THE IMPORTANCE OF STRATEGY IN SOCIAL MEDIA

For all of you who have embraced the tsunami that social media has become, it is important to keep in mind that you can’t just dive straight into action and start posting random updates on Facebook and expect an immediate return. The British Army’s adage ‘prior planning prevents piss poor performance’ springs to mind. The first thing you should do is make an assessment and analysis of your current social media assets and how they are performing. You also need to make an assessment of your competitors’ social media marketing programmes and to achieve this you need to engage a ‘top notch’ social media marketing expert. We all need clarity on how to use social media properly and a social media expert will offer a range of ongoing assistance, from intermittent support to monitoring and reporting on your social media presence, to full community management.

To this end, don’t waste another minute on social media without finding out how you’re performing and what your peers are doing. This can be achieved by employing a social media expert who will provide you with a strategy tailored to your business and resources, using the relevant platforms and forgetting those which bring no benefit. They will recommend a workshop with their social media experts who will explain best practices specific to your industry and will help you to define a set of measurable objectives.
A social media game plan provided by your chosen expert in this field will prevent you from wasting valuable time and money on social media. They will be able to help you work out where and how you should be spending both and will establish which platforms your business will be using and why. You should also know which platforms you should forget about – and why.  An expert will help you define what you should do on each platform and provide an analysis of your market, your resources and your business and explain the best practices specific to your industry, helping you define a set of measurable objectives.

Managing your content is just as important as having a well thought out social media game plan. The experts will save you time and worry and will ensure that you are never stuck for a post idea again. They can offer your audience content that is balanced between being informative, entertaining and market oriented and optimise your content for search rankings and maximum engagement. To develop a brand voice, create a social media ecosystem and establish a content and inbound marketing framework unique to your organisation, engage the services of a social media expert.