The primary goal of your social media strategy should be to grow your business through improved customer relations. However, the long term requires more care and consideration. You are trying to transform mildly interested leads into loyal brand ambassadors, and that requires consistency, reliability, and trust.

 

Social media can be the most effective way to raise awareness and drive engagement with your business, but you’ll only get those results if you have a solid plan. This article will help you think through the details of creating a long-term social media strategy that will drive actual business results.

 

Choose Your Social Media Platforms Carefully

You want to publish on the platforms that are most relevant to your business, and you want the audience demographics of each platform to match your target market.

 

For example, if you have a trendy cookie bakery located in an urban setting, you may want to use TikTok or Instagram that cater to a younger audience. Whereas a local community pet supply store may be better suited for Facebook or Pinterest with older buyers who have established lives.

 

Create a Publishing Calendar

Your publishing calendar is the most essential tool of all. It’s a master list of everything you need to publish on social media, organized by date and time. It gives you the framework and structure required to ensure you have a consistent content posting system so your clients will frequently return to engage with your brand.

 

Each person spends an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes on social networks and messaging. (GlobalWebIndex)

 

Take an Editorial Approach to Content

You’ll want to take an editorial approach, meaning that you’ll decide what kind of content you publish before putting it out there into the world. Just posting whatever crosses your mind at the moment is not going to do the trick. You need to focus on the needs of your customers and your branding. Niche down whenever possible and try not to force going viral. Stick to the content you know will work.

 

Create a Strong Brand Identity

You should have a strong brand identity. A strong brand identity is consistent across all platforms and channels, memorable, attractive, unique, and based on your company’s values. It’s not just what you say to people. It’s how you say it.

 

A good social media strategy will include guidelines for creating content that conveys brand messaging in an engaging way that consistently drives awareness and engagement with your target audience. Hiring social media optimization experts is a sure way to develop this skill.

 

83% of marketers believe the quality of social media posts is more important than the quantity. (HubSpot)

 

Create Custom Visual Content for Each Platform

Visual content is a powerful tool in social media marketing. A picture is worth a thousand words, and videos are more likely to be shared than any other type of content. But if you’re using the same image on all your platforms and not tailoring it to fit each platform’s look and feel, you’re missing out on an opportunity to stand out from the crowd. 

 

You need to customize the content based on the platform. TikTok uses short-form videos. Pinterest likes longer vertical images. Instagram prefers pseudo-professional and artsy photos. It all depends on your brand and your audience.

 

Analyze Your Results

A long-term social media plan is highly reliant on analytics. You need to know what is working and be able to tailor new content to the desires of your audience. This includes A/B testing and adjusting ad spend, so you are focusing more resources on what works the best.

 

A plan for your social media strategy will help you get organized and focused so you can create engaging, exciting content that keeps your followers coming back for more! Having this information allows flexibility when planning new campaigns because you will know what has worked already so that you won’t waste time on less effective strategies.

 

Conclusion

So many companies struggle with social media because they aren’t optimizing their posts. The great thing about long-term planning is that it’s simple to get started, and if you already have a content strategy in place, you can use it to jumpstart your optimization efforts. You don’t need much time or money to create a plan, but without one, you’ll be wasting both.

 

That is why we suggest our social media optimization experts at Griffon Webstudios. We have spent years perfecting social media content and marketing efforts and know-how to leverage your business branding to reach more potential leads. Contact us today, and let’s start putting together a long-term strategy for your business!