Are you just getting started with social media marketing?
Are you unsure how to create a plan for success?
Establishing a social media presence doesn’t have to be scary or overwhelming.
Keep reading and discover four tips to help you get your small business started with social media marketing.

#1: Identify Your Goals, Personality, and Audience

Strategize, plan and implement! Like most anything, a planned approach to social media always works better than flying by the seat of your pants! Your plan should be well though out and include all of the strategies that you plan to utilize for your business on social networks.

Start by writing down your business goals and branding objectives.

Your social media plan should address the following areas.

Align Social Media to Your Business Goals

Every business has a specific set of goals, and your social media plan should directly coordinate with these goals.
For example, if you run a coffee shop, an objective might be to increase the number of walk-in customers. So, you social media goals would then be to create more awareness of your coffee shop and drive more people to your location.

Create a Personality for Your Business

Identify how you want people to perceive your business. Think of this as an online personality for your business. People will form a perception about your business when they interact with you online.

Your social media presence should work in unison with your other marketing efforts to tell a story about your brand. Everything from the content you share to the types of images you post will leave an impression about your business in your audience’s mind.

Start by defining how you want people to perceive your business.

Write down a list of adjectives and terms that you want people to associate with you.
Hint: Use a thesaurus as a tool to help you find the perfect words to express the voice for your brand.
Define Your Target Audience

If you have not clearly identified your target audience, you will want to start here. Answer the following questions on paper.

Who is your ideal customer?
Who are your current customers?
Who are your competitors targeting?
What is the age, gender, education, location and interests of your ideal client?
Hint: Now that you have identified your ideal client, use this research and information to prioritize your top 2 or 3 social media channels. Don’t start with more than that, and if you are currently doing a mediocre job on 5 or 6 networks, step back and reset your strategy with greater focus.

#2: Identify the Best Social Networks to Engage On

Currently, there are about 800 different social media sites, and your potential customers might be on any of them, or most likely, on several of them. But who has the time, money or people to be active on dozens of sites? Not me. Not you. So, the key is focusing your social media presence on a couple networks where it really counts!

Unless you are a big company with the resources to plow full speed ahead into every social media platform, chances are you’re better to focus on one or two “core” social networks first. It’s better to excel on a couple of social networks than be mediocre on five or six. And while social media is (mostly) free, your time is valuable. Depending on the type of business you run, not every social media site is going to suit your marketing, your audience, or what you are trying to achieve. To help you decide where to begin, identify those social networks where your audience already “hangs out”.

#3: Pick the Perfect Social Media Management Tool

Once you’ve developed a social media plan for your specific networks, it’s time to select a social media management tool. Choosing the right tool can save you a lot of time and help you get the most out of your social media marketing efforts.
Based on your social network plan, draw up a list of basic features that you expect to need from a tool. As a small business, these might include the ability to schedule content, and manage engagement.

Because social media is in real time, you need to be able to work anywhere. So your social media management tool should work on your mobile devices and keep you tuned into everything that’s happening on your brand’s channels.

#4: Monitor and Measure What Matters

Monitoring and measuring are both critical to improving your social media performance and keeping in line with your goals and plan. But what specifically should you monitor and measure?

Measure Engagement, Not Follower Count
Although you’ll want to keep an eye on your follower count for each social network, it’s not a number you should worry about too much at first. Instead, pay more attention to how people engage with your business.

Do people respond to your content? What kinds of reactions are you getting from your content? What kinds of posts get the most engagement and how can you maximize these?

It’s okay to experiment with content on social media, as long as you can measure how much engagement you’re generating and use the results to inform your content plan.

Conclusion

Although social media is free, it does take time and effort to build a presence for your business. The key to getting started is committing to the process!

I hope that you can use these ideas to start getting your business social!