How to Design Your Social Media Strategy

Coz i am working as social media marketing executive i found this post by Mr.Kiran very useful

 How to Design Your Social Media Strategy

Social media is here for long, however very few organizations have harnessed its power.  If you are among that group which is yet to plunge into the world of social media, then it’s time. Designing a Social Media strategy is never an easy task for any business but it is not rocket science either.  This post will help you to design a social media strategy from scratch.


What are you looking for?


You should have the answer for this before embarking on a social media campaign. Starting a social media campaign without an objective is a total waste of time, money and other resources. Even though social media would not have the answer for all your business problems, it can provide you to resolve many issues in your business. This can be like improving your customer service, generating leads, Establishing thought leadership etc.
Listen First


Now that you set the objectives you wish to achieve through social media, the very next step is to know what is happening around you. This includes what is being said about your brand, your competitor, industry etc. Also you need to find out whether there are more positive or negative sentiments about your brand.  There are several tools available in the market to help you to start monitoring the social media conversations, including free tool like Google Alerts and premium apps like Radian6.


Join the conversation

So you have identified what has been said about you and the competition by customers and prospective customers. Before you start contributing towards the conversation, make sure that you have done enough research about the nature and characteristics of the influencers in your industry.  ALWAYS make sure that you are not directly broadcasting any marketing messages through your social media profiles as the prospective customers will have the impression that you are here to market your products and not to help them.
When you receive negative comments about your brand/company, don’t panic. You should think that the people who write negatives about you are the ones who care more about you. So you would have the opportunity to convert them as brand advocates if you carefully and properly deal with them.

Provide Value

Unless you provide a value through your conversations in social media it will be impossible to gain and maintain a good follower base.  Always try to help your followers with some kind of information or any other thing that add value to them. That will make them a loyal follower of you. You could even convert them into a customer, if you maintain this relation. Social media is all about building relationships.

Measure 

Without proper measurement your social media campaign is incomplete. There are several ways you can measure your social media efforts and the metric will depend upon the objectives you set earlier and your business goals. Social media campaign is a cycle so it doesn’t stop here. This is a contemplating stage. After identifying the area of improvement in your campaign, you can incorporate the changes and continue the process.