In an age where social media is often people’s go-to search engine for information on a product or service, it has become crucial for brands to identify their place within the social media maze. However, for brands starting out or even for established brands entering the social media realm for the first time, we know that finding exactly where to begin can be challenging.
As a leading social media marketing agency, we want to share with you some of our key steps when it comes to starting up your brand on social media.
The four steps to navigating social media
Step one: USP and brand identity
Before getting started on any social media platform ensuring that you have identified a clear USP and brand identity is paramount.
There is a common myth that your USP has to be something complicated – something that has never been done before. To put it simply, your USP has to explain to your audience why they should choose you.
Along with your USP, establishing a clear brand identity will allow you to set your tone of voice across every aspect of your brand – from your website to your social media channels. Your brand identity will ultimately be the thing that will help you to build a strong community around your brand and connect with your audience.
The good news is once you have established these two things, there is undoubtedly a place for you on socials!
Step two: conduct a competitor analysis
By conducting a competitor analysis, you will be able to gain profound insight into what similar brands are doing within your field.
Taking note of which social media platforms competitors are present on – and importantly which ones they are active on – will give you an understanding of where a similar target audience to yours consumes their social content.
Taking note of even the smallest things, such as relevant hashtags or keywords that keep appearing will enable you to paint a well-rounded social media picture for your industry and help you to get started.
Step three: create a clear content strategy
Creating a clear content strategy will help to ensure that you are maintaining a consistent posting schedule as well as producing a range of content – both of which will improve engagement levels and content reach.
In order to create a content strategy it will be important to utilise takings from your competitor analysis. What content performed well among competitors? What type of content didn’t perform as well for competitors? Is there any content you think competitors were missing? The answers to these sorts of questions can be used to guide & inspire content that is likely to perform well among your target audience.
If you are struggling to come up with a content strategy, here are some key content themes for some inspiration:
- Inform – this might include: bitesize information posts, links to articles or blogs, industry facts, hacks, or top tips.
- Engage – this might include: more personable content such as your company’s journey, storytimes, behind the scenes, team content or days in the life.
- Entertain – this might include: industry memes, polls, Q&A’s, skit videos, contests, or giveaways.
Step four: keep an eye on analytics & adapt
Congratulations, you are up and running on social media! But your job is not done yet. Keeping an eye on your analytics is likely to become your social media superpower.
Completing a bi-weekly or monthly analysis of your post analytics will help you to consistently assess which content is resonating well with your audience and which is not. It is important to act on this information and shift your content strategy accordingly.
If a certain type of content is consistently performing well, lean into that – it is clear your audience wants to engage with it so why not repurpose that content or use it as a guide or template for future posts? Likewise, if there is a piece of content that is consistently underperforming, adapt and make changes! Ultimately there is no use in chugging out content your audience doesn’t want to engage with.
Consistently keeping up with your analytics, trends, and most importantly your customers will enable your brand to maintain high engagement levels and to continually build a strong community on social media.
Once you have these four steps completed, the growth potential for your brand really is endless. From exploring short and long form video content, and establishing a different strategy across social media channels to delving into influencer collaborations, the possibilities are infinite.
We hope you have found these four steps useful for getting your brand started within today’s social media realm.
FDRY is an independent digital marketing agency with a dedicated team of creatives, content writers, UX designers and media planners who will be happy to arrange a discovery session with you to discuss more about our digital marketing agency services.
For more information send us a brief or get in touch at [email protected]
