A house cannot be built by hammer alone.
Similarly, an online marketing strategy cannot be built on Twitter or Facebook alone because they — like a hammer — are just tools. Without a content strategy, those tools don’t mean much.
For many, whether a small start up or a big brand their first venture into social media is the decision to create a Facebook page. They upload the company logo, post a few office photos, and write a status update from time to time.
Most of these same companies would not undertake any other marketing on a whim, but carefully craft their campaigns to target specific markets and plan their marketing strategies to the smallest detail. No company would want their marketing activities to be based on luck alone.
Creating and managing a page in such a cavalier manner, in hopes of becoming a hit on Facebook, is as likely to be effective as say standing at the side of the freeway and yelling to rush hour traffic about your products over the drone of passing cars. No one wants to listen, and if they did, they couldn’t hear you anyway.
In creating and managing an effective social media campaign you should identify your target audience and the platforms they already use. Demographic information is available for most of the major social networks, so there is really no reason not to target your social media activities to your audience.
If you plan how your grow your online following steadily by engaging with the right people, on the right platform, with the right content, you are more likely to get predictable results. Your social media strategy must detail your marketing aims and objectives. If you don’t have a social media strategy, how will you know when you have achieved your goals?
The first step of creating an effective social media strategy is to take an inventory of your organization’s content. It’s as simple as what you produce, or could be producing, on a regular basis. Things like:
- The obvious: Company announcements, press releases, marketing materials, company information.
- Events: Any special events that either your organization is putting on or that is related to your organization, that you can “live tweet”.
- News of the day: Comment on news of the day that is relevant to your organization or your mission.
- Your experts: Who are your organization’s experts and what they have to say about your mission, recent events, or news and world events.
- Human interest: Don’t overlook content about employees weddings, birth announcements, anniversaries, and other accomplishments. Your employees stories puts a human face on your company or organization.
Once you have considered and decided upon your content the next step is to decide what platform would be most effective for your company or organization. Click here to read our previous post in which we provide specific examples of how some companies and individuals are doing just that.
As your organization looks to delve into the world of social media take a good look at your overall content strategy. Without a solid message, the medium doesn’t really matter.