specific strategies for each business area or phase. For example, communication and engagement with customers, launching your social media presence, brand development and brand awareness.
3. Establish the rules
One of the disadvantages of social media is the potential of added risk to your business. For example, customers could criticise your business publicly, spam your page or use inflammatory language. By establishing some policies and procedures prior to starting up, you can ensure there are proper checks in place to help minimise these risks.
4. Set up a social media team
If you need help to maintain your social media presence, find out if your existing staff have any skills or professional experience with social media. If not, you might like to consider providing your staff with some training. Once your team has the appropriate skills, establish their roles and responsibilities carefully and familiarise them with your internal policies and procedures before they start.
5. Get started using social media
Once you know what you want to do, how you will achieve it and who will deliver it, you can get started by:
• setting up your page/profile/blog
• building your networks
• implementing your social media strategies.
6. Review your social media plan
It's always important to monitor and measure the impact of your strategies to see if you have achieved your goals. Once you know how effective your strategies are, you can adjust them to improve the result. It might also be useful to develop some achievable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Once they have been achieved, you can review the results and slowly increase your expectations.
Related articles
