Social media is an incredible way to eliminate the middleman and communicate directly with your target audience. It is also a catalyst for destroying your brand’s image and reputation when it’s mismanaged. For some, social media is a trivial pursuit; that’s especially true today, as it can be incredibly difficult to attract the thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers you need for the channel to have significant impact and worth.
For others, however, it’s a useful tool that can increase customer engagement, tell a brand’s story and distribute relevant content.
If your brand has more than a couple of social media channels, it can be difficult to remain consistent across all platforms while still using each for its respective strengths. Before addressing that challenge, however, it’s important to realize that the majority of brands don’t need every social platform. If your PR firm is telling you otherwise, you are either in a very small minority or your communications partner is after your money.
With that in mind, here are a few questions designed to narrow your focus around the goals for your social strategy.
– On what platforms is your audience present?
– Does your content and format match the platform on which it’s appearing (e.g. photos for Instagram; retweets and commentary on Twitter)
– Have you established tangible business goals for each channel? (e.g. using Facebook for recruitment and culture news, Twitter for thought leadership/announcements, etc.)
– How will increasing engagement on social media further your business goals?
– Is the content you’re posting consistent with your brand?
– What do you want to be known for?
Answering these questions can force you to hone in on and establish metrics around your business goals, then determine which of these channels is best suited for each. It can also save you time, money and resources while encouraging you to create and repurpose content in different ways to maximize effectiveness and audience engagement.
