In an every changing world businesses have to adapt and reach more and more people each day, and the digital world is a fundamental mineral for any business wanting to thrive. Statistics show that 93% of marketers are using social media for business, and you just can’t afford to be part of the remaining 7%. There is more to social media than just posting on Facebook and replying to your customers on Twitter, you must have a tangible social media content strategy to be successful, Having a strong social media presence is quite critical since it informs a lot during the making of purchases. Approximately 74% of the consumers rely on social media to influence their purchasing decisions.

If the web industry happened to be on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, then social media platforms would be at the very top

representing the least essential thing. However, social media has its place which should never be underestimated. Social media builds on the strength of your website as an authoritative source and extends your organisation’s reach. It enables you to not only find new audiences but also directly interact with people in a personal way. To achieve a successful social media presence, you will need great content that will directly speak to your audience thus it is imperative that you plan your content so that it’s interesting, timely, personal, responsive and snappy.

Social Media Content Strategy
Modernization came with social media resulting in an influx of businesses participating in social media. This has led to a lot of pressure which has made other business to conform and therefore creating some haphazard content that is more damaging to a brand than not having a presence at all. Content is vital; it’s what you give your followers to keep them interested and show you support. Most customers don’t care about the platform that you use or even what you say; they care more about how meaningful your interactions are. This means that you’ll have to invest in content to provide something substantial that would quickly cut through all the noise and directly speak to the users.

Your social media strategy should be Smart, relevant, useful and fun content if you are to make any ripples on the Twitter and Facebook ocean. The content should reflect your brand and give people a reason to stay engaged. Your strategy has to align with the brand’s overall objectives and goals and entirely focus on relevant information that is of importance to the audience because if they fail to see any value, you’ll lose them. Following five basic steps will help you develop an unstoppable social media strategy that will help you build better relationships and earn your brand better results.

1. Establishing your audience

Why does somebody follow you? Why do they like you? This is a great place to start describing the specific audiences for whom you will create content, what their needs are and what their engagement cycle might probably look like. You may also want to map out content you can deliver throughout their buyer’s journey to move them closer to their goals. Your overall digital marketing strategy must entail target audience research. It is, therefore, imperative that you get some insights from the website analytics software that you are using although Google Analytics. Some of the insights include Content preferences, demographics and acquisition channels. Other relevant social-media focused tools include:

BirdSong Analytics: This focuses on your competitor’s Facebook page and provides in-depth analysis of what seems to have worked for them including the most common words that they use in their posts, the exact day of the week or time of the day that triggers most interactions and much more.

BuzzSumo: This focuses on the comparison of Facebook pages and gets to know how their fans receive their updates.

Fanpage Karma: This focuses on your competitor and marks their most engaged followers on social media.

2. Investing in social media keyword research

Keyword analysis goes a long way in assisting you to perfect your content. Social keyword analysis is well-known to be an excellent foundation to enable you to attract potential followers. To achieve this, some of the tools to use include:

Hootsuite: Enables you to see rapidly what is more engaging and what is frequently updating.

Cyfe: Cheaper alternative, comes with a lot of widgets to play with customizable social media features included and also some superb social researching tools. Enables you to archive, import and also analyse Twitter search results for any hashtag or keyword.

Serpstat: focuses on finding the questions that are mostly searched by your target audience regarding your core term.

Understanding all this will give your inspiration for your content while addressing the most specific needs of your audience.

3.Testing Networks to find out which one works for your brandsSocial Media Content Strategy

Today brands are expanding and using just one social media platform is no longer the case. For any brand that is starting out its social media strategy, start by setting up several social media profiles and pour the same amount of effort in each. After some time, you analyze and conclude which one yielded the best results. Remember through this process; you will test out multiple social media tactics and content. After this realization, you don’t necessarily forget about the under-performing network, but instead, you use content tailor-made for such a platform. This will give you an upper hand since you will achieve several parallel objectives at the same time by perpetuating content campaigns customized for the followers on their platform of choice.

4. Create a social media calendar

Create a calendar that spells out what you’re going to say and when you are going to say it. See to it that it’s relevant to where people are in their lives and the season. For instance, nobody cares about Santa Claus in January. It’s such a great idea to incorporate a social element into the calendar since it quickly turns an eerily incomplete strategy into a fully integrated one. Below are some of the great ideas to make part of your intended social media calendar.

The organization’s events and plans- trips, anniversaries, birthdays and so much more.

Monthly holidays- weird unofficial ones included.

Relevant business or entertainment events.

Upcoming festivals, concerts or movie releases- make proper use of relevant memes.

5. Double checking your sites performance

It’s quite annoying for users to land a slow-loading or broken page. It’s even worse for you after spending several days and nights on a social media campaign plan. So many influential websites with viral content have failed to achieve their objectives because of cases like this. But once you have a social media calendar, you can easily foresee traffic, reach out to your tech department and have proper preparations done awaiting your big reveal. The following tools can also be quite helpful.

Uptime stats tool: get updated on a monthly basis to enable them to choose the most reliable host and focus on the performance.

Google tool: to ensure that your website is mobile –friendly. It helps when you also consider developing a mobile app.

Monitoring: for instant updates and once your site starts to go down, it will alert you through a tweet, text message or email.

Social media content deserves our time and attention hence it’s imperative that your take stock of your social media channels, assign them key target groups and then establish the goals of each channel and work on them. When you allocate responsibility, create a yearly plan and draft your posts in advance, your content will be more aligned with both the user needs and your business goals. Remember content is king and your social media content strategy must be well thought out and carefully constructed and executed. Social media is an incredibly powerful tool and getting involved and staying involved is essential to your profession.

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