How to Create a Social Media Strategy for Small Business

You Know You Need to Create a Social Media Strategy for Your Small Business … But Where Do You Start?

First of all, think of it as a map—a robust social media strategy that navigates through the noise and connects with your unique audience. Crafting this plan demands a clear understanding of where you’re headed, and that’s where you must begin.

Define your objectives: are you looking to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or establish a community around your products or services? Identifying these goals isn’t just the first step; it’s the foundation upon which your entire social media presence will be built.  However, the journey doesn’t end here. With your destination in mind, you’ll need to uncover the secrets of choosing the right platforms, analyzing competitor strategies, and much more.

Developing a comprehensive social media strategy tailored to the needs of your small business is essential for enhancing brand visibility, engaging with target audiences, and driving business growth.  So, what’s the next move to captivate your audience in this ever-changing game of digital engagement?  Let’s take a look.

Through Fresh Eyes specializes in social media management.  Through Fresh Eyes offers a Social Media Management Platform for small businesses.

Overview of How to Create a Social Media Strategy

• Defining clear objectives and identifying the target audience is crucial in order to create a social media strategy for small businesses that will be successful.
• Choosing the right social media platforms based on the audience’s preferences and habits is important for maximizing the return on investment.
• Analyzing competitor strategies can provide valuable insights and help adapt successful tactics while filling any gaps with engaging and resonating content.
• Crafting a consistent brand voice, developing content themes, and maintaining a cohesive social media presence is essential for building a strong brand identity and connecting with the audience on a personal level.

First of All, Define Your Objectives

Begin by identifying the main goals of your small business so you can plan your strategy well. It’s not just about saying what you want to achieve; it’s about setting clear goals that you can measure and that fit with your overall mission and plans for growth. You’re not just randomly posting things online and hoping for good results; you’re creating a meaningful plan that you can follow and change if necessary.

To start, ask yourself what you want to achieve through social media. Are you aiming to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or establish thought leadership within your industry? Once you’ve identified your primary goals, break them down into specific, quantifiable targets. If you’re looking to boost sales, set a realistic percentage increase as your benchmark. For brand awareness, consider setting targets for follower counts or post reach.

When you have clear goals in mind, keeping track of them is very important. You have to check how far you’ve come and look at the information to see what’s going well and what’s not. This helps you make your plans better and make sure you’re always moving towards your goals with accuracy and purpose.  And it makes you feel like you are accomplishing something when you start hitting those goals!

Identify Your Audience

It’s important to know who you’re talking to on social media if you want to be successful. This means figuring out what kind of people are interested in your brand or services by looking at things like age, gender, location, and income. But that’s not all – you also need to know what your audience likes and what problems they have that your business can help solve.  You need to know their pain points and why they would buy.  And remember, you want to sell the benefits, not just the features.  Why do they need you and your product?

This information will help you create messages and content that get people interested and build a community around your brand. To find out more about your audience, you can ask your current customers questions, look at how they interact with your social media posts, and see what kind of content they share. This feedback is really important.

Choose the Right Platforms For Your Social Media

Once you know who you’re trying to reach, it’s important to pick the social media sites where they are most active. This will help more people see and recognize your brand. Different social media sites have different types of users. If you want to reach young people like millennials or Gen Z, you might want to use Instagram or TikTok. If you want to reach professionals, LinkedIn could be a good choice. It’s not just about age though; you should also think about what your target audience likes and what kind of content they enjoy.

You don’t need to be on every social media platform, and you shouldn’t try to be. If you spread yourself too thin, your efforts might not have much impact. It’s better to focus on the platforms that give you the most value for your money.   Paid advertising can work, but it’s not the only way to get noticed. Creating interesting and engaging content can help you grow your audience naturally over time. This is a more sustainable approach in the long run.

Through Fresh Eyes Social Media Management Platform helps you grow your social media audience easily

Analyze Competitor Strategies

To stand out on social media, you’ve got to know what you’re up against. Take a close look at your competitors’ social media strategies to pinpoint what’s working for them that could benefit your approach.  You can also spot their missteps and ensure you don’t make the same errors in your campaign.

