1. Purpose – “Why” Should Your Business Be on Social Media?
What problem do you need to solve, and how will your presence on social media help? Start by answering these questions:
What are your needs?
Is it to create brand awareness and reach more potential customers? Do you want to drive traffic to your website or a physical location? Or is it to sell products or services? Write down all your needs in a list.
What can you contribute?
Besides what you actually sell (your product or service), what knowledge and inspiration can you offer? Make sure to define your brand. Think about the role you want to play in the market.
Who are you and what do you stand for as a company?
If your company were a person, how would you describe it? What qualities and values does your company have? Once you’ve defined who you are and what you stand for, your communication and message will be clear. This way, your target audience will more easily understand why they should choose you and your products or services.
2. Goals – “What” Do You Want to Achieve?
The difference between purpose and goals is that goals should be measurable. If your purpose is to create greater brand awareness, it might be a good idea to measure the reach of the content you publish on your social channels. If the purpose is to drive traffic to your website, you should monitor visitor statistics.
Just like you can have multiple purposes for your social media efforts, you might need to set multiple goals. The important thing is to define, track, and learn from them.
3. Target Audience – “Who” Do You Want to Communicate With?
A clue here is: it’s not “everyone.” So be a bit self-critical. No matter how fantastic your product or service is, you need to think about who actually needs it. Here, it’s the customer’s needs that matter – not yours. What problems does your product or service solve? And who needs that solution?
4. Channel Choice – “Where” Should You Be?
Only once you’ve defined your target audience can you start thinking about which channels to use. So you need to know – are the people you want to talk to on social media? And if so, on which platform? Is it Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, or Twitter? The report “Swedes and the Internet” – an annual study of Swedish people’s internet habits – gives you a good overview of who is where.
5. Content – “How” Will You Communicate Your Message?
Now you know why you should be on social media. You know what you want to achieve and who you want to communicate with. You also know where the people you want to talk to are. Great job! But now you need to figure out how to talk to them.
What kind of content is your target audience interested in?
Refer back to point one, your purpose, and your list of needs. The needs you’ve listed, along with the role you’ve chosen and what you can contribute, will form your content strategy.
If your business idea is to buy and sell antique furniture, you probably know a lot about different furniture brands, their value, and history. Maybe you have skills in reuse, upholstery, and furniture restoration. Or are you focused on sustainability, environment, and cultural heritage? By creating content about all this, you can share both knowledge and inspiration that will interest your current and potential future customers.
Start with a few types of content. Test what engages your followers and make adjustments as you go.
Examples of different types of content:
Examples of different types of content:
- Knowledge, tips, and information in a niche
- Top lists and summaries
- Polls and Q&A boxes that engage the audience
- Inspirational stories and quotes from customers
- “Behind-the-scenes” glimpses
- Employee introductions
- Instructional and unboxing videos
- Trend spotting
Remember to tailor your content for each channel and the audience you want to communicate with on each platform. ChatGPT is a great tool for both generating content ideas for a specific audience and generating text for different social media platforms. Check out our guide “How to Write Effective Prompts for ChatGPT.”
6. Follow-Up/Analysis – What Results Have Your Efforts Achieved?
Follow-up is often the step that gets neglected, even though it’s just as important as everything else. If you don’t track what your actions generate, you’ll be working blindly, and you risk spending time on the wrong things.
Most social channels have excellent analytics tools where you can get all the stats you need – and even some you don’t. Choose a few key metrics to track, ideally weekly or monthly.
Examples of metrics to track:
- Impressions
- Reach
- Engagement rate
- Conversions
