Be honest, how much time to you devote to your social media business channels each week?

(and I don’t just mean scrolling!)

Ten minutes? Ten hours? Too much? Too little?

Are you a planner or is your approach a bit more ad hoc?

As busy business owners, you know that the marketing potential of social media marketing makes perfect sense, especially if you are reaching out to a local audience BUT trying to find the time to research, create and implement a social strategy that will work is perhaps not at the top of your to do list.  Plus trying to keep on top of new techniques and tools to keep you relevant can often feel pretty overwhelming.

Is any of this sounding familiar?

Whether you are at the beginning of your social media marketing journey starting channels from scratch or you have a more established presence, there’s never a wrong time to take stock, get organised and come up with a plan of action!

Before you jump straight in with your strategy plan, here are some of our top tips to get started!

Write it down!

Whether you’re a traditional pen and paper sort of person or you’re more comfortable at your laptop, get your plan down in black and white.  When something is committed to paper, you’re committing to what you’ve written and it makes you accountable. You should regularly refer back to your plan – if you feel like you’re losing your way or you’ve forgotten your initial ideas, reread your plan to give you your focus back.

Be clear about your objective

What are you hoping to achieve from your social media marketing approach?  Raising awareness of your brand, driving traffic to your website, creating an engaged community? You need to make sure this aligns with your overall business goal and then decide what goal fits your overall marketing plan. Put it should be at the top of your plan (in BIG LETTERS!) and always consider it when planning your content, referring back to it when you need to, to give yourself some focus.

Be clear on your target audience

This is such an important step and should never be overlooked! Try to create three user personas that outlines your most typical customers in great detail - imagine them as real people so you can start to see why the might and might not engage with you. Think about their goals and pain points in life and how your product or service might help help to achieve/solve them.

Be ambitious but be realistic

It always good to have big ambitions for your social media channels and a clear idea about where you want to be but it is you should try to be realistic too.  If you create a plan to devote 10 hours a week to social marketing tasks but you only have 6 hours to spare, you are setting yourself up to fail.  Factor into your plan the reoccurring tasks that will need to be undertaken and how long they will take you so you can incorporate them into your weekly to do list.

Don’t spread yourself to thin at first

It is better to do one channel really well than set up pages on every social media platform that exists and barely have a presence.  Once you crack one or two and managing them becomes a little easier, you could consider setting up another channel.  REMEMBER, always keep your audience in mind too – there’s no point spending time and effort on a platform if your audience isn’t very likely to use it.

If you’re still staring a blank screen, perhaps I can help you out!

I offer comprehensive, made to measure strategy plans designed specifically for your business.

 CONTACT GLOW SOCIAL.

I always take the time to understand what you do as a business, your goals and what you want to achieve before assessing what the right approach would be for you and your brand. I love working with passionate business owners, understanding their story and where they want to be!  I can always stick around to implement the strategy for you too for six weeks before a full hand over to you and the team.

Why not contact me today to see how I can help you and your business – I don’t just want to make your social media grow, I want it to glow!