We often hear about different ways to run a successful social media strategy, but how can you execute it if you don’t start off right? Before you can enjoy daily wins, you need to lay the groundwork. Here are some key points to think about as you develop your social media strategy before going public.

Consider your overall strategy

Any marketing strategy you have should integrate with your overall business strategy and goals, including your social media strategy. Your marketing should help you work towards successfully achieving your business goals.

Spy before you try

Pay attention to what others in your industry and even outside it are doing on social media. Researching your competitors will help you a lot when setting up your own social media. By checking out their channels, you can see what strategies are successful for them and what isn’t. Remember, you don’t want to copy anyone; your brand should still stand out. Since they are your competitors, you will probably share similar target audiences. You can draw ideas from competitors and influencers, but make sure to put your own spin on it.

The other thing to keep an eye on is trends on social media in your industry. Trends have to start somewhere even if it is in a niche industry. You can either start them once you have a larger following or follow the flow and join in on the conversation as you are getting started.

Don’t make assumptions

While you may not have any data yet, social media and your audience behavior on it isn’t new. Don’t make assumptions about your audience and their online behavior. Get in there and learn about them by interacting with them, or at the very least – lurking and listening. It has been proven that your audience wants three things from you:

  • Special offers/deals
  • To learn something new
  • To hear about new products/innovation

That is a good place to start when it comes to content planning!

Start small

You don’t need to be everywhere online. In fact, it’s better to pick one channel and excel at it than be on 4 or 5 channels with inconsistency and low quality content. You will have a smaller digital footprint, but when it comes to your audience and consuming content, quality is always better than quantity. Spend the time necessary to set up and optimize your chosen social channels, and remember, when you are preparing your content strategy keep your content on each channel unique to the channel itself so you can build a better community and utilize each of your channels to their fullest extent.

Define success

Defining success is so important before starting any marketing initiative. Figure out your social media goals, whether it’s community growth, engagement, website traffic, etc. That way you can set up metrics to monitor over time. Have tracking in place BEFORE you get started, even if it’s just a simple excel spreadsheet with basic reporting metrics. You should also figure out how often you will create internal reports, whether it’s weekly, monthly, or a combination of both. It will save you time in the long run when you need to monitor your daily strategy.

Be realistic about your time

While it doesn’t cost anything to use social media platforms organically (not for paid social media advertisements), it does take time to do it properly. And time is a resource that isn’t infinite. If you can’t commit the time, hire a third party to do it for you, otherwise, you will be wasting what little time you do have to spend on social media and you likely won’t see the results you had hoped.

Another option is getting a third party to help you build the strategy and help you find ways to implement efficiently on a day-to-day basis.

A version of this article was originally posted to the SongBird Marketing Communications blog.