A 90-Day Plan to Strengthen Your Social Media
If your business is struggling, then chances are your social media presence is limited to non existent. Of course, there are a litany of ways in which a business might underperform; however, seeing as 97% of consumers use the internet to search for local businesses, a weak social media presence is likely one of the preeminent reasons for your business’s underperformance.
Through the implementation of this 90-day plan, you’ll be able to turn that underperformance around and potentially even break even on your advertising campaigns. Each of the steps in this plan have been proven to be effective and are part of the time-honored tradition of successful marketing tactics.
Days 1-7: Run a Competitive Analysis
The very first thing that you need to do is to run a social media competitive analysis. A social media competitive analysis involves pinpointing your key competitors and observing their marketing strategies, campaigns, and advertising partnerships in order to evaluate any and all effects of those practices on their conversion rates.
To put it simply, run through the following checklist with each of your competitors:
- Who are they and how do they present themselves? (Aim to select firms that compete with you the most fiercely.)
- What do they do differently from you?
- How do those differences affect their consumer interactions?
- Would those practices work for you?
There are plenty of other questions that you need to ask while running this analysis. Generally speaking, that last question is of the most importance. To ensure thorough data collection and analysis, take at least a week to finish this step.
Days 8-14: Focus on Your Target Audience
Now that you know who your top competitors are and what they’re doing, it’s time to look at your own company. Start out day 8 by referring back to question number one from the analysis stage.
Examining how your competitors present themselves is the quickest way to determine their target audiences. Considering that you’re providing similar goods and services, that might be your target audience as well.
This week is intended ensure that you have a flawless understanding of who you want to buy your product and how you want them to perceive your company. If you’re selling car parts, for instance, you’re going to want to target primarily men, but women aged 18 to 34 are also quite active in the automotive self-repair community.
For most businesses, local and regional demographic information is going to be the most important; however, larger businesses can stand to benefit from the addition of national and even international data for social media usage.
Days 15-21: Begin Implementing Original Content
The start of the third week marks the beginning of the real work. Now that you know what your competitors are doing and who you’re targeting with your content, you are ready to begin content production.
Traditionally, the best methods for driving readership have been a mixed bag of infographics and interactives, but the times are changing. Memes now account for a massive, uncountable percentage of social media, with users of one meme-generation website creating more than 2,000 memes per day, making them an easy and affordable marketing tool.
That said, there is a reason that marketing companies tend to stick with the classics. Memes might be great for a few firms, but they’re typically forgotten by the end of the day. Powerful images and videos, on the other hand, can last for a while.
Days 22-90: Execute an Event Campaign
As you continue to frequently and consistently put out original content, keep in mind that social media marketing is about more than just social media. It’s about your business as a whole.
If you focus exclusively on social media, there’s a chance that your account might balloon, but that chance increases exponentially when you hire models–that’s right, models–to attend events in your name. If you happen to be targeting demographics in Las Vegas, then you’re in luck. Las Vegas trade show models tend to have access to a wide variety of events.
Unfortunately, the bigger the event the more likely you are to have to put up a large amount of money up front by hiring a dedicated trade show staffing agency, which can put a major dent in your wallet.
One way or another, find one to three events per week and send your people. That will build name recognition and might even get your brand in the background of a celebrity’s photo op, providing a massive boost to long-term revenue.
Day 91: Hire a Social Media Manager
We’ve all heard it said before that “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” In the world of social media, doing so can bankrupt you. A more apt saying would be, “if at first you don’t succeed, hire an expert.”
There may be extenuating circumstances preventing this 90-day plan from helping you generate the increased social media traffic as it has done for so many others out there today. Perhaps the competition is particularly great, maybe you just don’t have the right team, and–as happens quite frequently–maybe you’re operating in the wrong market.
If that’s the case, consulting with a professional social media manager might be a necessary expense in order to save your business.
Conclusion
Once you’ve gotten your social media accounts off the ground, the most important thing to do is to keep on going. If you miss so much as a week of content–assuming you’re producing on a weekly basis–then your followers might have already moved on to viewing the content of one or more of your competitors.
No matter what you do, just keep on keeping on.
