Forget ‘new year, new you’ as this month we’re all about social media-specific resolutions for 2017. The below tips will help put you on track for a year of smart, strategic social media.

1) Run a social media audit

Carrying out a social media audit across the channels you use will help align your 2017 business goals with your social media strategy. Taking time to reassess what you’re trying to achieve with each platform and to refocus your efforts accordingly ensures your social presence is meaningful and managing it is time-efficient.

Buffer, who specialise in social media scheduling software, recommend asking yourself the following questions for each platform:

  • “Why are we using this social account?”
  • “Why do we want to use it?”
  • “What are our goals for this social media platform?”
  • “Are our target markets using it?”

There are lots of considerations worth taking into account when doing this. For example, Facebook’s sophisticated advertising capabilities are valuable if you’ve got great content you need to get in front of your target audience. Brands selling luxury products can thrive in Pinterest’s aspirational environment. Twitter can take your real-time customer service offering to the next level, and is a quick way to make contacts via direct conversations. Instagram has a rapidly growing audience ready to consume food and travel content.

If you need help deciding which social channels you should be using, just give us a call.

2) Allocate a social spend budget

If Facebook is part of your strategy, and you want to take advantage of the sophisticated advert targeting capabilities referred to above, you’ll have to invest at least a modest social budget to ensure your content has significant reach. Facebook’s advertising tools can also be used to replicate content to, or create bespoke adverts for, Instagram.

We’ve shared our tips on using strategic social spend here.

3) Consider micro-influencers

Online influencers offer an authentic, targeted advertising channel worth considering when allocating your marketing budget. Various studies have suggested that engagement rate peaks not with the most popular influencers, but rather those with a more moderate following, so you don’t necessarily need to seek out the biggest online stars – good news for brands with a more limited budget.

Read more here and here.

Going live via Facebook or Instagram is a great way to add an extra dimension to your social media presence4) Get comfortable with going live

In light of research highlighting the value millennials place on experiences, brands should consider taking an experience-led approach to appeal to the current market. Live streaming content will add an extra dimension to your brand’s social presence.

With Facebook providing live features and Instagram now rolling its out too it’s worth experimenting with. We’ve shared some tips for going live here.

5) Engage

This is by no means a new and innovative change, rather something you should already be doing. Social media (the clue is in the name!) is probably the most effective way for brands to speak directly to customers, which is both an opportunity to forge a sense of trust and a chance to access genuine feedback about what you’re offering.

 

Sasha Parkes - Senior Digital Executive at Wild West Comms

Words: Sasha Parkes

Senior Digital Exec at Wild West Comms

Follow us on LinkedIn for the latest PR and digital insights

Also check out more Wild West insights and news below:

[mk_blog_carousel view_all=”*” count=”10″ enable_excerpt=”false” offset=”0″ order=”ASC” orderby=”menu_order”]