As social platforms have grown in popularity, so too has the importance of building an effective social media strategy. With one click of a button, companies have direct lines of communication to millions of consumers and potential consumers. While it’s now functionally easier than ever to reach people from all corners of the globe, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to connect with those people; it’s an important difference that many fail to grasp.

Just because Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram have a combined audience of nearly 2.85 billion users, that doesn’t mean all of them are eager to hear your message. In fact, most of them don’t even know your brand. This is why it’s essential to come up with a social media plan of attack, and commit to executing it well.

To have a successful social media strategy, it’s essential to plan meticulously, and stick to your message, even if it doesn’t seem to take hold at first. One of the worst mistakes you can make is to spend countless hours coming up with a plan, and abandon it within a few days of launching it. Marketing Consulting Services Simi Valley
To help with the process, below are four steps you can take to build a sound social media strategy.

1. Create a social media marketing plan before you start
This may sound obvious, but far too often, people jump into social media with the thought “I’ll see what works and what doesn’t as I go.”

Don’t do that.

Craft a detailed strategy, and put forth your full effort. The first step is to create a SMART goals list.

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound

Creating a list like this will make it easy to track your progress, and allow you to easily see whether or not you need to alter your approach.

2. Choose the right platform

The first step is to go back to your SMART goals, and examine exactly what you want to accomplish. Understand who you want to target, and what type of engagement you want to have with your target audience. Once you’ve answered those questions, you can utilize various search functions to determine what platform to embrace.

3. Create a visual identity, and stick to it

One of the easiest ways to confuse your user base is to have a number of different brand identities. Consumers need to be able to easily recognize your brand, even if your company’s name is absent from the image.

4. Follow the social media rule of thirds

This is important to follow in order to create a steady stream of incoming followers, and prevent those you’ve already captured from bolting. While the goal of any business is ultimately to make more money and drive revenue, that doesn’t mean you should only be posting content directly related to your brand.

This strategy accomplishes a couple things. Firstly, by sharing content other than your own, you’re signaling that your social account isn’t just about inundating your followers with your own content. Just like in normal social relations, people generally don’t like interacting with others who can only talk about themselves; and the same is true with these platforms. Web Designer Simi Valley

If all you promote is your own content, users aren’t going to be driven to your profile, and they won’t have a desire to interact with you. “To become a trusted advisor,” social accounts need to post “educational materials, [and] then drop in something on your company.