What is social media strategy?

Actively participating in social media sites is one of the most effective ways you can promote your business. Because user interaction plays a considerable role in what becomes popular, the more you interact with your audiences, the more ways you can connect with them and promote your business. Networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and social news and bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Digg, can all help you increase your interaction and influence with other professionals.

But, with so many different sites and platforms available, you need to take the time to understand which sites and platforms will help you achieve the results you want. Creating a social media strategy—and making sure you take the time to support it—should be a part of your overall marketing efforts. Here’s how you can start planning your strategy today.

One: Describe your business—fast!

Sounds basic, but if you can’t describe your brand’s precise value proposition in one crisp sentence, you need to figure that out first. People skim, rather than read, online media, and if you don’t tell them what you’re all about quickly and clearly, they’ll move on.

Two: Choose your business goals

You probably have several business goals, but I think there are only three realistic business goals for a social media effort:

• Create brand enthusiasm: Introduce your brand to prospects and keep your current customers interested in what you have to offer; turn them all into fans.
• Increase sales: Make it easy for customers and prospects to do business with you. Create first-time customers, and drive repeat business.
• Deepen customer relationships: Improve customer loyalty and keep your customers from going to the competition. Shine at customer service.

Focus on one goal for a while, and then adjust your strategy as needed. But don’t try to tackle multiple goals simultaneously. Trying to do too much at once with social media muddles your message and confuses your fans.

Three: Target your audience’s awareness level

Your prospects and customers have completely different relationships with your brand. Some have never heard of you, while others are raving fans. Which ones do you want to reach? Be specific here because your understanding of what your target audience knows about you will dictate the social media activities and conversations you will have with them.

Focus your efforts on no more than two of these areas in the customer awareness cycle:

• Awareness. They’ve maybe heard of you, vaguely. Target this audience if you just want to get your name out there. Work social media activities into your existing promotional/advertising efforts to raise awareness even more.
• Interest. They’ve heard of you and maybe have visited a Web site, but they haven’t made any purchases. Focus your efforts on converting these prospects into paying customers.
• Action. They’ve made a single purchase. Find out why, and give them more of what they want!
• Advocacy. They are fans of your brand. These customers are frequent purchasers and tell their friends about you. Cultivate this audience and keep them happy.

Four: Find out how your audience uses social media

Rolling out a social media program that features a customer photo contest is going to fail spectacularly if your audience isn’t prone to content creation. To engage your audience successfully, find out how your audience uses social media and integrate their usage patterns into your overall plan.

While finding out what they use isn’t easy, sending out simple surveys or using tools such as Forrester’s Social Technographics Ladder can help you do this. You’ll often find that your audience falls into one of the categories on Forrrester’s Ladder: Creators, Conversationalists, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, and Spectators. Knowing who’s doing what can help you fine-tune your efforts as you go along.

Five: Crystallize your brand

Social media is by its nature simple, brief, and to the point. To be successful in social media, you need to focus and distill your brand into the one thing that’s truly interesting, and in most cases, it’s not product related. Give it some thought but think poetry here, not mission statement. Once you’ve figured out your one thing, bring it to life in social media, and continue to engage your audience using social and traditional media to turn them into your customers.

Six: Humanize your brand

Why do consumers love social media? Because the more direct interaction puts them on a more equal footing with brands that have historically been concealed, impersonal, and aloof. If your social media strategy doesn’t make your brand more accessible by putting put a literal or figurative “face” on your brand, you’re missing the point and risk alienating your audience.

Seven: Measure your success

Before you implement anything, establish a baseline by choosing three metrics that matter to your company. Once you launch your program, measure them consistently and well. If your business goal is loyalty, measure true ROI by focusing on churn metrics. For brand enthusiasm, look at repeat purchases. There are dozens of other ways to measure success such blog posts and tweets, comments, or fans/friends in your social media outposts are some examples.