Being present on social media has become an indispensable part of any marketing strategy worth its salt. However, carrying out a successful digital strategy is a different animal. You should dedicate time to nourish it, think carefully about your set of goals, keep your mobile app or game social media profiles active and interact with your audience.
However, these are not the only tasks that you will have to tackle in your day-to-day. Product and customer development, content creation, social listening and tracking your results to tweak your strategy accordingly are amongst the long list of things that need to be attended to.
With all that has been said, it seems that managing your social media activity can be very challenging. However, there are some tips that you can follow to manage your time efficiently, analyze your results without difficulty, improve your relationship with your followers, and ultimately, reach your goals.
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There is a wide range of social networks that you can be on. However, unless you have limitless resources to design a specific strategy for each of them, it will be very difficult to be present on all of these platforms and maintain quality.
Just with a quick search on the Internet, you can discover which social networks are the most popular and where users are more active. Still, the most important factor is to research and find out where your target audience is. Growing your presence on two or three of these social networks will bring you great benefits without wasting your efforts on less popular platforms amongst your prospective customers.
2. Plan your content ahead of time
The content that you prepare and share on different social platforms will represent what you are as a brand and what your company stands for. Your message must be consistent across social media and relevant for your audience.
So, leaving room for improvisation doesn’t sound like a good option and it would only cause you to waste time and add hours to your already overloaded workday.
The solution = an editorial plan + recycling content
Editorial plan
An editorial plan will let you organize the content that you will be sharing on each social network ahead of time. A successful digital marketing strategy can not be conceived without a powerful editorial plan.
This is basically a visual template where you can organize your main objectives and identify those social networks that you consider helpful in achieving them, by never losing sight of your target audience.
Bear in mind that each social network has its own limitations and it is not recommended to share the same type of content on all of them. Nor will the objectives that you’d like to achieve with them be the same. Do your research.
Once you have a clear idea about which social network best suits each goal and how to develop them, you can start designing a calendar and establishing the frequency of your publications.
As a summary, an editorial plan is a wonderful tool to organize the workflow and facilitate participation in the content creation process for all your team (four or six eyes see more than two). Also, if your content plan is well designed, your strategy will be more flexible and dynamic to adapt quickly to the ever-changing social media world.
Recycling content
Keeping up with the fast pace of social media is work in and of itself. You must be constant with your publications and also do it frequently. Recycling content will become your best ally if you do it wisely.
Pick those publications that your audience better engaged with and repurpose them in different creative ways and share them on other social platforms.
For instance, if an article is published on your blog on Monday and shared on Twitter and Facebook, at the end of the week you can share it as a summary with images on Instagram. The following week, you can upload a YouTube video and adapt the entry to this format.
This technique will help you avoid running out of ideas.
We all know that being unique and original is a way to stand out amongst all the noise generated on social media. But this is as important as sharing your content at the right time. This is crucial to increase the visibility of your digital publications and reach, and ultimately, make sure all your efforts are not in vain.
Part of the job has already been done: identifying the target audience.
Dive into your audience demographics, learn what your community likes and searches for and, last but not least, when they are active on each social network. There are plenty of articles out there where you can extract valuable tips about when the peak times to publish are depending on the social platform you use. However, this might not apply to your community, so make sure you do your homework and get to know your audience well.
In line with what we have been saying in this article, being active on social media is a must. Why? For a multitude of reasons. It helps to increase brand awareness, build a loyal community, grow your presence and establish authority. In a nutshell, it serves as a reminder that you are there for your community.
In theory, this sounds like a great plan but in practice, it is not that easy to always be there. There are many other tasks that you need to accomplish and being present at all times is very time-consuming. Here is where post scheduling tools come into play. Tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer or Metricool will do the job for you. Program your posts ahead of time and you will be able to focus more on what really matters, with the peace of mind that your social network profiles are taken care of.
5. Track your competitors’ activity
Is my engagement good or bad? Should I publish more often? Am I on the right social network? What should I focus on? These are common questions that we usually ask ourselves (or we should) and there is a shared answer to all of them. Look at your competitors.
Each sector is different, and not all the businesses have the same impact on all social networks. So, identify your competition, monitor their activity and draw valuable conclusions to direct your strategy towards success and ultimately, leave your competitors behind.
6. Analyze your digital strategy
Long-distance runners can’t improve their times if they don’t know which marks to beat. The same happens with social media: if you don’t track your results, you can’t improve.
The analysis should be present at each step you take to accomplish your goals. It is the instrument that will guide your progress towards the right direction. So, always reserve time for this task, never neglect it, this is the only way you will make sure you are not deviating from your goals and you are ready to adapt quickly to any unforeseen circumstances.
Monitor the growth of your community closely and see how they react with your publications. Plus, you can understand the impact of your content through engagement, interactions, reach, and impressions.
So, all this information will help you get a good overview of how your strategy is working, which areas need to be improved, and which changes you can implement. Keep doing it and your social media strategy will work like clockwork.
Some final thoughts
There are multiple resources and tips that you can resort to in order to improve the efficiency of your work and save time to dedicate it to what really matters, such as, creating and curating original and high-quality content.
Find the balance and discover which strategies bring better results and focus on them. Good organization and planning and a close analysis of your progress will be your best allies to thrive in this competitive but rewarding digital world.
Good luck!
This post was written by our friend Veronica Hernandez from Metricool. With a background in finance and analysis, and an enriching life experience in London, Denver and Madrid, her interest in social media as it relates to businesses has grown stronger. As part of Metricool, she focuses her skill set on improving business relations abroad, the user experience and adapting their content to the US market.
