There’s no doubt any more that social media is an important and necessary marketing tool for any company that wants to stay important and accessible in today’s busy online world. In fact, 92 percent of marketers claim that social media has helped to increase visibility, suggesting that if you don’t make full use of social media, you are missing a big opportunity. But it can be difficult to get started and even something as simple as choosing a social media platform can be more complicated than what you would think. There are thousands of social networks to choose from but the good news is that you can start by reducing them to the most common and widely used channels. From there, it’s all about deciding which channel can give you the exposure you are looking for with the right audience and finding which one will help you achieve your marketing goals.
Understand the purpose of each Social platform
It’s important to understand what each social platform does before you start opening an account on any social media network. If your target audience is millennial, it may seem like the right choice is to be on Instagram and Snapchat. You may be right, but it’s vital to consider the actions of your audience and how they can discover your brand and company in social terms. Once you understand the purpose of each social media platform, it will allow you to narrow down which platform will be best for your business.
Identify your Audience
The first step is recognition of who your target audience is. You want to be as precise as possible, because that will help your decision. Try to find out who your customer is and what are they interested into (your products and services).
Define your Goals
Once you know your audience, you need to identify goals for that audience. As a business owner, your primary target is likely to boost revenue by attracting consumer. While some brands use social media to encourage brand awareness and establish friendly ties with potential consumers, others are use social media for customer support. Brainstorm a list of both normal and unique ways social media could work for your brand when it comes to building your social media goals.
Find your Audience
Now that you have got your audience profiled and your goals set, it’s time to find your audience. To do this, you need to evaluate which platform the audience is using by looking at the users profiles on each site. You may also want to think about how involved or how active your audience is on this platform.
Identify Your Resources and Skills
We know now that each platform is special or unique in terms of how you can reach your audience, but each platform often supports and need different skill sets and needs specific resources to implement them. Not only is it crucial to match your business needs with the right social network, but it is also vital that you have the skill set and resources to make successful use of it. Think about what your strengths are and figure out what types of resources or skills are needed to make that network effective.
Analyze your Competitors
You need to do a Competitors Analysis of all your competitors; what they do? Who’s following them? Whom are they supporting? Which Social Media Platform do they use? You need to make sure that thorough competitive analysis you get answers of all of those questions. The report will help you decide where your competitors are and which platform is best for your industry-based company. Knowing your competitive landscape will help you develop a plan to target influencers, brand ambassadors and the public to buy your product and remember your brand on social media.
Analyze and adjust Strategy
Measure your statistics on each social media platform and analyze which posts performed the best. Spend some time thinking about why these posts stood out for your audience and how you can replicate them on the same social media platform or on other platforms. If there are posts that have not done well or not performed well on other sites, go back to the start and check the times of the day you are publishing, in accordance with the content type and the content itself.
There are so many social media platforms out on the internet. While being present on each one of these platforms is ideal it can be a huge overhead to be present and active on all platforms. By using these simple steps you can choose which platforms you need to be active on and use your time and resources effeciently to optimize your reach on these platforms.