Identify Competitors’ Strengths

Start by analyzing your competition to find out what makes them stand out on social media. It’s not just about knowing who they are, but also understanding what they’re doing right. By comparing their performance, you can figure out what strategies work well and how your business can either adapt or do better than them.

To paint a clearer picture for you:

• Engagement rates: How well do they connect with their audience?
• Content quality: Is their content more creative or professional?
• Posting frequency: Do they maintain a consistent presence online?
• Audience growth: How rapidly are they gaining new followers?
• Innovation: Are they using new features or platforms effectively?

Identifying these strengths will guide you to create a social media strategy to compete more effectively.

Learn From Their Weaknesses

Why only focus on what your business is good at when you can also learn from your competitors’ mistakes? By examining their weaknesses, you can discover opportunities for your business to shine on social media. Take a closer look at where they are struggling. Are their posts not getting much attention? Is their content not connecting with their followers?  This is your chance to create content that fills those gaps and sets you apart.

Craft Your Brand Voice

Creating your brand’s voice is an important step in connecting with your audience in a personal way. You want your brand’s personality to come through in everything you post, tweet, or share. It’s not just about what you say, but how you say it. Consistency in your voice helps people recognize your brand wherever they see it. Think of your brand’s voice as the character that represents your company on social media. It should be real, relatable, and show what your brand stands for.

To paint a clearer picture of what crafting your brand voice entails, consider these critical elements:

• Identify Core Values: Understand the heart of your brand to express it genuinely.
• Understand Your Audience: Tailor your voice to resonate with their interests and values.
• Be Distinct: Differentiate your voice from competitors to stand out in the crowd.
• Keep it Consistent: Use the same tone across all platforms to build brand recognition.
• Adapt and Evolve: Stay relevant by evolving your voice as your audience and their preferences change.

Develop Content Themes

Creating content themes is really important for keeping your social media presence consistent and interesting for the people you want to reach. When you have content themes, it means that you have a few main topics or ideas that you focus on in your posts. This helps your followers know what to expect from you and makes your brand stronger.

You can think of content themes as the foundation of your content strategy. They are the recurring subjects or messages that connect all your posts together. When you plan what to post, try to have a mix of themes that show off your products or services, show what your brand cares about, and give your audience cool and relevant content to look at.

Here’s a simple table to help you visualize different content themes for you you to create a social media strategy:

Through Fresh Eyes Social Media Management Platform helps you grow your social media audience easily

Plan Your Posting Schedule

Once you’ve figured out what topics you want to focus on, it’s important to decide how often you’ll share your posts. You should try to post during the times when your followers are most active so that you can get the most interaction.  This is something that our Through Fresh Eyes Social Media Management Platform helps with – after a couple of weeks of your posting through the platform, you can see the optimal times to post on the schedule and reports.

It’s also important to have a good mix of different types of content so that your feed stays interesting and doesn’t get boring.  That is why we have different categories on our social media marketing calendar, and regularly post to all of these categories.

Determine Content Frequency

Deciding how often to post is really important. If you have a regular schedule, it can keep your audience interested without giving them too much to handle. The key is to find the right balance where your main content topics are highlighted and your audience feels encouraged to interact. Try to create a pattern that your followers can expect and get excited about.

Our platform helps make this easy.  With the optimal times on your marketing calendar, and the opportunity to post and re-queue (evergreen post) your content, it is easy to fill the times with popular content.

To paint a clear picture, and see how Through Fresh Eyes Social Media Platform helps you succeed easily:

• Analyze Peaks in Engagement: Identify when your audience is most active to maximize visibility. (Optimized times are in our scheduling calendar)
• Balance Content Types: Rotate through different content pillars to keep things fresh. (Evergreen/re-queue posts from different categories at optimal times makes this easy)
• Monitor and Adjust: Track performance and adjust frequency as needed. (Our reports show you exactly how you are doing)
• Consider Resources: Be realistic about how much quality content you can produce regularly. (Our AI writer helps with this)
• Engage Regularly: Supplement posts with frequent, real-time interaction to build community and responsiveness. (Most of our plans include engagement posts that we post to your accounts regularly)

Leverage Peak Engagement Times

To increase your social media presence, it’s important to post at the times when your audience is most active. To figure this out, you need to look at your social media analytics and see when your followers are scrolling and engaging the most. It’s also important to consider time zones if your audience is from different parts of the world.

