5 Questions That Will Bring Clarity to Your Social Media

If you’re like me each morning you get up and log online and your first instinct is to check your social media profiles and email. Inside, your feed is filled with competitor’s posts that are beautifully designed and gaining lots of attention from their audience. Oh, and I did I mention it’s a GROWING audience?

Then you login into your email and see their updates that you are sure is sent to hundreds of people and getting them the sales and clients they want. And inevitability you feel like somehow what you are doing just isn’t enough.

I’m here to tell you, you are not alone!

You know that social media works for others in your industry because you have seen it! But you’re frustrated because you have tried to replicate their success in your business without the same results. You are not sure what they are doing differently.

While there could be so many things that could be different I want to start with making sure the fundamentals are sound for your social media and email marketing.

To do that, we need to bring clarity to your social media plan. To find it we will talk about the why, who, what, where, and when of your social media marketing.

Why do you want to put your business on social media?

I put this question first because everything should start and end with your ‘why’

• Why are you in business?
• Why do you want to be in the industry you’re in?
• Why are you providing the product or service that you are?

You have a purpose for your business and you have big goals to achieve. Those why’s help get you through the tough days and are your northern light when making decisions about your business. The same is true about putting your business on social media.

Being on social media is a choice that every business needs to make. Not only will you be deciding if you want to be there – but where you want to be and what your message is (more on that later). But there is a choice to be made.

Some businesses actively decide that they will not be on social media, that is a choice that they have made and they understand why they have made it.

The same is true of those that decide to be on social media. You need to understand why you want to be there and what impact you are expecting from that decision. 

Some of the reasons businesses choose to be on social media:

• Increase their brand awareness
• Create a community around their brand
• Manage customer service
• Target their specific audience
• Showcase their products and services
• Become a thought leader in their industry
• Drive traffic to your website
• And the list goes on….

But in order to be successful on social media, you need to know why you want to be there so you can plan for the steps you need to take in order to reach those goals.

Who is your audience?

This one is a biggy and knowing this will impact many of your decisions on social media moving forward. Companies who do this well ultimately connect with their audience and do well on social media.

Now that you know why you want to be on social media lets focus on who your audience is. Here are some of the questions you want to ask yourself.

• What is the age range of your ideal customer?
• What is the gender of your ideal customer?
• Do you sell to B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer)
• What are you selling? Is it a product or a service?
• What is a day in the life like for your customer? Are they on the computer, are they on their feet?
• What issues is your business solving for them?

We are going to take these results and use them to talk about our next ‘W;’ – the Where!

Where on social media should you be?

There are so many social platforms out there. From Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, SnapChat, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and so many many more. No one has the time or energy to be on all of them. So where should you focus your time?

Personally, I suggest looking at the main channels first – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest. Unless you are in a market where some of these other platforms serve your ideal customer better (think younger buyers) not diving down into the rabbit hole of newer platforms will help you establish your social media strategy first.

But even then – I don’t recommend using all of those at first. Each platform has its own demographics who are looking for dramatically different content. Start with one or two platforms that will serve your ideal client the best.

Next, think about your buyers and customers, where do they like to hang out? If they are drawn to Instagram then you should find ways to get your content to translate onto Instagram. Be where your buyers are!

What information are your customers most interested in getting from you – what is your message?

At this point, we have fleshed out a few different pieces but knowing what your message will be will help tremendously with reaching your audience on the platforms you have chosen.

You can decide that all of your platforms will carry the same messaging and in some cases, this will work. But remember what we said about the different platforms, the users on each are looking to consume different types of information while on those platforms.

So how can you take your message and modify it for those audiences? Do you want to use Facebook to grow a community group so you can help answer support questions for your products? Or maybe LinkedIn groups would better suit your needs because you want businesses talking to each other about your services. Do you want to showcase the visual nature of your products through Instagram and have your customers show off images of them using your product as well?

All of these things are possible with each and every platform that you are on. And the better you define your message for those platforms the easier it will be to plan your social media content in the days to come!

When will your audience see your content?

This might be one of the last details most people think about when creating a social media strategy but when you post matters. If you identified that your ideal audience isn’t online all day long, then posting to Facebook at 10am during the week is ultimately not going to get you the results you are looking for because your content will be pushed down in the endless amount of posts that showed up after yours.

Timing is everything! On Facebook, you can find the best time to post based on your current audience’s activity. On other sites, it might be more of a challenge but can be found by testing the timing of posts and seeing when you get the best reactions.

Next Steps

Everyone has the opportunity to be successful on social media but it all starts with bringing clarity to your social media plan by understanding why, who, where, what and when. By answering these questions you will gain better clarity on your overall goals for social media and be able to create content that will be sure to engage your audience.

Next, let’s look at setting goals and optimizing your business profiles.

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