How to Create an Effective Social Media Strategy (Part 2)

A recent study found that 50% of consumers say they follow brands on social media to learn about new products or services. Half of the people following your page are already interested, that is huge! Half of your audience already expressed interest, so use your content to convince the other half why they too need your product or service. 

In our last blog, we covered the necessary tools to create a foundation for your business’s social media strategy while fostering a community of highly engaged, well-informed users. You've come a long way in understanding your audience, goal setting, and recording social metrics. The work doesn't stop there. In the second part of our blog series, we're going to share how you can leverage your competitors to create better content, utilize social metric data, and how to take those data findings to constantly improve your social media strategy. 

Stay consistent with competition

Odds are your competitors or partners are creating content and using social media. The beauty of social media is that anyone, even you, has access to their content as well as their cadence. If you have a particularly active competitor or partner on social media, try to understand what it is they're doing to stay engaged with customers on social media. Also, take note of their weak points - it's an area to focus on when implementing your strategy. Here are some key things to look for: 

• Post Consistency
• Resharing (both their own content and outside organizations)
• Type of Content 

Post consistency is just that—the rate at which they are sharing content. It's difficult to say that there’s a specific number or range you must hit per week as it differs on each channel. While there are plenty of studies that say to be successful, you must “post three to five pieces of content per week between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM,” BUT this doesn’t account for industry, time zone, or audience size. That tactic may work some of the time, but there is no umbrella statement to social media success. Feel free to experiment with time zones and the type of content you post. Rely on the data to determine the key factors that will help drive more traffic to your channels. 

You want your audience to come back to your social page knowing they can expect to see some fresh social proof, a blog post, or a case study on your page. As in all walks of life, consistency is key! If your competitors or a partner seem to be posting 4 times per week, start there and see if that works for your business.

Some folks are hesitant to reshare their own content. While it's easy to think you may come off as annoying or repetitive, it's impactful because it's unlikely that your followers will see all of your posts the first time, let alone multiple times. This isn’t anything to be discouraged by. Social feeds are busy places. If anything, that makes resharing posts a top priority. This also takes some of the weight off your shoulders in terms of producing content. For every single new piece of content you create, schedule a cadence so in the first six weeks you are sharing that piece of content four times. That way, you're establishing consistency and are making great use of the content you already have.

Social metrics tell a story

This seems like a lot to take in, so let's review some basic terminology discussed from the first blog post as a refresher. 

• Reach - the percentage of followers, subscribers, or connections that come across your social page over a certain timeframe.
• Engagement - the level of interaction that a piece of content is receiving from an audience.
• Conversion - the percentage of consumers who take the action you want them to take. That can be clicking a link, buying your product or service, etc.
• Activity - the number of comments, likes, shares, or any interaction you receive on a piece of content or your social page.

Tracking these metrics week over week and month over month has a tremendous benefit to your social media strategy. Monitoring what your audience reacts to and what they don’t should be an ongoing task. That information should lead, dictate and improve your current social media practices. It seems simple because it is. Yet, it's something that often gets overlooked by businesses. 

Social media metrics are also a key factor in goal setting and assessment. The whole point of creating a social strategy is to have your business benefit from it. So when you’re setting your social goals, make sure you link them back to overarching business goals. 

Let’s say one of your business goals is to increase brand awareness. So a social media goal can be to increase your reach by 15% over a quarter.

In order to accomplish this goal, you generate new pieces of content and share an outside sourced content. You tag relevant companies with bigger followings. If you’re tracking efficiently, you should know before the quarter is over if you’re going to hit your target. If the numbers look lower than expected, then adapt! Figure out what posts are generating the most traffic using your engagement and activity numbers.

The advantages of tracking social metrics are endless. They prove you can measure how successful a strategy, campaign, or social channel is, and in the end it shows your impact on the business. By providing consistent social media data reports, you'll be able to expand upon the social department, both personnel and resource-wise. Lastly, by tracking these four metrics you and your business will be able to assess the overall health of your brand. Because at the end of the day, if you are following an intelligent social media strategy, setting goals, keeping things simple, and tracking social metrics, you give your business the best chance of success. 

Understanding who we are trying to reach and what they are compelled by is the hardest part. Using these tools you’ll be able to establish answers for those two questions, then take it to the next level. Social media can be daunting but by simplifying, tracking the right metrics, and using outside sources your business can excel.