Want to start using social media but aren’t sure about where to start?

It’s important to develop a social media strategy in order to plan how and why you will use social media.

This guide will give you some ideas for developing a social media strategy.

Planning your strategy

Once you have decided to get started on social media, a strategy will help you to decide how you will use social media and help you to plan ahead.

We suggest that you use the POST method to maximise your impact on social media. The POST method was developed by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their book Groundswell. It’s a simple, memorable way to improve your social media impact and help you plan ahead.

People Objectives Strategy Technology

People

This is your audience, which may be specific to the content which you are sharing or the objective which you’re hoping to meet.

  • Who do you want to reach? Defining your audience can help you to fine tune your message and pick your platform.
  • What kind of stories do they want to hear about? It’s important that your audience is interested and engaged with the stories which you’re sharing.
  • Where can you find them? Think about where your audience is – are they on Twitter or Facebook? Perhaps they’re subscribed to your mailing list?

Objectives

Try to set specific, measurable objectives with a set time-frame.

For example, instead of saying that you want more visitors to your website you could set a goal for ‘50% more traffic from Twitter to the website by a specific date’.

Also think about who is responsible for each objective – who will be creating and posting content and measuring outcomes?

Strategy

What is your strategy for getting your audience to take the action you want them to? If you want them to click through to your website, for example, what value are you offering them in exchange? This could be information or an interesting story, but the value to them should be made clear.

Technology

What tools and technology will you use? This will depend on where your audience is and how you plan to measure your objectives.

For example, if you want to increase traffic to your website from Twitter you could use Twitter (to post content), Bitly (to shorten links and monitor clicks) and Google Analytics (to examine user flow).

 

Other resources you may find helpful: