Developing A Social Media Strategy For Your Business In 2020

Do you want social media to generate more website traffic and goal conversions for your business? If you do, let’s talk about the importance of being a socially-active business as well as developing a social media strategy in 2020.

Today, the power of social media platforms can’t be overestimated. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and others work as potent brand awareness builders and lead generators. Depending on the business vertical, a strong social media presence can be either crucial, recommended, or optional. Deciding on the approach for a social media management strategy boils down to answering three main questions:

1. Who is your target market?

2. What social media are they mostly on (if any)?

3. What are their needs, pet peeves, challenges, and dreams that can be addressed via social media platforms?

In order to answer these three questions and to avoid prioritizing the wrong channels, you need to conduct extensive market research and determine whether your audience even wants to connect with you through social media and if so to what extent. This will allow you to identify the key platforms that you need to focus more on when looking for social media management and marketing services.

Once you do that, make sure to follow the five golden rules we will describe below. If you need any help with collecting data to answer the questions given, contact us.

Five Social Media Rules To Follow

1. Don’t abandon your account(s)

First and foremost. Before creating business accounts on social media, make sure you will be able to manage them on a regular basis, otherwise, it’s better that you don’t create them at all.

When it comes to website management, especially if you don’t have a blog or if you don’t date-stamp your posts, it’s far less obvious (if at all) that you haven’t updated your website for a week, a month, or even a year. Of course, such a standstill won’t go unnoticed by search engines and they can downrank your website for that, but for a regular user, your website will look the same. With social media, you know that it’s a different beast because every visitor can see when the last time was that you appealed to your audience with a post.

Abandoned Facebook or Instagram business accounts can be a red flag for customers indicating either a lack of resources to manage your profiles or the demise of your business. A quick check through your once created but abandoned social accounts can result in lost leads and a high bounce rate.

With that being said, make sure you will be able to consistently publish new posts after your accounts were created and named after your business. Hiring a social media manager can be a great solution to this end.

2. Fit content published with your company’s persona

This may seem like a no-brainer but more often than not there is a discrepancy between what is found on a company’s website and on their social pages. The reason behind it is that people who create your website and social media content may not even know each other and might have different writing styles and different views on what should be published. To remain consistent in what you say to your audience, you should send a unified message across all of your channels only slightly modified. To avoid sending contradictory messages, make sure your content creators communicate with one another and also hire a social media manager who will be reviewing the content before it goes live.

3. Listen and be responsive

It has been said before, but it merits repeating: check the comments for your posts on social media as well as your direct. Many businesses shoot themselves in the foot by publicly overlooking these vital interactions they are being handed. Given that social media allows for dialogue, many people go there to praise, complain, or simply ask questions. Make sure to listen carefully and respond accordingly.

4. Develop a content plan

This has a lot to do with defining your buyer's persona and understanding what issues they want to be addressed. Having this data available will allow your social media managers to create a content calendar and post according to that schedule. Of course, if something big happens in the industry, you can make some room for an announcement but aside from that, it’s better to have an approved content plan to stick to.

5. Analyze

Data analysis is an essential part of your social media marketing strategy if you want to avoid targeting the wrong audience. The addition of the right analytics tools will help you to see the demographics data about the people who like and follow you, such as their age, gender, country, city, language, etc. This will allow you to tailor your content for the widest of audiences for more engagement.

Takeaways

The way people search for businesses online has transformed with the rise of social media platforms. Now users perform ‘a company name’ + ‘social media platform name’ type of searches in order to immediately check out your business account, the number of followers and most importantly, your reviews.

In order to be discovered, studied and preferred over the other businesses in your niche, you will need to continually put a fair amount of effort into managing your social media accounts. It’s strongly recommended hiring a social media manager who will take this weight off your shoulders. At Webxloo, we provide social media management and marketing services aimed at broadening your online audience, increasing brand awareness and bringing in leads from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other channels. Contact us today to discuss the best social media marketing strategy for your business.