One of the main responsibilities I have as part of my role with Learning Everyday is managing the social media accounts. Not only do I manage the The Content Marketing Academy pages but I also manage the accounts for one of our clients.
For each business I have developed a social media strategy with the aim of increasing the number of people liking and following the various pages. Having a social media strategy is important to ensure you reach the goals you set for your content marketing efforts. Social media is a distribution channel for your content marketing and should form a large part of your marketing strategy.
This article will tell you how to create a social media strategy. I hope you will be able to take some tips from it and apply it to your own strategy.
Social media channels and branding
The three main social media channels that I manage are Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. While you may have other channels like Google+ or Pinterest, TCMA use these three the most, as they are the channels used the most by our audience.
Before you begin bringing people to your social media sites it is important that the branding and feel of the pages are in line with your website and business. We had a designer make all our branding across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, keeping the same design to ensure consistency across all three platforms.
Tip! Make sure the images you use are the correct size and are not blurring or cut parts of the image off as this can look unprofessional and messy.
If you don’t have a designer to produce the branding for your business a great tool you can use is Canva. With Canva you can produce Facebook cover images, Twitter and Google headers and many other social media images. This ensures you make the images the right size and they have a range of designs to choose from, or you can upload your own images.
Begin by being a content curator
The TCMA social media strategy began with buffering content to go out on Facebook and Twitter at particular times of the day using the scheduling feature of Buffer. As Chris has mentioned in a previous article, content marketing starts with content consumption, then content curation. I rolled these into one and curated the content I was consuming, when I thought it was relevant and useful to the target audience a.k.a you.
Click here to read Chris’s aritcle about content curation
Click here to read about the benefits of content curation
So I started using Buffer to schedule content to be posted everyday, usually finding content on a Monday to fill up Buffer for the week.
Become a content creator and promoter
Once I started writing articles I then added in the promotion of the content we were producing for The Content Marketing Academy. Once I had published an article I immediately buffered it to go straight out onto our social media platforms and then scheduled it for the next day and again for the following week. It is important to keep promoting your most recent posts as chances are when you first promote it, only a handful of your audience will see it. Posting it on different days at different times will help to reach more of your audience.
Tip! Using photos and images to promote your most recent blog articles can be beneficial as people tend to respond more to images and visual content than just words alone.
Scheduling
Scheduling your social media content is a good thing to do, especially if you don’t have the time each day to sit down and post content at regular intervals. Buffer is a great tool to start with to create a content schedule. You should then think about analysing your schedule every so often. Change the times you post content based on the feedback you get not only from Buffer but from other tools such as Social Bro and Followerwonk. You want to make sure what you are posting is seen by your audience so find out when they are likely to be most active and adjust your schedule accordingly.
Tools I use to help with my social media strategy
Buffer
Part of your social media strategy should include a schedule so you know when you are going to post content. Buffer lets you schedule content months in advance.
Social Bro
Helps you analyse your twitter followers and produces a report on the best time to tweet
Followerwonk
Similar to Social Bro, this allows you to analyse your followers or who you are following. You can see the best engagement times so you can adjust your schedule for better engagement with your followers
Likealyzer
Specifically for Facebook, this analyses your page and provides suggestions for improvement
Your Turn
- How have you gone about creating your social media strategy?
- What tools do you use to help you with your strategy?
- Do you think your social media strategy is working for you? Is it time to change it up?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!