Wait, is there a “best strategy” to social media?
Perhaps the answer is clickbait, as that’s what brought you here to read the first sentence of this blog post. But clickbait isn’t a reliable way to build a trust in consumers — in fact, it does the opposite.

The short answer to our own question: there isn’t one.

No matter what any ‘marketing guru’ tells you, there is not any one way to market on social media for any business. There are, however, certain guidelines to follow, tools to use, and strategies to implement that will help you get your social strategies on the right track. There are many, many, (many), blog posts you can read about specific tools to use, platforms to focus on, target markets, and all of that technical stuff. Today, we’re going to focus on the essentials. The most basic things you can do to get started with a healthy social media plan.

Think of where you want to go

Understanding your goals is the first step when making almost any decision. These set a bottom line and direction for you and your marketing efforts. This is can be as simple as saying “I think we should focus on building followers on our Pinterest and Instagram pages, because we’re a fashion retailer and those platforms have great potential to showcase our products.”
If you’re thinking like this, you’re on the right track
Set specific and measurable goals and track them as time progresses. When you create goals, try to keep this very important thought in mind: in almost every sense with social media marketing, you want to focus on quality, not quantity. Followers that are engaging with your posts (i.e. liking, commenting, sharing) are exponentially more valuable than the ghosters who like your page and see your posts but will never engage with them.
So try not to set goals like “I would like our social pages to have thousands of followers,” but instead try “I would like our social pages to be extremely engaging with our followers”. Nice and simple. The likers will come when you target the right people for your brand and product/service. It’s like Field of Dreams: build it and they will come.

Consistency is Key

One very crucial thing about creating a social media strategy is making sure that you stay relevant and consistent with your posts. Set a schedule that works for you. If you can’t post everyday, that’s okay. It’s much better to post once or twice a week with consistency than driving yourself crazy by posting every day and burning out. Start small, then build up.
If you’re posting on multiple platforms, the number one tool we recommend is Hootsuite. You can sign up for a free account and schedule posts for up to three social media accounts. It’s an amazingly simple and effective tool to help you make social media posting much easier.

Building on Quality

It doesn’t matter what you do business-wise, consumers of your content are much more likely to engage with you if you have high quality content. By this we mean, you need to make thoughtful and creative pieces of information to share, high resolution video and photos, blog posts over 500 words, etc. The more people see you putting effort for the content they’re receiving, the more likely they are to put in the work for you (i.e. engage with it).
But! We also want to emphasize that you need to find a happy medium for the quality of work. Big businesses with large marketing budgets can afford to create intricate infographics and videos, whereas smaller businesses may only be able to take photos. Focus on what you can do well.
There you have it! Three things to think about and get you started with social media:

  1. Define specific and measurable goals.
  2. Post with consistency.
  3. Focus on quality.

We do social media professionally for 20+ clients around the globe! If you’re wanting to build your social media plan into a winning strategy, we can definitely help. Give us a call or email us at info@roimediaworks.com.
Bonus tip: don’t use click bait.