Planning Your Social Media Strategy

Planning Your Social Media Strategy

The thought of defining a social media strategy may sound overwhelming but it does not have to be.

The best place to start is by asking questions to determine your goals:

• ·      Do you want to promote a product or generate demand in advance of a product launch?
• ·      Do you want to raise money or promote an event? 
• ·      Do you want to create buzz and conversation? 
• ·      Do you want to sell a product or service? 

Next, determine the target audience.  Will you segment your market by gender, by age, by lifestyle, by geographic area or something else?  Understanding your goals and your target audience is key to matching your marketing activities to a social media platform.

Once your goals and target audience have been defined, you will need to determine the cost(s) to create and maintain your social media profiles.  This includes fees paid to outside agencies for marketing content, graphics, photography, video production and any web fees or reporting package costs.  Additionally, are there any staff salaries to be paid for in-house content creation or social media platform maintenance?

Now it is time to do a little research into the available social media platforms to understand which demographic segment(s) they attract?  While all platforms may appeal to individuals across age and lifestyle segments, oftentimes, there is one predominant group that the channel attracts. Pinterest, for example, has an audience primarily comprised of females (Levy, 2013).  Instagram is open to anyone with a smartphone app and a camera and appeals almost equally to males and females; however, its predominant user group is aged 18 to 34 (Martin, 2012).

Another item to understand is how each channel facilitates communication between you and your target audience.  YouTube uses video as its primary means of communication.  Viewers can watch, and hopefully subscribe, to your channel.  Additionally, viewers can interact with you or each other by leaving comments on each video.  In addition, YouTube offers a search functionality that allows users to search for content.  If you want to learn how to bake French Macarons all you have to do is search for it and several videos [of varying quality] appear. 

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that is best suited for “in the moment” (Levy, 2013) communication pertaining to product launches, daily specials and announcements.  Twitter limits its tweets to 140 characters; however, it allows for external links that can easily redirect traffic to your web site, a YouTube video, a Pinterest board or a Facebook post.

Once you understand how each platform allows you to connect with your publics to achieve your goals you are almost ready to dive into the world of social media.  The last thing to consider is what are you going to say? Much like the age old question of which came first the chicken or the egg, there is much debate as to which is best, content or conversation.  Michael Greenburgh (2009) of MultiChannel Merchant suggests planning what you will talk about and then creating a calendar to chart the frequency of which the content will be posted as Greenburg believes that content is the key to success, “Without content, there is not a whole lot to talk about” (Greenberg, 2009).  Catherine Novak (2010), blogger for Social Media today asserts the opposite, “Content without conversation is just broadcasting.”  What this really tells you is that you must create engaging content with regularity to encourage your target publics to talk about you, share you, promote you and purchase from you.  Content does not have to be long and drawn out to be successful.  If you do not have the resources to consistently create a dialog with customers or to maintain conversations that will determine if you should choose one platform over another or if you should choose a single platform from which to operate.

Let us look at an example to tie the concepts together.  The WNC Nature Center located in Asheville, North Carolina has a non-profit arm, the Friends of the WNC Nature Center.  The Friends of the WNC Nature Center is a 501(c)3 charitable organization tasked with fundraising through events, renting facilities for children’s birthday parties, the sales of annual memberships and by obtaining grants and donations. 

Each of the objectives targets different audiences groups.  Children who love animals, parents who want to teach their children to care about the environment and local wildlife, grandparents who want family friendly activities to share with their grandkids. Adults who love animals or enjoy photography or who wish to volunteer with the Friends to help maintain the Nature Center or to assist in fundraising or public relations.  Then there are local businesses that are seeking to build goodwill in the community by matching employee donations or via direct grants.

So how do they determine which channel to use?  Well, they have identified their objectives, their audiences and assume they have researched the major social media channels that have the likelihood of reaching the greater number of users.  Now they determine if they have the capacity to use different channels for different objectives or if they do not have the experience or time to create and maintain the profiles, then they should select a primary social media medium that will provide the greatest potential reach.  They want to build relationships that will translate into goodwill and donations and membership sales.  Thus, Facebook would be the correct choice. 

Facebook is “one of the most powerful social platforms in the world” (Levy, 2013) and “you can assume most people are on it” (Levy, 2013).  Facebook’s strengths include building relationships and creating conversations. This allows customers “to get to know the people behind the logo” (Levy, 2013). 

Should the Friends of the WNC Nature Center have capacity to expand beyond a single channel, Twitter and YouTube would serve to support their Facebook efforts.  The creation of a YouTube channel would reach those that may not be on Facebook or prefer to have e-mail notices when new content is posted versus having to search in their newsfeed on Facebook.  Videos introducing the public to the animals at the nature center or sharing experiences at the annual Mountain Safari can be effective PR tools and relationship building. 

Twitter can be added to the mix to send out breaking news such as upcoming events, announcements of new animals or attractions and notifications that the newest newsletter is ready.  Additionally, Twitter can be used to stimulate conversation by asking trivia questions about Nature Center animals and conservation.

Remember, “most people and companies cannot be amazing on every platform” (Levy, 2013) so “instead of having a sub-par representation in a lot of place, be awesome on a few of them” (Levy, 2013).

REFERENCES

Greenberg, M. (2009, October 20). Content is king of social marketing. MultichannelMerchant.com. Retrieved January 25, 2014 from http://multichannelmerchant.com/social-media/1020-content-social-marketing/

Levy, S. (2013, December 3). How to Choose the Best Social Media Platform for Your Business | Entrepreneur.com. Retrieved January 23, 2014, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230020

Martin, T. (2012, December 11). Pinterest vs Instagram - Which is better for marketing?Retrieved January 23, 2014, from http://www.conversedigital.com/digital-strategy/should-my-company-be-on-instagram-or-pinterest

Novak, C. (2010, July 27). Why conversation, not content, is king. SocialMediaToday.com. Retrieved January 26, 2014 from http://socialmediatoday.com/wordspring/152636/why-conversation-not-content-king