#SocialMediaStrategy – What is Strategy Road Map Development?

Without a doubt, social media is one of the most diverse and powerful tools you can have in your marketing toolbox. However, to use social media effectively, you have to understand it and determine how you can best harness its power.

Social media isn’t really one thing. It’s a collection of platforms, each with its own unique strengths and weaknesses. That means that to make the most of it, you need to understand its components and make a plan for how you will take advantage of them, and the best way to do that is to develop a strategy road map. Yes, that means you need a plan. The roadmap will help you navigate the winding path from content creation to execution.

A social media roadmap is a strategy that includes your overall goals, your targets, and your tactical plan. Among the elements your roadmap should include are:

  • Your objectives: Unless you know what you hope to accomplish with your social media, you are destined to spin your wheels. Are you looking to strengthen your brand, grow your customer base, develop leads, or all of the above?
  • Your audience: Like any marketing effort, you need to tailor your message to your audience. That means you need to understand their needs, their problems, and what you can do to help them.
  • The platforms: Whether you are talking about Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or some other channel, you need to understand what it can and cannot do, as well as what types of techniques and content work best.
  • What success looks like: To keep your strategy in tiptop shape, you need to be able to measure whether or not your content is hitting its mark. That means you need to establish goals and metrics so you can determine if you are accomplishing your objectives.
  • What resources you need: While social media may be free, it takes resources to create content and respond to your community.

Creating an effective social media roadmap does not have to be a daunting task. Start small and build up. Over time you will see what works and what doesn’t and you can fine tune from there. An even better alternative than starting from scratch is to benefit from the expertise of The Social Media Advisor by taking advantage of its quarterly strategy development program. Their team of social media experts can help you get a quick start on building a successful social media strategy and help you grow your business.

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Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedInFacebookTwitterBlogGoogle+YouTubePinterestInstagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media TrainingSpeaking and Strategy Consultations.

#SocialMediaStrategy – When to Add Strategy to Your Social Media

Knowing when it’s the right time to develop a formal social media strategy can be tricky. If things are going well, why change? If things aren’t going so well, maybe changes will make them worse? Either way, the answer is the same, regardless of where you are in the process of developing a social media presence. You need a social media strategy right now.

When you launch into a social media effort without a clear strategy, you run the risk of acting reactively instead of having a proactive plan for how and when you will post and what type of content on which you will focus. That means that there’s a very good chance that you are spending a lot of time and effort for little or no return. Not only that, how will you even know if your efforts are working?

Let’s think for a minute about what having a social media strategy means. At the top level, it means that you establish a framework to guide the actions you take when it comes to using all those elements that go into defining your social media presence—from the overall direction to the tactical aspects.

When you establish a formal social media strategy, you are forced to answer hard questions. Among these are:

  • What are your goals and objectives?
  • Who is your audience?
  • How will you measure success?
  • What resources are you willing to dedicate?

By answering these questions, you’ll be able to spend your time creating content that has a clear purpose rather than just posting on an ad hoc basis. With a clear strategy, you can target your audience more effectively, make sure that you accomplish your goals, and be able to refine your activities as you need to.

Without a doubt, stepping back and taking the time to create a comprehensive strategy for how you will take advantage of all that social media has to offer can be an overwhelming task. Luckily, there are resources you can turn to for help. You don’t have to go it alone.

The Social Media Advisor’s Quarterly Strategy Road Map Development program can get you started off on the right foot. You’ll come away from your introductory session with a clear focus on the big picture. In the end, you’ll wind up with a toolbox full of everything you need to make your social media efforts a success. So don’t waste a minute more. Get started on your social media strategy now.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedInFacebookTwitterBlogGoogle+YouTubePinterestInstagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media TrainingSpeaking and Strategy Consultations.

#SocialMediaStrategy – Top Tools to Create Your Social Media Posts

One of the things that makes social media content compelling and fun is the way it takes advantage of graphics and images. If you are the one creating the content, this can also present challenges since it does require that you have access to specialized tools. Luckily, there are lots of resources available to help you accomplish your objectives. Here are excellent tools to help you create your social media posts. Most of these have a free version available but to get the full slate of features, you’ll need the paid versions.

