A successful social media strategy can be a pretty powerful thing for your business. It can help you drive traffic to your website, land clients and customers, and establish yourself as an authority in your field. However, in order to do all of those things, you need to actually have a strategy and a purpose behind the updates you share on social media. And there are four elements I believe every successful social media strategy should have.
THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
To create a social media presence that gets major results, there are four things you need to keep in mind as you schedule those updates and engage with people. They are: niche, authority, engagement, and consistency.
NICHE
You probably already know how important it is to define your niche for your blog and business. But did you know it’s equally as important for your social media platforms? You want to ensure you are posting content that will attract the right audience, otherwise you’ll end up with all the wrong followers. And the wrong followers won’t care about your blog posts and they certainly won’t buy anything you’re offering.
And trust me, I’ve been there. I started blogging back in 2008 and I’ve had two websites of my own. I’ve also had two entirely different audiences. When I was a lifestyle blogger, my focus should have been on building a following of women who would be interested in my posts. However, I gained a following of creatives and entrepreneurs instead because I spent more time connecting with them, as opposed to the people I should have been targeting. Let’s just say it was not a successful social media strategy.
In the end, the following I had built wasn’t clicking on my links to my blog posts. And they weren’t really engaging with me because I’d talk about fashion, makeup, or DIYs while they were talking about business. As a result, I really struggled to gain traction on social media back then. I’ve since learned from it and have built an audience of people who actually care about what I have to share. The reality is, it doesn’t matter how large your following is if they aren’t interested.
Ask yourself: Am I sharing content within my niche? Are my current followers in my target market? If the answer to either of these questions is no, then things need to change!
To help define your niche, you need to get to know your dream customer. What are her demographics? What are her biggest problems, needs, and challenges? How can you serve her specifically? Your answers to these questions will determine exactly what you share on social media.
And remember: Your customer isn’t everyone. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’ll have the best results by being everything to everyone. It’s much better to narrow your niche and focus on a specific group. And knowing and understanding that audience is the first step in creating a successful social media strategy.
AUTHORITY
Imagine that you are the go-to girl for whatever your niche is. People rave about your blog’s content and your products. They interact with all of your social media posts. And they refer all of their friends to you. It sounds like a dream, right?
In order to be considered the go-to person for your niche, you need to focus on providing valuable content to your followers. So, what does your audience want to see? Address their interests and issues with your social media posts. You can do this by sharing great content from your website and others.
One thing that so many brands fail to remember is that you cannot let social media be a platform for you to just talk about yourself 24/7. If you’re promoting your own content, products, and services nonstop, people will get bored. They’ll move on. To avoid this, curate amazing content from other sources as well. A successful social media strategy is a balance between content you’ve created and content you’ve curated from other sources.
Curating great content from other people is only a small part of becoming an authority figure online, but it shows people that you’re knowledgable. You also have to make sure the content you share is amazing. The content you post on social media should be relevant to your audience. It should be valuable.
ENGAGEMENT
If you’ve just been scheduling content on social media and not engaging with your followers, you’re doing it wrong. You need to use social media as a way to connect with your audience. Build relationships with them. After all, that’s how you establish that KLT Factor I’m always talking about.
Don’t just schedule your updates and think you’re done for the day. Check into your social media platforms a few times per day to see what other people are talking about. Respond to updates others have posted. Ask questions and encourage your audience to respond as a way to spark a conversation. Engagement is essential in helping people get to know you and like you. And that, my friend, is how you turn a follower into a raving fan.
Now, that doesn’t mean you need to be on social media 24/7. That’s just impossible! My recommendation is to block off a few times every day to check your social media accounts. This way, you won’t be logging in all day long, allowing the distractions to tear you away from your work.
CONSISTENCY
Finally, consistency is a must when creating a successful social media strategy. It should come as no surprise that if you skimp on the social media updates, you tend to see your follower count drop. But the truth is, we are all guilty of forgetting to post from time-to-time (myself included). However, if you want to maximize your success on social media, you have to be consistent with your posting schedule. How do I recommend you do this? Create a social media editorial calendar.
You probably have an editorial calendar to plan out your blog posts, right? But what about one to plan your social media posts? If you really want to get a handle on your social media platforms, consider using an editorial calendar to plan your updates in advance.
This is especially great if you’re prepping for a product launch, holiday sales, etc. You can plan out when those specific updates will run and even write them out ahead of time. It takes the stress out of social media when you already have things figured out.