It’s helpful to understand your audience’s habits. Are they more active at night or in the morning? Do they check their social media during lunch breaks or when they’re commuting? Use this information to create a posting schedule that puts your content in front of your audience when they’re most likely to see and interact with it.

Through the Fresh Eyes Social Media Management Platform, you can find out the optimal times to post for your specific audience. This platform provides a report that shows you the best times to post for maximum visibility and interaction.

Balance Content Types

To captivate your audience, it’s crucial to mix up your posts with a variety of content types, from images and videos to polls and articles. Visual storytelling should be at the heart of your strategy, using compelling images and videos that resonate with your followers. Don’t forget to engage your audience with interactive polls, which can provide valuable feedback and boost engagement.

• Behind-the-scenes videos: Offer a sneak peek into your business operations.
• Customer testimonials: Share stories that build trust and credibility.
• Interactive polls: Engage users and gather insights with fun, relevant questions.
• Educational infographics: Present data and tips in an easily digestible format.
• User-generated content: Showcase your customers’ experiences with your products or services.

Through Fresh Eyes Social Media Management Platform helps you grow your social media audience easily

Engage With Your Community

When you engage with your community, it’s not just about telling them things; it’s about having important conversations that can shape how people see your brand and build strong relationships with your customers.  To get people involved, you can offer incentives to the community. These could be special discounts, early access to new products, or rewards for being loyal customers. These perks not only encourage people to participate but also make them feel special and like they’re part of a VIP group.

You can also use content that your customers create to strengthen the connection. Encourage your followers to share their own experiences with your brand, whether it’s through writing reviews, posting photos, or making videos. This not only gives you real endorsements but also creates a library of content that you can share with others to show real people enjoying what you offer.

This is a powerful way to show that your brand is important in people’s everyday lives and that it’s something they can trust and rely on.  A couple of our Through Fresh Eyes Social Media Management Platform plans offer a great tool to accomplish this with little time to set up and manage.  Our Campaigns include testimonials, photo contests, video galleries, viral campaigns and so many more.  With templates to use and customize and back-end campaign management to help you choose winners, you can easily set these up for your business.

Measure and Adjust Campaigns

Once you’ve launched your social media campaigns, it’s crucial to track their performance and make data-driven adjustments to improve their effectiveness. You don’t want to fly blind—campaign metrics offer the insight you need to understand what’s working and what isn’t.  That is why it is important to make sure you have a good system for reports, like our platform offers.

As you gather this data, you’ll identify trends and patterns that can guide your adjustment tactics.

Here’s what you should keep an eye on:

• Engagement rates: likes, comments, shares, and overall interaction with your content.
• Reach and impressions: how many people have seen your posts?
• Conversion rates: the percentage of users who take the desired action, like signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase.
• Follower growth: the rate at which you’re gaining new followers.
• Click-through rates (CTR): how often people click on the links in your posts.

Use these metrics to pinpoint areas for improvement. If your engagement rates are low, consider tweaking your content strategy. Are your conversion rates not meeting expectations? Revisit your call-to-action prompts.

Continuous monitoring and adjusting ensure your social media efforts aren’t just a shot in the dark but a strategic tool in growing your small business.

Can I Manage My Small Business’s Social Media Strategy on My Own, or Should I Hire a Professional Social Media Manager?

You can manage your own social media with good time management and an easy-to-use platform such as our Through Fresh Eyes Social Media Management platform, but if content creation overwhelms you, hiring a professional could save you time and potentially bring better results.  Through Fresh Eyes can help with content creation too.

Create A Social Media Strategy for Your Business

You’ve now got a solid social media strategy tailored for your small business. Remember to stay focused on your goals and understand who you’re talking to.  Pick platforms that resonate with your audience and keep an eye on what competitors are doing. Let your brand’s voice shine through unique content themes and maintain a consistent posting schedule.

Most importantly, engage with your community and tweak your campaigns based on the results. Get out there and make your social media presence felt!

Through Fresh Eyes Social Media Management Platform helps you grow your social media audience easily