5 Small Business Social Media Strategy Tips

While the ease of social media adoption is great for small businesses, simply creating accounts in order to leverage your online presence will do little to build your brand and boost engagement. A resource-strapped and budget-conscious small business owner may quickly jump into multiple social media streams and feel that opportunities are being missed without an in-depth social media strategy guiding them through the various platforms.

In his latest article, featured on PR Newswire’s Small Business PR Toolkit, Steve Lazuka, founder of Interact Media, offers five actionable steps that small businesses can take to ensure their strategy is keeping pace with the social media current.

Objective. Your objective should go beyond simply gaining likes and followers. All posted forms of content should support your objective and results should be tracked in order to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts.

Buyer Personas. These are examples of the real buyers who influence or make decisions about the products or solutions you offer. Use the demographics of your customers and prospects to create several personas and use these to guide you with content creation and in determining what social sites to participate in.

Update. If you have previously created profiles on multiple social platforms, now is the time to revisit and ensure that the information is up to date. Take note if a particular platform requests you to fill out additional information on your organization.

Apples to Oranges. Since users interact with content differently on each social channel, no platform should be treated the same. Adapt your strategy accordingly but maintain the same voice and personality across all channels.

Editorial Calendar. While engagement and interactions with your audience shouldn’t be “scheduled,” you want to ensure you have a content plan in place to support your objective. Categorize each channel into their own bucket and provide details on topics and timing.