Whether you work for a small business or a multinational corporation, following and updating your social media strategy is key to a shot at digital success. There are important basics each strategy should have to get the most out of your organization’s social media.

Do Your Research

Research is the most important element of a social media strategy because uninformed tactics are likely to fail. Research your own organization in order to set realistic and measurable goals. Goals should include a number indicating how much you want to change a current situation and dates by which these benchmarks should be met. For example, you may want to increase the number of your company’s followers by 20 percent in 30 days.

Another important element to investigate is your audience. Ensure your targeted audience is specific enough that social media efforts are spent on those who are likely to be interested in your organization. At the same time, ensure your targeted audience is broad enough that the organization’s social media has room to grow and attract new groups.

Comparing the organization’s social media to competitors is another important element of the social media strategy. Social media marketers can then see how your business is stacking up compared to competition while also discovering what the competition does not do well and capitalizing on that empty space. 

Finally, use this research to discover brands on social media you like and may want to emulate, with your own twist. Finding admirable brands is important because it can give you inspiration for your own content strategy which may ultimately attract a larger audience.

Channel Strategy

Importantly, within your social media strategy, marketers should tailor goals and tactics to each of the organization’s social platforms. For each channel, consider how often the business should post. For example, you can post much more frequently on Twitter than on Facebook. 

Decide which comments the organization should respond to and which comments it shouldn’t. For example, you may want to respond to praise but may not want to respond to hate comments. It’s important to note that criticism or complaints do not fall under hate, and those may be concerns your organization wants to address. 

Most importantly, decide which social media platforms you want to invest your effort in. Your organization may have accounts on a number of platforms, but you may not be able to focus on all of them depending on staff size. Start out with the most effective platform(s) within your industry and/or to your consumers, then consider growing into other channels when you have the capacity.

Read about working with influencers here.

Evaluate and Update

Once you’ve kicked off your social media strategy, consistently evaluate your channels to ensure you’re meeting your measurable goals and update your strategy to reflect your findings. You are not locked into your strategy once you make it and it’s important to tailor your plan to the real-life results.