I have seen it time and time again, small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) who think they ‘master social media’. They have rushed into setting up a Twitter account, a Facebook Page and even a group on LinkedIn. Their updates are intended for ‘anyone that has money to buy our products’ and they are plugging themselves like they were god’s gift to enterprise.
Funnily enough, this approach doesn’t work. SMEs have a tendency to forget about social media strategy and planning. This could be explained by the fact that they don’t have a dedicated marketing department, oftentimes you see the founder or the intern clicking the social media buttons – neither of which are particularly well suited to be doing it.
Where are the results?
After having tweeted aimlessly for a month, someone (possibly the finance director) asks what the return on investment is. If the business has a decent CRM system, they will be able to track enquiries and sales derived from social media. After a month of shooting from the hip in cyberspace, they are very likely to be disappointed with the return on effort.
Guess what, the company now reckons social media is a waste of time and stops the updates altogether. This is what will happen to most businesses without a social media strategy and planning.
How can you put a strategy together?
There are a few questions you can ask yourself, just like with any marketing plan you have to think about what you are selling, to whom and why your offering is better than others. Answer these questions before you start crafting a strategy:
• What are your goals with social media (enquiries/sales/awareness/social proof)?
• What is your target audience (demographics, location, B2B/B2C)?
• Who are you looking to connect with and why (direct customers, agents, suppliers)?
• What tools are they using (you should be too)?
• Where are the discussions happening (forums, blogs, platforms)?
• What is topical and how can you add to the conversation?
• How can you measure results (what metrics do you use in your current marketing)?
There are plenty more questions like these that will be more relevant to your industry, the point is that it’s vital to get these right before launching your social media marketing.
Bottom line
I work on these strategies together with my clients and I’ve found that they need tweaking every three months or so. The social media landscape is ever changing and technologies come and go but the underlining strategy of your marketing has to aligned with your business goals to achieve success.
What is your strategy? Happy to critique it if you let me know in the comments!
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