Implementing a social media strategy is valuable for businesses of any size or industry and has a direct impact on sales and your bottom line. According to Sprout Social’s Index, consumers are 57.5% more likely to buy from a brand they follow on social media.

It’s also not all about marketing. It’s also key to sales and service! Your brand should be using social as a universal and accessible customer service support tool. Missed experiences can spread like viral wildfire, so it’s important to control the conversation by being present and active on your platforms, especially since social users are 71% more likely to buy from a brand after a positive social experience (Sprout Social Index)!

We’re breaking down Something Social’s top five must-do’s for your small business social strategy below.

Set Goals for your Social Media Strategy

Many brands struggle with measuring their ‘Return on Investment’ for social, unsure if their efforts are creating any change for their business. This isn’t necessarily because their efforts are fruitless. This usually stems from a lack of goals and as a result, an inability to effectively analyze and incorporate social metrics into their strategy.

As you set out on your social media journey, be sure to set goals to measure your success. To do this, start by considering your business objectives and your social strategy’s place within those goals. Here’s a quick workshop:

What is the most important for your brand to focus on? (Consider Brand awareness, community engagement, web traffic, generating leads/sales, customer base brand advocacy, customer support, competitor analysis.)

Identify your audience. A ton of data is available on your audiences. Analyze this information to really pin down what is valuable to your audience to inform your content strategy.

Need help working on developing and achieving your brand’s goals? Shoot us an email to chat about your goals and how we can construct your content and social strategy to best achieve your marketing and sales goals.

Track and analyze performance

Now that you’ve set goals, it is key to measure your strategy’s ability to accomplish them. It is important to track all of your analytic data, but specific measurements are going to be the most significant in measuring your growth. We’ve rounded up a few of the most common marketing goals and the metrics that are most relevant to achieving and measuring them.

Brand Awareness – Reach, Followers, Likes, Visits, Shares, Mentions

Community Engagement – Followers, Engagement Rate, Shares, Impressions, Content Type

Web Traffic – Traffic Sources, Click Thru Rate, Website Interactions

Generating Leads/Sales – Click Thru Rate, Conversion Rate, Cost Per Click, Cost Per Lead

Brand Advocacy – Followers, Shares, Mentions, Comments, User Generated Content

For more on measuring analytics, read our post on it here.

Engage, engage, engage!

Build relationships through engagement. Respond to customer questions on social as effectively as you would in person.

Search social for new customer opportunities. Use keywords and similar brands and businesses to single out customer bases that will respond to your product, then engage with those potential customers through the language of social: likes/comments/follows – oh my!

Plan a social calendar to keep your audience engaged. Don’t wait until the last minute to figure out your content strategy. Your audience is active and engaged and you should be as well. Although posting isn’t the only element of your strategy, it is the most critical. Be sure to experiment with posting days, times, and hashtags to find what works best for your audience and goals.

Quick tip: We love giveaways for boosting engagement, but we see so many contests gone wrong. Check out our tips for goal-oriented giveaways.

Create quality content.

Your content should be consistent and high quality across the board, but don’t forget to experiment and listen to your audience responses. This will inform your content down the line. Try out our tips for the prettiest flatlays. Make sure to pay attention to image and video size ratios as every platform has its own optimal sizes. Don’t forget video content! Don’t let the barrier for entry get you down. It is easier than ever to create high-quality content.

Combine organic strategy with paid results.

We just covered Facebook Ads in our most recent Instagram Story Q+A, but there is so much to cover on this topic. In addition to an effective, organic social strategy, paid media makes a huge impact regardless of your business goal. The most engaging paid content is entertaining, offers a discount, and is entertaining. And since you’ve already broken down your audience demographics, you already have an idea of how to incorporate these into your ads.

Written by our Brand Communications Coordinator, Kaeleigh Morrison.

How did these tips work out for you? We wanna know! Tweet us  @somethingsocial or tag us on Instagram- @somethingsocial.

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