Do you want to reach the right audience for your social media posts? You should!
If so, get laser-focused.
The very first question you need to ask when creating a social media strategy is “what are your goals?”
This question is important to answer because figuring out your goals will help you develop an effective social media strategy, designed to facilitate them, and will determine and provide you with guidelines for your social media posts.
Think SMART:
- Specific – Make your goals clear and specific so there is no confusion on what the end result should be.
- Measurable – Make your goals measurable, so you know if your efforts are working.
- Actionable – You’ll want to set up steps to reach your goal.
- Realistic – Set goals that make sense for your brand. You’re most likely not going to gain 1 million followers overnight.
- Time-bound – It’s important to set time boundaries for your goals, or else you might sit on them forever.
It’s important to always about the following questions when crafting each of your social posts on any social channel:
- Who specifically do you help?
- What problem do you solve?
- Why should your audience care about your post?
- How will your solution improve their life or business?
- What is unique about what you are suggesting?
When crafting a social media plan for your firm or a client, I always ask the following questions or at least explore them when I get to know my clients (it’s so important to interview various stakeholders at your organization at the outset of starting a social strategy to get a clear sense for what they expect and so you have a risk measurable snd attsinable goals).
Here are social media questions to ask to help you form a killer social strategy on any platform.
- Why are you on social media?
- What type of content does your audience respond to best on social?
- What do you hope to achieve using social media?
- What are the biggest challenges to your success on social media?
- How does social media fit into your growth plan?
- Who are your main competitors?
- What social platforms does your target audience use?
- What tone should social media updates have?
- What type of content do you want to publish?
- How often do you want to publish new content to your profiles?
- What resources (pictures, video, GIFs, etc) do you have available for content creation?
- What is your workflow process for content from inception to publication?
- What is the main message that you want to send through your content?
- Are you looking to expand onto new social media platforms?
- Are you looking to narrow your focus to fewer networks?
And remember to be client-focused and client centric in everything you do, otherwise abort mission or start over from scratch.