Getting Started with Social Media

You have to start with an objective – what do you want to get out of it, leads, sales, more traffic. Once you know what you want to get out of social media you can draw up a strategic plan for how you are going to achieve the objective.

Social media needs to fits into your wider sales and marketing plan. Understanding where your audience is and which social media channels they use, is essential. That way you can target them more effectively. If social media is new to you, it’s an idea to pick one platform and start with that, rather trying to do too much.

Key questions to ask yourself when getting started with social media:

1. What do you want out of social media; brand awareness, traffic to your website, new leads, bookings, sales?

2. Does it fit in with your current marketing plan; how will social media facilitate your brand awareness, sales, advertising, or web presence?

3. Who is your target audience; new customers, influencers to review and promote your products or services, is it suppliers, existing customers?

4. What are your competitors doing on social media; do they use it, can you see how effective it is, would you like to be better than them?

5. Are you already generating content via a blog or email that you can reuse?

6. Content, content, content, this is the biggest part of any strategic social media project; who is going to produce it, who is going to manage your social media accounts, when and how often are you going to publish content?

7. Do you have the capacity, skills and discipline to manage this yourself?

8. Do you need some extra help or training?

And then, when you’ve answered these, you should have a clear strategy and plan to follow – its time to implement it all on social media.

As with all marketing activity, you should approach social media as part of a wider marketing strategy with the continuation of the same message and connecting all the various channels with the same voice. Seek expert help to make your marketing work for you.

Straight talking thoughts on Getting Started with Social Media

Have you any questions?

Here at Yorkshire Powerhouse, we’re happy to help as much as possible – is there anything else we can do to help you, do you have any further questions or can we help introduce you to an expert – please let us know: