• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Social Media Examiner

Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

  • 🔥 Free Newsletter
  • ⭐ FREE Web3 Course
  • 🗓️ Our Events
    • Social Media Marketing World (Mar 13-15)
    • Other Industry Events
  • 💡 Society
  • ⚙️ Tools
  • 🎙️ Podcasts
    • Social Media Marketing Podcast
    • Social Media Marketing Talk Show
    • Web3 Business Podcast
    • Our YouTube Channel
  • 🎯 Partner With Us
    • Podcast Sponsorship
    • Email Sponsorship
      • Email Newsletter
      • Dedicated Email Blast
    • Event Sponsorship
      • Social Media Marketing World
    • Tools Sponsorship
  • 👋 About Us
    • Our Story
    • Articles
      • Web3
      • Instagram Marketing
      • Facebook Marketing
      • YouTube Marketing
      • LinkedIn Marketing
      • TikTok Marketing
      • Expert Interviews
  • Search
  • Social Media Marketing World10th annual. Biggest industry event. Get the recordings!IMPROVE YOUR MARKETING

    5 Ways to Develop a Social Media Strategy

    by Debra Eckerling / September 8, 2014

    social media how toAre you struggling to make social media work for you?

    Do you have the right social media strategy for your business?

    The challenge of social media is that it's constantly changing.

    In this article I'll share five ways to adapt social media for your business.

    #1: Do a Social Media Audit

    To determine what is and isn't working in your social media strategy, go over the analytics for your posts.

    ways to adapt social media for business
    Find 5 ways to adapt social media for your business.

    Review your posts over the last three months, six months or year. See which posts got the most traffic, as well as the most shares and other engagement. Adjust your strategy accordingly.

    In his article Social Media Audit: How to Use Tools to Audit Social Media, Ian Cleary of RazorSocial goes into detail about which free tools make it nearly effortless to analyze your social media traffic.

    For Google Analytics, Ian recommends starting with a comparison report, which you can do for any period of time.

    google analytics comparison report
    Google Analytics allows you to compare past performance on your social channels.

    A few tools Ian recommends: the AgoraPulse Facebook Page Barometer, Simply Measured Free Twitter Follower Report, Tailwind’s Pinterest Tools, Iconosquare Instagram Statistics and Google Plus Steady Demand Brand Page Audit Tool.

    Once you determine which types of content got the most traffic and engagement, you can reassess and reinvigorate your strategy moving forward.

    #2: Use a “Shotgun Approach” for Reliable Reach

    It doesn't matter how large your following is, your message sometimes can fall through the cracks. With increasing numbers of brands utilizing social channels, you have to find better ways to get your message to stand out from the noise.

    Jay Baer of Convince and Convert shares Why It Might Be Time to Completely Change Your Social Media Strategy.

    The gist is this. Unless you call, email or otherwise send your content to your audience, you have no idea if it's going to reach them. Even if you have a huge fan base on your social networks, you never know if your people will see your message.

    Jay's solution is to have a shotgun approach for your social media strategy, as opposed to a rifle approach, which is how most people distribute their content.

    3 Days of World-Class Training—Zero Travel!

    Social Media Marketing World

    Travel to Social Media Marketing World off the table? Get all of the great content at a fraction of the price with an On-Demand ticket.

    That’s full access to recordings of every keynote, workshop, and session—the ones people travel thousands of miles to see. Don't wait. Get your On-Demand ticket and enjoy actionable content that you can watch anytime, anywhere.

    GET YOUR ON-DEMAND TICKET NOW

    Jay went into detail on this at the Social Fresh conference.

    Jay Baer explained the shotgun approach to social media strategy.

    According to Jay, the rifle approach represents best practices for social media: create quality content, approach each channel in a unique way and build a large following.

    The shotgun approach, Jay says, is based on the mathematical realities of this wave of social media. Increase the amount of content and post in more places to increase the chances it will be seen.

    When you post more content in more places, the possibility of connecting with your fans increases substantially.

    #3: Analyze Competitors

    Perhaps the most important research for your social strategy is an analysis of your competition. Discover what works for your competitors and then determine how to use that information to improve your social media strategy.

    On Jeff Bullas‘ blog, Vibhu Satpaul shares The Simple 6 Step Checklist for Analyzing Your Competition on the Web.

    To effectively analyze your competitors, Vibhu says to look at their keyword prioritization patterns, break down their rankings and monitor their online visibility, especially on search engines.

    Tools Resource Guide

    Looking for something to make your life easier?

    Discover the tools we recommend to drive engagement, save you time, and boost sales across your entire marketing funnel or business.

    Whether you need help planning content, organizing social posts, or developing your strategy, you’ll find something for every situation.

    FIND YOUR NEXT FAVORITE TOOL

    Vibhu took six steps from Avinash Kaushik’s 10 best practices on the Occam’s Razor blog to compile his competitor analysis checklist.

