Believe it or not, social media is very much like the real world—boundless, bare, and full of opportunities.
Now, you can be like the average user; wake up, open your favorite social media app, and post whatever comes to mind at the moment. But if you are a business looking to establish a tangible online presence, you cannot afford to be carefree with your social media content.
With over 45% of the world’s population actively using social media, your business is faced with two situations. On the one hand, you have 3.5 billion people your business can reach. On the other hand, that’s 3.5 billion people you have to compete against for attention. The challenge here is making sure your brand reaches your audience despite the millions of posts going out every minute.
Why Social Media?
While one may argue against the necessity of web and email platforms when building a business’s marketing strategy, we cannot deny the potency of social media. Social media is, as we put it earlier, the digital version of the real world. So if you want to take your business online, social media is definitely the way to go.
Social media offers you the opportunity to personify your brand, establish your business as an influencer in your industry, and engage with your customers on a more personal level.
However, navigating social media as a business can prove tricky. There are so many sites to choose from, and there’s the behemoth task of creating content. This is where a strategy comes in handy.
Social Media Strategy as a Tool
A social media strategy maps out where to go, what to do, and how to implement your tactics. It helps you measure your actions and understand them. With social media strategy, you are not doing things on a whim; you are intentional, and that is what matters most.
To better understand the need for a social media strategy, here are some ways and best practices to building a strategy can help your business:
To Build
Social media allows you to spread the word about your product. It’s kinda like an online billboard where you can advertise your products to your followers for free.
With a social media strategy, you can reach out to new or potential customers while keeping existing customers updated. It helps you understand the nuances of each platform and how you can reshape your message to fit the vibe of each platform.
To Control
A social media strategy isn’t always about marketing your products. Being strategic with your brand online helps you control the narrative of your business. You get to dictate (to a large extent) the perception of your brand and what people should know about your business.
Besides, if you do not control your narrative, others will do it for you, and you do not want your brand perception to be based on the interpretation of an outsider.
To Influence
Influencing is about developing a brand that people trust. When people trust your brand, they are open to whatever you say or offer. This is where having a social media strategy comes in. It tells you what you need to do to gain the trust of your audience.
To Inform
Every platform you own (online or offline) is a space for you to communicate with your audience. What a social media strategy does is to provide an approach to how information should be disseminated.
It’s not enough to put it out there; it should be convincing and in line with your brand image. This is where a strategy comes in.
To Measure
It is very unlikely that your business will immediately achieve your goals for social media.
With a social media strategy, you know what your performance indicators are and how to achieve them.
Even better is the fact that you can measure the growth of your social media accounts with the help of analytical tools. You can get insights into your audience’s behavior and adjust your strategy based on the feedback. But you wouldn’t know what to watch out for without a social media strategy.
In conclusion, just as developing a strategy is vital to any endeavor, a social media strategy is the only guarantee of social media success. It also helps that these platforms are free, so there is nothing to lose but everything to gain.
If you need help exploring social media for your business, you can reach out to us. We can help you design a strategy that will perfectly capture your brand and engage your audience.
