If you’ve ever had to devise and implement a social media strategy, you know how challenging it is to keep up with the ever-shifting nature of the social media world. In an ever-changing industry like social media, it’s crucial to separate fleeting fads from sustainable trends.
In this article, I’ll demonstrate why investing time in developing and executing a strategy for social media is worthwhile. Keep reading to find out how to create a social media strategy that can bring in lots of visitors to your website.
We’ll discuss how we went from treating social media like an afterthought to making it a top priority, which ultimately resulted in a monthly increase of social media traffic to our blog and website of 230%.
First, There Was Social Media No Man’s Land
The use of social media has brought the fields of sales, customer service, and marketing closer together than ever before.
Very little was being done in that regard at Hubstaff at the outset. Even though we had a great expert in charge of social advertising, he was limited by the quality of the content being promoted.
To be honest, my involvement with the blog exceeded any other activity on my part. My daily tasks included scheduling social media posts using the Buffer app and writing and publishing blog posts.
Unfortunately, this meant that our social media channels were primarily filled with our own content (completely objective and trustworthy, right? ), rather than useful, up-to-date data culled from sources all over the web. There was hardly any distinction between our blog’s front page and our social media profiles.
People were starting to contact us via social media, so this was a big mistake. Except for when we were actively trying to promote our blog posts, our page was slow and unassuming. Visitors to our profiles would see our repetitive posts and quickly click away rather than follow us or like what we had to offer.
The Process of Collecting Information and Developing Principles
Though I had experience managing social media accounts, I wouldn’t call myself a strategist. I made updates for social media and pre-released them. Before this, I had no experience with social media editorial calendars, analytics, or content standards and guidelines.
Thankfully, I had a lot of experienced people on my team. I didn’t know where to look for spam on our Facebook page, so I let some of it through (whoops), kept posting like a robot, and made other rookie mistakes in that first month.
During this period of change, I established some principles to serve as a framework for managing our social media channels.
The first document was a set of rules for responding to messages and comments on our social media profiles. The second was an exercise in tone and voice designed to help me capture the essence of our brand’s character in my own writing. Finally, I made a social media checklist with all the tasks I needed to complete each week.
The primary objectives I set out to achieve were:
Provide a response to ninety-nine percent of tweets and wall posts that mention you
Clear our Facebook page of all spam.
Use our social media channels to spread engaging, helpful, and relevant content.
In general, I was more reactive than proactive with our social media strategy during the first few months I was in charge of it. The consultation with a social media expert changed that.
Use of a Consultant
Our social media strategist for the future was shaped by our consulting session with our social media consultant, who is simply wonderful at what she does. What we were doing right, and where we could stand to hone our skills, were both highlighted by her insightful comments.
I strongly advise anyone who isn’t as comfortable with social media marketing or who needs more guidance with their strategy to seek out some expert feedback.
What we took away from the consultant meeting was this:
Highlight outcomes rather than inputs
Our social media profiles’ “About” sections focused on us rather than on our target audience. We mentioned who we were and what we did, but failed to mention how we could help our potential clients.
Through the use of time tracking software that records screenshots and employee activity levels, we streamline the process of monitoring and managing remote workers.