Building a social media strategy can be a delicate balance — on the one hand, many times executives want to see a return on investment from the digital marketing efforts. But on the other hand, many times the marketing department is left out of strategic discussions.
The reality is that a great social media strategy doesn’t happen in a silo. The best plans (and growth) happen when a company is aligned on goals.
Social media-specific goals are important, like getting more followers, more web traffic, more email click-throughs, and so on. But an effective social media strategy can also help further company-wide goals.
For instance, say the C-suite sets a strategic goal to increase sales by 10% this year. That could include the digital marketing team. If you want to increase sales conversions, is your time best spent taking pretty pictures for Instagram? Maybe not (depending on your business). Instead, you might want to focus attention on your lead magnet.
If the company has the goal of launching a brand-new product or service in the next year, the marketing team could create a digital campaign around the launch, including pay-per-click ads, a related Inbound campaign, relevant blog posts, and more.
Perhaps the company is growing and wants to do a big recruitment campaign in the next three months. In that case, you may want to look at using social media for your human resources.
This article from Dave Barnett goes into more depth about why marketing departments should be brought into decision-making conversations: https://business.financialpost.com/executive/why-the-marketing-department-needs-to-be-at-the-decision-making-meetings
Big-picture goals can, and should, be part of your social media strategy, but smaller-scale goals matter, too.
It’s still important that there is a consistent social media presence happening, even when your focus is on bigger projects.
To create a solid strategy that bridges big and small goals, consider these tips:
- Create a content creation calendar.
- Batch create similar content.
- Develop buyer personas to figure out where your ideal clients are spending their time.
- Conduct a competitor analysis to see how similar businesses are marketing.
- Perform a social media audit.
Digital marketing can and should be part of the strategic decision-making process. One way to focus efforts on larger-scale projects is to outsource the day-to-day marketing.
For instance, at Pulsion we will work with you to write regular blog posts, social media shares, and will even do the posting. This can allow the in-house team to be more strategic while still building an audience.
Contact us today to learn how we can help build the digital marketing strategy of your dreams. Call 1-888-701-4441 or visit www.digiforcemarketing.ca.
Are your digital marketing efforts aligned with the C-suite? Let us know on social media. We’re on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.