Create a succinct social media strategy that gets you leads, conversions, and more revenue!

Social media usage grew considerably during the pandemic, both in terms of average time spent and user population. That’s why your business will bounce back faster in the post-COVID economy if you fine-tune your social media strategies now. And unlike the popular belief that social media marketing is complex, you can greatly improve your social presence in three simple strategies –

Understand why your business needs social media presence

Social media has 4 main benefits to businesses:

• Building your brand awareness and engagement through social media influencers, paid adverts, and social promotions.
• Interacting with customers. This means listening to and shaping conversations around your brand, creating a community around your brand, and providing personalized customer support.
• Generating new business leads, pulling traffic to your website, and encouraging sign-ups.
• Listening to and spying on your competitors.

The culmination of these benefits is increased conversions, revenue growth, and business expansion. Your strategy has to be anchored on this understanding if you are to get good value for your social media investment.

Strategize around a particular buyer persona

Not everyone on social media will listen to your brand message no matter how well you package it. The idea is to only interact with social media users who are both interested in and able to afford your products. You will do that by creating a buyer persona beforehand. A buyer persona defines an ideal buyer’s social status: Age, financial standing, marital status, gender, religion, location, and any other personal data relevant to what you sell.

A user’s social standing determines many things including the platforms they are on and when/how/why they consume social content. For example, when targeting users below 25 years, you have better odds on TikTok or Instagram than you would have on Twitter. When targeting users over 50 years, your odds will be better on Facebook than on TikTok or Instagram.

Note: It is okay to target multiple buyer personas on the same platform, but it is important that you target one persona per post.

Content should be at the center of your strategy

Between videos and images, what should you share on social media? Well, it is better to share everything shareable. Of importance here is to post regularly and in good time, and content that appeals optimally to your ideal buyer persona. Here are key content creation tips for you:

• Focus on posting content that addresses particular pain points that your ideal buyer could have. That gets them interested.
• Have a clear and consistent theme for all your posts. If you choose to post memes, for example, let each meme carry your brand message, reputation, and image. If you choose to post testimonials or user-generated content, ensure that it aligns with what your brand stands for.
• When creating videos, ensure that they are short enough to be shared across platforms and that they are catchy enough to inspire users to share.
• Always remember to link your social media content back to your website.
• Timing is important. When are your social followers most active? That’s the time to post.
• Maintain a professional tone in all your conversations on social media. With the ongoing cancel culture at its peak, one wrong word can badly hurt your brand reputation. Also, when choosing brand influencers, ensure that their social media image aligns perfectly with your brand image.

Bottom line

Be the number one advocate for your brand. Your employees can be your invaluable brand advocates as well if you inspire them well. Lastly, social media is fluid and dynamic, so you need to constantly test, measure, and improve your strategy if you are to remain relevant and competitive.