Creating a basic Social Media Strategy for small businesses

Many businesses find creating a social media strategy overwhelming. There are so many networks available, and they’re constantly adding new features to learn and integrate into your plan.

If you don’t have a full-time team of social media experts at your disposal, it’s even harder. But the fact is that your success depends on having a sensible and straightforward strategy that fits your resources and goals.

Without a strategy, you might be posting on social media platforms for the sake of posting. Without understanding what your goals are, who your target audience is, and what they want, it’ll be hard to achieve results on social media.

In this blog post we're talking about creating a social media strategy. This is really the first step in building a social media presence and you want to do it before you start investing in tactics. The way to success is to have a plan.

Let’s start by understanding what a social media strategy is 

Your social media strategy is your master plan for how you create, post, and engage with your social media content. It encompasses your social content guidelines, posting frequency, social media marketing campaigns, creative plans, and engagement strategy that promote your business and brand.

Kick-Off Questions

One of the simplest ways to create your social media marketing strategy is to ask yourself the 5Ws:
1. Why do you want to be on social media?
2. Who is your target audience?
3. What are you going to share?
4. Where are you going share?
5. When are you going share?

Why do you want to be on social media?

What are your goals? Are you trying to achieve traffic, looking for brand awareness, searching for links, press or endorsements? Maybe you're trying to get on the radar of investors or potential people who could help you with your company. These are all fine goals. You should check the ones that make sense for you. So, if you’re aiming for links, conversions, and visits, then you should know not to do things that are more brand awareness or press focused.

Your goals will define your social media marketing strategy and how much time and energy you’ll need to dedicate to it.

Who is your target audience?

A social media target audience is the specific group of people you want to reach with your social channels. They are the people who are most likely to be interested in your content, products, or services. They are likely united by some common characteristics, like demographics and behaviors.

So, ask yourself - Who do you want to reach? Is it current customers, potential customers, influencers, or perhaps new markets that you haven't touched yet? 

What are you going to share?

What types of engagements will you do? Is it going to be things like content, blog posts, photos, graphics, and videos? Are you going to be promoting other brands or only your own? This is a good decision to make upfront and these should tie back to the goals that you've got.

Which channels are going to work best for you?

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and Google+ are some of the mainstream ones, and there might be some niche ones. Don’t forget about the little ones in your efforts. Also, think of forums as a good social netword. There could be major forums in your industry that are niche but are hyper-focused and hyper-relevant for what you are doing.

  • Facebook and YouTube are both prime places for ads due in part to their high-earning user bases.
  • The top social networks among Millennials and Gen Z are Instagram and YouTube, signaling the strength of bold, eye-popping content that oozes with personality.
  • Women vastly outnumber men on Pinterest, which is noted to boast the highest average order value for social shoppers.
  • LinkedIn’s user base is well-educated, making it a hub for in-depth, industry-specific content that might be more niche than what you see on Facebook or Twitter.

    Don’t spread yourself too thin. Instead, focus on networks where your core audience is already active.

When are you going share?

Your business might have an opposing response to that of your competitor or any other business. So don’t follow what they do. Instead, investigate the pattern of your followers and people who have liked your page on these social media forums.

Study them thoroughly and analyze the data provided by these social networking websites that will help your business get a better insight of your following on the internet.
The way your target audience behaves is what will decide whether you need to post on a daily basis, or on alternate days of the week, or maybe just go for one post a week. Again, all this depends on how active and how interactive your audience is.

It is always better to focus on the quality of your content rather than focusing on the quantity of your social media posts.

Lastly let’s look at Metrics

What metrics are we talking about? Check out the breakdown below:

  • Reach. Post reach is the number of unique users who saw your post. How much of your content actually reaches users’ feeds?
  • Clicks. This is the number of clicks on your content or account. Tracking clicks per campaign is essential to understand what drives curiosity or encourages people to buy.
  • Engagement. The total number of social interactions divided by the number of impressions. This sheds light on how well your audience perceives you and their willingness to interact.
  • Hashtag performance. What were your most-used hashtags? Which hashtags were most associated with your brand? Having these answers can help shape the focus of your content going forward.
  • Organic and paid likes: Beyond a standard Like count, these interactions are attributed to paid or organic content. Given how much harder organic engagement is to gain, many brands turn to ads. Knowing these differences can help you budget both your ad spend and the time you invest in different formats.

Final Thoughts

Online marketing may be considered a cost-effective and worthwhile investment, especially with the easy-to-understand courses at RMVA. If you can handle this strategy, you will get excellent investment returns. An ideal approach will allow you to reach the right prospects at the appropriate time.

Get a kickstart

Why not contact us at info@rmva.co.za to see how we can provide you with your personalised training and skills enhancement packages.

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As stated before, the reason for our existence is based on our passion and commitment to the educational future of this country, and how we can help bring this country into the future of education.

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