When you mention social media, everyone automatically thinks of celebrities with millions of followers and endless tweets about their perfect lives.
There are a number of reasons why a business should be active on social media but if the answer to why is “because everyone does it” then it’s time to have a rethink and address some questions such as:
- Why you are doing it?
- Who do I want to target?
- What channels do I want to use?
- What content will I need?
Something that is very important is that being active on social media isn’t simply about promoting your business through broadcasting information about yourself. Listening to what people are talking about and getting involved in the discussion is just as, if not more important. After all, the key is in the term – social – it’s not about broadcasting information, it is about conversations with people who may be interested in the product or service you are promoting and it also means listening – are there people active on social media channels discussing problems which your product or service could address? Any social media plans for business need to maintain a balance between broadcast, listening and conversation.
To be done properly, a social media presence requires a well thought out and clear strategy. A good starting point is to ask yourself where your target audience is most likely to be active and if all channels are appropriate to your business. If they aren’t then don’t concentrate on them all and focus on the ones relevant to your business. It is also important to make sure the content being created for the selected channels suits that audience. It isn’t a one size fits all where you can create one thing and post onto all channels – the content needs to match the style of that channel.
You should also write a Social Media Mission Statement. This can be overall but also include each individual channel you have chosen to focus on. Once you establish this mission statement, each piece of content you produce and share on social media should meet the aims you have set out in this statement. If the content doesn’t meet those aims then it shouldn’t be created or posted.
I am writing this from experience of trying and getting it wrong. Like many marketing teams, we initially went down the same route as others and did exactly what I have just said not to do. We focused on broadcast only because we weren’t really clear on what we should do but thought we should be doing something. Now, we have established what channels to focus on, what our mission statement is and we split different types of content across different channels. For instance, we have tried to inject an element of fun into our work by previously featuring MindGenius Online Ducker on his world travels. We are also looking more to the listening side of social media activity and working on having more conversations. We recognise we aren’t experts and have a lot more to do in an ever-changing environment and are constantly working to improve our approach.
To get to the point we are at now, we turned to our own tools and utilised our MindGenius Online product to address the questions outlined above. From there we were able to write our social media strategy and mission statement.
MindGenius Online is a product with a number of built in templates to help marketing teams get started on any project. As we find a way to use the product ourselves, we can then easily share that with our user community in the form of a template and our social media strategy template is available now.
So go on – get started on your social media strategy with our easy to use template and in the spirit of social media sharing – let your followers know you created your social strategy with MindGenius Online.
