Tackling Social Media Like a Pro Rock Climber
When I went rock climbing for the first time, I had no idea what I was doing. My friends and I were complete newbies about ropes, rappelling, and every other bit of jargon and technique that goes with climbing. We saw others doing it spectacularly well, and we were thrilled at the thought of reaching the top of the climbing wall. But we had no idea how to get there.
I’d imagine that creating a social media marketing strategy could feel the same way. If you’re starting from square one, it might feel equally parts thrilling and overwhelming. You know what you want to do and why. You can see that others have climbed the social media mountain, but you have few ideas for getting there yourself.
That’s why it would help to have a plan – a blueprint to guide you step-by-step as you navigate the world of social media marketing. Luckily, I’ve got just the thing. Drawing on insights from leading experts and my own experience, I’m about to walk you through how to build a winning social media strategy from scratch for your IT business.
Step 1: Define Your Social Media Goals
The first step to creating a winning social media strategy is to establish clear objectives and goals. Without goals, you have no way to measure success and return on investment (ROI).
Each of your social media marketing goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. For inspiration, take a look at these 19 essential social media metrics you could track.
You may want to track different goals for different social media networks or even different uses for each network. For example, if you use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your website, you would measure click-throughs. If Instagram is for brand awareness, you might track the number of Instagram Story views. And if you advertise on Facebook, cost-per-click (CPC) is a common success metric.
Remember, your social media goals should align with your overall marketing objectives. This makes it easier to show the value of your work and secure buy-in from your boss. So start by writing down at least three goals for social media that tie back to your business goals.
Hootsuite’s expert advice emphasizes the importance of focusing on what you want to get out of social media, rather than just starting to post and track everything. As Hootsuite’s Senior Manager of Social Marketing, Amanda Wood, says, “Don’t just start posting and tracking everything – match your goals to your business and your metrics to your goals.”
Step 2: Get to Know Your Audience
Now that you’ve defined your social media goals, it’s time to get up close and personal with your audience. After all, you can’t create content that resonates if you don’t know who you’re talking to.
Take the time to create audience or buyer personas – detailed profiles of your ideal customers. You’ll want to know things like their demographics, interests, pain points, and buying behaviors. Documenting this information in your strategy will help you refine your approach and better target your audience.
Social media analytics can also provide a ton of valuable information about who your followers are, where they live, and how they interact with your brand on social media. These insights allow you to further refine your strategy and better target your content.
For example, Jugnoo, an Uber-like service for auto-rickshaws in India, used Facebook Analytics to learn that 90% of their users who referred other customers were between 18- and 34-years-old and 65% of that group was using Android. They used that information to target their ads, resulting in a 40% lower cost per referral.
Step 3: Spy on the Competition (in a Good Way)
Odds are your competitors are already using social media, and that means you can learn a lot from what they’re doing. Conducting a competitive analysis allows you to understand who the competition is, what they’re doing well, and where there might be opportunities for you to shine.
Look at things like:
– Which social media platforms are they active on?
– What type of content are they posting?
– How are they engaging with their audience?
– Which of their posts are getting the most engagement?
This intel can help you identify gaps in your industry that you can capitalize on. Maybe one of your competitors is dominant on Facebook, for example, but has put little effort into Twitter or Instagram. You might want to focus on the social media platforms where your audience is underserved rather than trying to win fans away from a dominant player.
Social listening is another way to keep an eye on your competitors. Hootsuite recommends using Streams to monitor relevant keywords, hashtags, and accounts in real-time. This can give you insights into what your competitors are sharing and what others are saying about them.
Just don’t go overboard on the spy tactics, as Amanda advises. “Make sure you aren’t ALWAYS comparing yourself to the competition – it can be a distraction. I’d say checking in on a monthly basis is healthy. Otherwise, focus on your own strategy and results.”
Step 4: Audit Your Existing Social Presence
If you’re already using social media, it’s time to take stock of your efforts so far. Ask yourself questions like:
- Which social media channels are you currently active on?
- What is the purpose of each of your social accounts?
- How frequently are you posting on each platform?
- Which of your posts are getting the most engagement?
- Are there any fake accounts using your business name or products?
Hootsuite has created an easy-to-follow social media audit guide and template to walk you through each step of this process. Your audit should give you a clear picture of what’s working, what’s not, and where you should focus your efforts going forward.
Step 5: Choose Your Social Channels Wisely
As you decide which social networks to use, you’ll also need to define your strategy for each one. Benefit Cosmetics’ social media manager, Angela Purcaro, told eMarketer, “For our makeup tutorials, we’re all about Snapchat and Instagram Stories. X, on the other hand, is designated for customer service.”
