Often, a business leader comes to us, thinking of building and enhancing their social media exposure. Smart. But they aren’t sure where to start.
Often, the business leader starts the conversation by telling us about their favorite social media networks. So, we respond by us talking about different networks, but the business leader says they don’t like those networks.
Now, “I don’t like it” is not, all by itself, a good reason to leave options on the table—so what’s a good way to develop a social media program?
1. Simplicity
What a great word. Whatever media marketing you do, your plan must be simple, or you will get stuck at some point. Figure out who will do what in terms of developing content, deciding what to post, and posting it. Make sure everybody on your team knows the plan. There. You have achieved simplicity.
Simplicity will make all your other decisions much easier, because you’ll be able to see what you’re dealing with. Which brings me to…
2. Clarity
Clarity is a close cousin of simplicity. You can’t have one without the other. Well, I guess you could be clear about a complex process, but clarity is easier after you’ve achieved simplicity. Clarity deals with the why. Are you clear on your mission, your goal, the reason you are doing what you’re doing?
We often see business leaders jump into social media because someone told them it’s a good idea. They aren’t clear about their own why, so they can’t prioritize, nor can they focus. The results are not good. Know your why, and that will tell you a lot about your how.
3. Know Your Audience
Here’s the thing. You may like LinkedIn the best, but if the people you’re talking to (prospective customers or clients, people you want to network with, and so on) don’t like LinkedIn, they won’t see your LinkedIn posts. It’s a very simple idea, if you’re clear enough about your priorities to see it—if you want to connect with others, you have to go where they are.
Making the Social Media Decision
Your social media strategy is going to come down to a couple of simple decisions.
- Do you want to market with social media?
- How much of your time and resources do you want to put into social media marketing?
- Who is your target audience—who are you trying to reach through social media?
These decisions are all up to you.
Maybe you don’t want to do social media marketing. Maybe you are busy enough already. That’s fine. You know your business, what it needs, and what you can afford.
But if you do want to jump into social media, the answers to the other two questions should make your choice of networks pretty easy. You might need to do a little research, so you know where your target audience is. If your audience is on more than one network, you can look at your resources to find out if you have to narrow it down or find help.
The point is that as long as you’re clear about what you want and you keep things simple, your social media program will almost seem to develop itself.
We have a short podcast on this topic of the social media decision–it goes into other parts of the social media marketing decision-making process. Check it out here. Or watch it on YouTube here.