What Steps Should be Taken to Determine the Perfect Social Media Strategy

There are several strategies present on the internet that claims to be the perfect social media strategy for small business. However, are these tactics  really helpful in converting clicks into the conversions? Can these strategies really provide target audience or viral posts?

Every business has its own niche, target audience and competitors. This diversity demands that every business should model its own social media marketing strategy. However, all of the social media tactics are based on a few basic questions.

• Which is the best social media platform for your business?
• Is one platform enough or you need to focus on multiple social media websites at a single time?
• How you should target your audience?
• Who are your target audience?
• How often should you post updates?

Keeping in mind all of these questions, here is a strategy that will cater to  the needs of most of the small businesses.

Identify Your Goals:

The ultimate marketing goal of any business is to earn more and more profit. But when it comes to  social media marketing, before thinking of profits, you have to think of your customers and your business. The goals that you will need to achieve include:

• Consistent online presence
• Engaging posts to keep your audience loyal to your page
• Long term audience
• Back links
• Sharing and more sharing

Once you have identified your goals, the next step is to use all of your wits to achieve them. For this purpose, social media offers you a wonderful opportunity to  create brand awareness so that most of the people know what you are offering them. Other things that you can do through the social media sites  include protecting your reputation, creating online rapport with your audience and enhancing your PR.

Identify Your Target Audience:

How would you plan your strategy if you do not know who are your target audience? Simple as that, before making your social media strategy, make a profile of your target audience. In this profile, include everything from age,  gender, demographics, profession, interests, necessities, local or international market and any other information that might look relevant to your business.

Identify Most Appropriate Social Media Platform for Your Business:

Most of the marketers jump to this step directly when they start their social media marketing for small business. However, what they do not realize is that unless you know all about above mentioned two important factors, you cannot decide, which social media platform is most suitable for your business. Moreover, it is not necessary that you should start with one platform at a time or you should go with all of the major platforms at once. Keeping in mind your goal and target audience, you should format a strategy and priorities on the basis of your needs instead of current trends. Major social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube.

Define Your Unique Selling Proposition:

Unique Selling Propositions or USP is the ultimate defining feature that will distinguish your business from rest of the online businesses. Your USP should be designed keeping in mind your target audience and the business goals. The information collected at this step will help you finalize not just your social media marketing plan but it will also help you at the time of creating a brand.

Your Own Editorial Calendar:

Editorial calendars are not just for content marketing. They could also be used as an amazing tool to synchronize your social media marketing. With the help of an editorial calendar you can prioritize what you should be sharing this week. You can also create a column for the topics that mostly generate tremendous output from your audience and they could also be used to keep material to start conversations and monthly themes.

Tracking the Progress:

Last but not the least there should be a plan that helps you trace your marketing campaign over the period of time. Google Analytics is an excellent tool to measure success of social media marketing for small businesses. With the help of this tool, and other similar tools, you can track your progress, catch loopholes and can devise counter strategies if the strategy fails to achieve target goal.