Computer-based social media refers to technologies that facilitate the online sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information via virtual worlds and online communities.
It gives users fast communication and sharing of content, such as documents, videos, photos, and even personal information. Users may engage with social media by using computers, tablets, or smartphones via web-based applications and/or software.
As of January 2022, there are approximately more than 3.6 billion people actively using social media, and that number is projected to increase by 4.41 billion by 2025.
In this regard, social media is a valuable resource that any modern business can exploit to gain brand awareness and monitoring, promote causes, collaborate with other users, and more. Social media is also an avenue that allows marketers to connect and engage with potential customers in whatever social media platform they are at.
With a strong social media strategy, digital marketers can engage their audience by the creation of engaging content.
What is a Social Media Strategy?
A social media strategy is a plan of how to maximise interactions and engagement. It is also a summary of everything that you plan to do and hope to achieve on social media. By setting one up, it guides your social media actions and lets you know whether you’re succeeding or failing. The more specific you prepare your plan, the more effective it will be.
In Australia, as well as, businesses all over the globe, are looking into social media platforms to connect and engage with their customers. In this regard, a unique set of skills are needed to fully understand and cater to the needs of an audience and should be part of your social media strategy.
The Purpose of Social Media for Businesses?
Let’s begin with one simple fact: Any modern business requires a social media presence.
The fact holds true regardless of whether you are running a small local shop or a big national company. More so if you are running an international company. Since the advent of social media, it has now been proven that it is more than just a trend.
Social media has proven as an essential piece of a business’s marketing strategy.
Though in itself, social media is only one aspect of modern business that can drive business growth. Social media platforms do help in connecting with customers and increasing awareness about your brand. Social media can also help in boosting leads and increasing sales. With these presents, you need to start with an always-on mindset backed by a solid content marketing strategy.
So what good does social media do for businesses? Consider the following:
- Social media is an effective outlet for businesses to reach new audiences with engaging content.
- Social engagement helps in building trust, your authority in your field, and also to showcase your brand in a personal capacity.
- As such, you would need a solid plan to distribute engaging content via social media.
With billions of active monthly users around the world, engagement on major social media platforms just keeps increasing.
How Businesses Can Save Time Using a Social Media Strategy
As a business owner, how much time should you spend or invest in social media? Managing social media is painstakingly time-consuming, thus, saving time on social media management is a pressing issue for you to be able to reach your goals successfully as well as efficiently.
As you may already be aware, social media is a never-ending stream of conversation, more so that there seems to be never enough time to post, engage, and share constantly. Add to that, the time you will need to compose what to post and create valuable content for your ideas.
Below are some tips we can share that will help you save time to get optimum results in less time possible.
- Keep tabs on your Social Media Strategy
We need not tell you that social media is distracting. So many things happen every single second you dive into your social media streams. Too much information at any given time can overwhelm the brain, making it difficult to stay focused on the most important tasks at hand.
With a social media strategy, goals are set into place, making it efficient to focus on key elements during any given working day. Results only fail because the tasks required to reach particular goals are not executed properly.
A social media strategy serves as your road map to efficiently handle your social media management. With it, it will help you focus your mind on the most pressing tasks. By this, you can save time, resources, and energy.
- Advanced Content Planning
Content creation needs to be planned in advance and with the use of a social media calendar to save tons of time. An editorial plan takes away the guesswork on what to post, where to post, and when to post. You can also add to this the scheduling of all your social media tasks to keep you focused and organised.
Another advantage of having an editorial plan is that it leaves you more time to create better content, or even repurpose your existing content. In like manner, a content plan provides an overview of your content needs.
In turn, it will provide you with more space to create, produce, and engage with your content and your community. These strategies will considerably save you time on content creation and content curation, leaving you to get more reach, engagement, and increasing traffic for your new and existing content.
- Automate
Scheduling content by using social media automation tools takes away the pain out of a myriad of tasks for your daily social media routine. These tools make life easier by managing all of your social media accounts from one place, regardless of whether it is to edit, schedule, repeat, and/or curate posts and/or content.
Automation will save you time from managing various social accounts from different social networks separately.
How Businesses Can Increase Sales Using a Social Media Strategy?
The prime rule of social media marketing is to employ platforms that your audience or customers use. You can’t expect magic to happen overnight simply by signing up to Instagram or Facebook and expect to find your target customers there.
You need a social media strategy to determine where or which social media platform your target demographic frequently visits. Also, the strategy should include information on which times they are most active.
Reaching as many people as possible by creating profiles on every social media channel available will do little to reach your chosen target market. The key is for you to look at your buyer personas when deciding your social media channels.
Your social media strategy should include plans for handling trends affecting your industry. Your strategy should include ways how to enhance your brand visibility.
Social media is a powerful tool for prospecting and connecting with new customers. Ensure that your social media accounts are optimised to support your selling efforts.
Additionally, most social media platforms today support features where customers are now able to purchase and check out directly from a post. This reduces the customer’s effort from a multiple-step process to just a single click. Another plus factor to this is it reduces the time spent by a prospect to reconsider their purchase decision, thereby driving increased sales.
If you have no clue on where to begin or if your current social media strategy is not working out for you, we at The Growth Manager can be your guide and compass. We can help you attain your business goals by helping you create your own social media strategy or tweak the one you already have for maximum output. Get in touch with us and let us help you attain that goal to success, today.
