Why Businesses Need Social Media Strategy

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Most businesses and companies do not have a clear strategic picture of their social media endeavors or campaigns. They make the mistake of building their strategy around the various social media platforms rather than focusing on their own business objectives and goals. Developing a good social media strategy right at the beginning will go a long way for any business in terms of ROI and bringing value to it. The questions that need to be answered are: how much are you willing to invest or can invest in the social media activities (both in terms of money as well as time) and how does that relate to the business value? How best does the social media strategy align with your business and other marketing strategies?

Its very important to get the answers to these questions and understand the objectives and goals of the business or company before starting off any social media activity like opening a Facebook or a Twitter account without any concrete plans or strategy in place to measure success or understand what you want to achieve from it. 

Having a social media strategy in place is the need of the hour for any business today, helping to build a foundation towards better handling of the social media platforms in the right manner to suit the individual business and its values, and also helps to achieve the unique objectives and ensure maximum ROI.

In order to create a comprehensive and successful social media strategy, the business should first establish who their demographic audience is that they are trying to reach and to identify a clear way to measure the success. Understand the objectives of the social media strategy and be prepared for a long term commitment, as it takes consistent effort and time to get results from online campaigns.

Think clearly what your business wants to use social media for - brand awareness, drive more leads, drive sales, promote products, improve customer relations or customer services. All these can be achieved by careful planning, expertise and experience.

The different social media have their own unique and specific tools or metrics that can be used to measure the results or level of interaction that takes place on that platform. For example, the number of "likes" on Facebook, or number of followers on Twitter or percentage of females versus males in your community can be tracked over time to measure your progress and the impact of your social media campaign on your bottom line. 

The different social media platforms should be analyzed and conversations tracked so that you can identify business relevant topics as well as potential crises and issues. The end result should put your brand in a position to establish who your audience are, where they are online and define your objectives to maximize engagement with them. 

In order to find and identify the most relevant platform to your business, monitor the different sites to see where your brand name is being mentioned, where your competitors are, use specific keywords to identify and understand what your target audience is using and which will offer you the greatest opportunities for your business. The sites can include anything from Facebook to blogs or forums. So be prepared to go anywhere. 

Once a business has identified and chosen the relevant platforms to further its social media activities, it will have to then define how to manage engagement with the customers on the different channels. Each platform will require different content or means and ways to engage the customer in an effective manner. Therefore, a careful strategy needs to be developed around content creation in all sites or platforms along with its frequency of posting. The content should be the voice of the business, should reflect brand values and guidelines, which takes time, effort and resources but is crucial to build an active and engaged community.

A continuous open communication between the business and its customers has become very vital for any business today. Therefore plan, engage, listen and manage any negative comments/feedback or criticism in a timely and effective manner so as to maintain your credibility and reputation online. Social media provides many tools to accurately track and monitor the performance of your business online. Therefore, its wise to use these findings to optimize the program and ensure that your social media activity is performing as effectively as it possibly can. This not only leads to social media success but is also vital in contributing to the overall objectives of your business.