Dangerous I know, but I’m starting with an assumption – that you don’t need to be convinced of the business case for using social media as part of your marketing strategy. Social media has come a long way since posting updates on tea consumption.

If you do want the full business case, email me and I’ll be happy to provide you with one. For now, here are the headline reasons for getting involved; build awareness, build trust, reinforce your brand positioning, gather intelligence for product development, manage and improve customer service, increase website visibility and website traffic.

Now let’s focus on the common challenge most businesses have – where to start. Here’s a step-by-step process to get you going:

1. Situation analysis. Where you are now? Measurement is a key factor with social media, so understanding your base position is important. You may have a few profiles already in place on different social media channels, possibly some you’re not even aware of set up by eager employees. Look at how they are performing and check out what your competition is up to.
2. Set objectives. Like any marketing activity, before investing, clarify exactly what it is you want to achieve and ensure it’s aligned to your overall business objectives. From detailed channel-specific metrics (‘we want this number of followers on this platform, so many likes here’ etc), to bigger picture factors, like increased brand awareness and site traffic, there’s plenty you can measure to evaluate performance.
3. Determine your strategy. How are you going to meet your objectives? Think about your target audience – what do they actually want? Entertainment, knowledge, money-off? Shape your content strategy to address their needs. Your content needs to be interesting and relevant to your audience.
4. Tactics. Now break it down further. Which channels will be best for which audience segment? How will you differ the content shared on one platform versus another? Consider frequency and timing of content for different channels to create maximum reach. How will you integrate the activity across channels?
5. Actions. Next create a plan of activity. Who will do what, when and how often. Be disciplined. Think like a traditional publisher, commit to deadlines and schedule what needs to be done. If you find it is unsustainable, revise it, but always have a plan.
6. Measure, test, optimise. Social media is as much about listening as anything else. Monitor what’s happening in line with your objectives. Try things and don’t be afraid to make insight-led tactical refinements.

The trick is having objectives and a plan to meet them. Keep it simple to start with and broaden your activity as you become more confident and see things happening. If you find yourself struggling with tactics and actions, go back to objectives and strategy – chances are you’ve not fully worked those through. Once they’re in place you are free to try things, and with social media and digital marketing in general, experimenting and testing is fundamental to success. So go for it, reap the rewards and have some fun in the process.