Sorting Your Social Media Strategy

Sorting Your Social Media Strategy

Social Media Marketing can play a big part in generating leads and awareness of your small business. Like most things in life, you get better results when you plan, or create a strategy as it enables you to ensure you are reaching your ideal prospects. So how do you create a strategy for your small business social media marketing?

Start with the WHO.

Who are your ideal clients?
It's essential to know who your audience are. When you who who they are, you'll know where to find them or at least be able to research where they hang out. Which leads us nicely in to the...

Where are your ideal clients?
Are they tech-friendly? Are they on Facebook and Twitter? Does she hangout in forums? Is she an avid offline networker? Reasearching your ideal client and where to find her means you'll be in the right place to have conversations and share useful information with her.

What keeps her awake at night?
You've found your ideal client and you know where she hangs out, you now need to work out what to share with her, what will catch her attention and enable you to start talking to her in a natural, unforced way.

Working out the "what" helps you provide awesome material for your fans and followers. It means your strategy stays on track and starts to attract the right people to you.

Why should she care about your business
The Why is your marketing message. It's why someone should follow you, it's the why someone should get to know and become interested in your business. It's the Why that generates profitable social media conversations. Why is a mixture of personality, the ability to listen and a dash of being in the right place at the right time. That of course leads us to

When...
A lot of small businesses ignore the "when" part of their social media strategy. Imagine you are selling headache pills, not any ordinary headache pills but ones that head off migraine. When is the perfect time to talk to the ideal customer about your product? If you answered when she's about to have a migraine, you have got the when down to a pat. But social media can reach you too late, you can miss the engagement that leads to others recommending you and by then your prospect is in bed with someone else's headache pills!

So you listen for the conversations that are the triggers. You share useful information that will help you be found for headaches and migraine and you know when the perfect timing is to say "take a look at this product" and when to say "read this article". The when helps you build advocates and come across as a professional. No matter how well-intentioned you are you don't want to look like a social spammer!

The How is now putting together all of your answers to form your social media strategy and once you have it all you have to do is act upon it.

Sarah Arrow is the co-author of Social Media Marketing guide; Zero to Social Media FILM Star. The book contains advice on setting up your social media profiles and contains strategy templates to help you get started marketing your business.