Hootsuite’s own social team even designates different purposes for formats within networks. On Instagram, for example, they use the feed to post high-quality educational infographics and product announcements, and Stories to cover live events or quick social media updates.
A good practice is to write out a mission statement for each network – a one-sentence declaration to keep you focused on a specific goal. For example:
“We will use X for customer support to keep email and call volumes down.”
“We will use LinkedIn for promoting and sharing our company culture to help with recruitment and employee advocacy.”
“We will use Instagram to highlight new products and repost quality content from influencers.”
If you can’t create a solid mission statement for a particular social media channel, you may want to ask yourself if it’s worth it. While larger businesses can and do tackle every platform, small businesses may not be able to – and that’s okay. Prioritize the social platforms that will have the most impact on your business and make sure your marketing team has the resources to handle content for those networks.
Step 6: Create and Optimize Your Profiles
Once you’ve decided which networks to focus on, it’s time to create your profiles or improve existing ones so they align with your strategy.
Make sure to use high-quality images that follow the recommended dimensions for each network. Hootsuite has an always-up-to-date social media image size cheat sheet you can reference.
But profile optimization isn’t just about the visuals. It’s also crucial to optimize your profile names, bios, and content for social search engine optimization (social SEO). 44% of Gen Z consumers use social platforms to research their purchase decisions, which means it’s extra critical that your channels are easy to find and understand.
That means making sure your profile names are clear and descriptive, you’re including relevant hashtags and keywords in your bio and on every post, and you’re using features like alt text and captions to include your target keywords as naturally as possible.
Step 7: Get Inspired by the Best
While it’s important that your brand be unique, you can still draw inspiration from other businesses that are killing it on social media. I consider it my job to stay active on social to know what’s trending, which campaigns are winning, what’s new with the platforms, and who’s going above and beyond.
You can usually find case studies and examples of top-performing social media content on the business sections of the social networks’ websites. For example, here are Facebook’s case studies. You could also check out the winners of The Facebook Awards or The Shorty Awards for inspiration.
Pay attention to accounts you personally enjoy following on social media. What is it about their content that compels people to engage and share? National Geographic’s stunning visuals combined with compelling captions on Instagram are a great example. Or look at how Shopify uses Facebook to sell themselves by showcasing customer stories and case studies.
Notice that each of these accounts has a consistent voice, tone, and style. That’s key to letting people know what to expect from your feed and why they should follow you. For more on this, read our guide on establishing a compelling brand voice on social media.
Step 8: Plan and Schedule Your Content
Sharing great content is essential, of course, but it’s equally important to have a plan in place for when you’ll share that content to get the maximum impact. Your social media content calendar lists the dates and times at which you will publish different types of content on each channel.
This ensures your posts are spaced out appropriately and published at the best times to post, as determined by your past engagement rate, impressions, or link click data. Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish feature can even recommend the optimal posting times for you.
Your content calendar should also reflect the mission statement you’ve assigned to each social profile, so that everything you post is working to support your business goals. Hootsuite recommends the 80-20 rule: 80% of your content should be educational, entertaining, or user-generated, while 20% can be promotional. You could also try the social media content marketing rule of thirds: one-third educational, one-third promotional, one-third personal.
Whatever you decide, be sure to document it in your strategy doc. And use a scheduling tool like Hootsuite to prepare messages in advance rather than updating constantly throughout the day.
Step 9: Measure, Refine, and Repeat
Your social media marketing strategy is a living, breathing document, and you can’t assume you’ll get it exactly right on the first try. As you start to implement your plan and track your results, you may find that some strategies don’t work as well as you’d anticipated, while others are working even better than expected.
That’s why it’s important to document your progress along the way. In addition to the analytics within each social network, you can use UTM parameters to track social visitors as they move through your website, so you can see exactly which social posts drive the most traffic.
You can also use Hootsuite’s built-in social media benchmarking tool to evaluate your performance against industry averages. This allows you to identify areas for improvement and test different strategies to see what works best for your business.
Don’t be afraid to make changes to your social strategy as needed. Social media moves fast, and your business will go through periods of change as well. Refer to your strategy doc often to stay on track, but don’t hesitate to adjust it to better reflect new goals, tools, or plans.
Ready, Set, Strategize!
There you have it – a comprehensive blueprint for building a winning social media strategy from scratch for your IT business. Remember, the key is to start with a plan, get to know your audience, and constantly test and refine your approach.
And if you need a little help along the way, the team at ITFix is always here to lend a hand. We’ve got the expertise and tools to take your social media marketing to new heights. So what are you waiting for? Let’s get strategizing!