Making Images

Canva is pretty much cream of the crop when it comes to creating social media posts. First and foremost, it’s user-friendly. Experiment with it, and you’ll be creating eye-popping content in no time at all. Best of all, it’s designed to help you design for all the major platforms with specifications built in. Since they’re recent partnership with free stock photography websites, Pexels and Pixabay, the Canva library of images has gotten quite impressive. There are many competitors out there wanting to take this tool on as a rival, but we’d still recommend Canva any day of the week.

Making Videos

There are tons of tools out there for creating and editing videos for social media. Videos are an important aspect of social media and can be used in a variety of ways. You can post pre-recorded videos to just about every social media channel and YouTube is one of the top 3 most visited websites. There are always ways to go “live” with video on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. You can post videos to both Facebook and Instagram Stories and the new IGTV on Instagram. While there are plenty of tools available to help you get started, both free and paid, our advice is to start with what you already have – your smartphone. Once you commit and become consistent in creating and posting videos, then you can look into ways to improve upon what you are doing.

Finding Content

If you aren’t creating 100% original content, you’ll need reliable sources of content that relate to your business to share on your social media to remain consistent. You can do this a variety of ways including simply making a list of trusted sources to check regularly for content. If you’d like a tool to collect content from all of this sources for you so you only have to go to one site, then look into a RSS Feeder. Feedly works well and has both a free and paid version where you can input your favorite sites and they will curate the content for you.

Editorial Calendar

We can’t state enough the importance of having an editorial calendar before you begin creating content for your social media marketing. When it comes to building an editorial calendar, you won’t need a fancy app or tool to do that. You can do it in a Word document or Google Sheets file. Regardless of how you build this strategy, just make sure you create one. If you are struggling with creating your content calendar, contact us for help!

Before you jump and begin to create content, it pays to develop a solid strategy that includes fleshing out your objectives, which platforms are best for what you are trying to do and scopes out your resources. To make sure you cover all the essential points, why not take advantage of the expertise of The Social Media Advisor. Their Quarterly Strategy Road Map Development is the ideal resource to help you get a quick start and ensure that you are making the most of your time and resources.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedInFacebookTwitterBlogGoogle+YouTubePinterestInstagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media TrainingSpeaking and Strategy Consultations.

#SocialMediaSupport – What Does an Outsourced Social Media Manager Do?

For many business owners, social media presents quite a dilemma. You know you need to make the most of such a valuable marketing tool but you’re already working at full speed. Even though you’ve dabbled with Facebook or Twitter, you’re not quite sure what you need to do.

One thing’s for sure: you don’t have the time to learn to be an expert. If this rings true for your situation, then it’s time to think about outsourcing to a social media manager. However, that begs the question—what does an outsourced social media manager actually do?

The short answer is that your outsourced social media manager will define your strategy and execute it. Let’s talk about that in a little more detail.

  • A social media manager’s number one job will be to learn your business and develop a social media strategy that is unique to your business. To be successful, your social media manager will need to learn about your customers, your competitors, and your brand.
  • Once the strategy is set, your social media manager will develop a plan to put your strategy into action. The plan will include tactical details such as how to best use each platform, a budget, a general schedule and metrics for how to measure success.
  • After developing a strategy and action plan, the next step is to start executing. That includes creating content and messaging, monitoring activity, and making adjustments as needed. An excellent social media manager will keep you involved and collaborate with you to make sure your brand and voice are accurately portrayed.
  • Your social media manager will communicate and report to you about how the strategy is working and share suggestions for improvement.
  • Your outsourced social media manager is an essential resource for your entire team. He or she can work with your entire staff to make sure that everyone is involved and that you are all putting forth the same messages. They can also offer technical instruction on how to use social media effectively.

Social media management is both an art and a science. That means that a social media manager’s experience can make a big difference in how effectively they use all the tools in the social media toolbox. It also means that it can be an excellent fit for outsourcing since you can’t be expected to be a pro without considerable training. One great way to get started is to take advantage of The Social Media Advisor’s social media build/revamp services. You owe it to yourself to see what they have to offer.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedInFacebookTwitterBlogGoogle+YouTubePinterestInstagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media TrainingSpeaking and Strategy Consultations.


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