Social Media Strategy: SMART
The world of social media marketing can be very daunting. We all know that it is an important part of any business, but it shouldn’t be frightening or something to worry about. It’s a great opportunity to communicate with your customers and grow your business!
After you’ve completed a social media audit, you can begin to create your social media strategy. A good strategy to follow is the ‘SMART’ strategy. This means that your plan should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relative
- Time-specific
In this example, we’ll take a look at how a fictional coffee shop “I’m Latte!” would go about developing a social media strategy.
Specific
The owners of “I’m Latte!” need to set a specific goal for their social media efforts. Having looked at their competitors they’ve noticed that they don’t have as many followers on Instagram as other nearby coffee shops. They view each follower as a potential customer, so they really want to increase awareness of their cafe and get more followers!
They considered focusing on other factors like customer service, lead generation and customer loyalty. But they feel that increasing the awareness of the cafe is the most important thing right now.
Measurable
Now that there is a specific goal in mind, the owners need to come up with a way to implement their plan and measure their success.
The audit showed that nearby cafes are posting to Instagram five times a week, Instagram stories three times a week and Facebook four times a week. The owners have decided to post the same amount of content as the competitors.
They’re also going to use a social media management tool like Hootsuite. This software will help with scheduling posts and most importantly give analytical reports. These reports will be used to see if the social media strategy is effective.
Achievable
Once the overall goal is decided upon and the framework is in place to monitor the strategy, it’s now time set achievable goals within the strategy. “I’m Latte!” currently has 500 Instagram followers.
The social media audit covered three local cafes. One has just opened and has 450 followers. The nearest outlet of a multi-national coffee corporation has 10,000 followers. While a cafe a few blocks away of a similar size and age to “I’m Latte!” has 2,000.
The owners feel that they can’t compete with the marketing budget of the multi-national, so aiming for 10,000 followers is not achievable right now.
However, having 2,000 followers like a similar cafe nearby is achievable.
Relative
In the midst of all the planning, the owners remembered a helpful article that they read recently. The article said, “All content posted on your business’ social media account should be relative to your business.”
During the social media campaign, the owners bought a new boat and spent some time on the lake with their friends. They were going to post pictures of their latest fishing trip to the cafes’ Instagram page. But when they asked themselves if it was relative to the business, the answer was no.
Instead, they searched for Instagram posts that had tagged the cafe. They found a great picture of a couple enjoying a hot chocolate at their cafe. They asked them if they could use the image and once they got permission from the owner, they posted it on their profile.
Time Specific
The goals of strategies should all be time-bound.
The owners of “I’m Latte!” want their business to grow organically. They know that success doesn’t happen overnight. They’ve decided to attempt to achieve their goals over one year.
Now that they’ve created their strategy, it can be summarised as:
- Specific - Get more followers
- Measurable- Posting to Instagram five times a week, Instagram stories three times a week and to Facebook four times a week. Complete monthly analytical reports.
- Achievable - Aim to have 2,000 followers by the end of the campaign.
- Relative- Only post content that is relative to the business that customers will enjoy.
- Time Specific- The campaign will last for one year.
Social media is important for every business. If you still feel unsure about managing your own accounts, get in touch with us and let us help. We manage social media accounts for businesses of all sizes in many different industries.