    1. Start with a visit to your competitors' websites, and make notes about the good and bad features.

    2. Then break down their customer acquisition strategy—analyze their direct, organic, referral and other traffic sources.

    3. Next, see what's broken and what's fixable.

    4. Also, review their content marketing and see if it's producing results.

    5. Look at where they're advertising and guesstimate whether their marketing budget is effective.

    6. Finally, check for unknown variables and determine if they're working in tandem or against business goals.

    Even if you do just part of this evaluation to analyze your competition, you'll gain useful insights to incorporate into your strategy.

    #4: Create an Audience Strategy

    Produce content with your (whole) audience in mind (who your customers are and what they have in common), and you're more likely to inspire consistent, shareworthy content.

    So said Brand Savant's Tom Webster, when he spoke about Why You Don’t Need a Content Strategy at the Marketo Marketing Nation Summit. His recommendation: create an audience strategy instead.

    marketo video
    Tom Webster suggests marketers create an audience strategy for their content.

    The days of “gaming the system to win at content” will soon be over, Tom says. The solution is an audience strategy.

    Tom cites Kristina Halvorsen‘s definition of content strategy, which is “planning for the creation, delivery and governance of useful, usable content.” Audience strategy, he says, is “figuring out which people could be your customers—based on what they believe, value, think and feel—and why they would be.”

    If your customer segments (buyer personas) are based solely on your data, as is typically done with content strategy, you make assumptions and in turn miss out on a lot of people.

    Figure out the overlap between why you think your product's important and why your customer thinks your product's important.

    #5: Analyze Mobile Options

    If mobile isn't part of your social media strategy, what are you waiting for? Readers consume a ton of content on mobile devices, so analyze and optimize mobile as part of your social media strategy.

    On the BufferSocial blog, Kevan Lee offers an Ultimate Guide to Mobile Social Media, which includes the why and how of looking at strategies for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ with mobile in mind.

    He shows how the experience is different for desktop vs. mobile and offers solutions to incorporate into your mobile strategy.

    For all mobile channels, make your header image count. “On every social media app, the header image on your profile is huge—in size and importance,” Kevan says. “It's the first thing people see, and it's your first (and best) opportunity to make an amazing impression.”

    Additionally, for Twitter, Kevan recommends you focus on visual content and keep track of what you retweet, since your tweets will also appear in lists.

    buffer facebook post on mobile
    Buffer's image updates show up well in Facebook's mobile news feed.

    For Facebook, share updates as images (include links too) and pin posts. Kevan also notes the company's address will supersede your bio and description on mobile, so only use it if necessary.

    For LinkedIn, share images and video and write an amazing bio. Content is more structured in the mobile app, so make sure it grabs readers' attention.

    For Google+, “Support your community by engaging in comments.” It'll get you noticed.

    There are many little things you can do to enhance your mobile reach.

    Conclusion

    Social media strategies fail for a variety of reasons—lack of brand consistency, no value within the content, not sharing original material. They succeed when you've done the appropriate legwork.

    Social media strategy is different for every brand, company and product. If you do your research and create appropriate focused content that will get to your readers, you're already headed in the right direction.

    What do you think? How often do you change your social media strategy? What tools do you use to review and revise it? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

    Get Your FREE Course: Web3 for Beginners

    Web 3 for Beginners

    Curious about Web3, but don't know where to start or who to trust?

    Introducing Web3 for Beginners, a course taught by Michael Stelzner, the founder of Social Media Examiner.

    Learn the basics of Web3 and apply it to your business with this FREE comprehensive course.


    CLICK HERE TO GET FREE ACCESS

    Tags: Social Media Strategy

    About the authorDebra Eckerling

    Debra Eckerling is an editor at Social Media Examiner. The creator of Write On Online and Guided Goals, Debra helps writers and entrepreneurs define, plan and achieve their goals.
    Other posts by Debra Eckerling Âť

    Get Social Media Examiner’s Future Articles in Your Inbox!

    Get our latest articles delivered to your email inbox and get the FREE Social Media Marketing Industry Report (39 pages, 50+ charts)!

    Industry Report Cover

    Worth Exploring:

    Facebook

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Instagram

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    YouTube

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Linkedin

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Web3

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Social Media Marketing Industry Report

    Get Free Report →

    Social Marketing Trends

    The data you've been missing!

    Need a new plan? Discover how marketers plan to change their social activities in the 14th annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report. It reveals what marketers have planned for their social activities, content marketing, and more! Get this free report now and never miss another great article from us. Join more than 400,000 marketers!

    Enter your email to get
    our free report:


    Footer

    Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
    Copyright © 2023 Social Media ExaminerÂŽ
    All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy.

    Helpful Links

    • About us
    • Our content via email
    • Our podcasts
    • Our YouTube channel
    • Our live show
    • Our industry report
    • Sponsorship opportunities
    • RSS
    • Accessibility