In this article we will see an example social strategy articulated in 7 points.
Social media is nothing more than a series of techniques aimed at promoting companies and people with the help of social networks.
Nowadays, promoting oneself on social media is a crucial aspect for any type of business, not adapting would be a big mistake.
In this article we will show some examples Social strategies that you can implement to win the competition.
We will see together:
- Why it is critical to prepare a social media strategy
- How to analyze on social media your competitors
- How to measure engagement and why
- Example social strategy to beat the competition
Sit back and take some time, because this article explains in detail how to win the competition through Social channels.
In the endless world of the Web, there are various social media platforms.
Some generalist like Facebook, some verticalized on images like Instagram and Pinterest, some dedicated to Business like Linkedin, and some like YouTube and TikTok dedicated to video.
Each of these channels has its own specificities.
It is therefore essential to know its characteristics in detail in order to make the most of its potential.
Social Media examples for your business
Marketing carried out on social media is increasingly ousting traditional methods.
This happens because through such an expanded network it is possible to reach an extremely broader audience to whom one can target one’s marketing campaigns, succeeding in convincing even the most skeptical.
Through a well-planned social media strategy, it is indeed possible:
- Increasing Brand Awareness
- Engage wider audiences who might be interested in what you offer
- Generate leads
- Increase conversions and build customer loyalty
- Steer traffic to your website
If you want to implement the social media marketing strategy of your company, we will show you what the basic steps are through an easy-to-understand example.
First, however, it is essential to start with an analysis to define:
- Target market: is your company local, or does it operate nationally and/or internationally
- Target audience: targets a private B2C (Business To Consumer) audience, or targets B2B (Business to Business) companies
- Audience: what is your potential audience? Segment your target audience by gender, age, interests etc. and build your Buyer Persona.
- Company values: what are the factors that enable your company to stand out from competitors? This step is crucial because if you don’t know your competitors, you can’t even defeat them.
- Tangible and intangible values: what are the values of the products or services your company offers, compared to the market and competitors
At this point the analysis shifts to the competitors, through acompetitive analysis in fact, it is possible to understand how they move in the social world, on which platforms they are present and how they manage their accounts.
For each social channel, where competitors are present, it is essential to check Social Media Optimization (SMO).
More simply, the optimization of Business Pages on Social Platforms. This step is important to understand:
- How their pages are structured
- Are they rich in information?
- How they use contact or call to action (Call To Action) functions.
- How many followers have
- Which applications integrate
- How often do they update the channel
- What kind of content do they publish
The analysis does not stop there. It then provides for an audit of what is calledBrand engagement.
There are several online platforms, more or less expensive, that enable detailed analysis.
We at Factory Communication, a social media agency for businesses, use Semrush. Perhaps one of the most widely used platforms worldwide.
If you do not want to undertake such an investment, you can try to do it on your own. We explain how.
It is then sufficient to check the posts published on the page and analyze user interactions, relating them to the number of followers.
Social strategies examples: how to measure Engagement on Instagram
Do you want to analyze the Engagement of your company’s Instagram business page? The first thing you need to check is the number of followers you have compared to the number of profiles you follow.
It is essential that the number of followers is significantly higher than the number of profiles followed.
Let’s take a practical example by analyzing theEngagement of the Instagram page of Factory Communication.
Date of analysis 2019-05-02
- Number of followers: 1277
- Number of profiles followed: 30 (significantly less than the number of followers)
- Post: 362
- Publication frequency: 1 post per day
Now let’s look at how to measure your profile’s Engagement by analyzing your last 10 published posts. Add up the number of interactions (likes + comments). The total is 388 and divide it by the number of posts. Result about 39 interactions, per single post.
Now to measure engagement, that is, the level of interactions users have with your page, divide the number of average interactions (39) by the number of followers (1277). This results in an engagement of about 2.6 percent.
Clearly, platforms such as Semrush, perform significantly more in-depth analysis. The above, can be considered a decent starting point.
What happens a lot of times, looking at the profiles of big companies, or of entertainment personalities, is that we are struck by the number of interactions their posts have.
Don’t be impressed. They probably have lower engagement than your page. Let’s take an example.
Social strategy examples: how to check the engagement of Chiara Ferragni’s Instagram profile
Let’s try to analyze the Instagram profile of the very famous Chiara Ferragni, whom we deeply esteem, because she has been really good, and has become the top Influencer in Italy.
Let’s look at the interactions between the influencer and his or her audience.
- Date of analysis 2019-05-02
- Number of followers: 16,400,000
- Number of profiles followed: 961 (significantly less than the number of followers)
- Posts: 12,832 (impressive number)
- Average publication frequency: 3 posts per day
Now let’s analyze the last 10 posts published. Add up the number of interactions (likes + comments).
The total is 4,642,656 and divide it by the number of posts. Result 464,265 average interactions per post.
Now to measure the engagement of Ferragni’s Instagram page, that is, the level of user interactions, as before, divide the number of average interactions (464,265) by the number of followers (16,400,000).
This results in an engagement of about 2.8 percent, which is slightly higher than that of Factory Communication’s Instagram channel.
Clearly this exercise was not meant to compare our channel with Chiara Ferragni’s Instagram channel.
The goal is to provide you with a simple methodology to check the engagement of your channel, but especially of your competitors’ social channels.
As in the case of Chiara Ferragni, at first glance the number of interactions per post is really high. If you divide it by the number of followers you see that it becomes significantly smaller.
Example social strategy in 7 points
After you have done the analysis of your social channels and the relative engagement of your competitors, you can define how to structure your social media strategy. We have arrived at the long-awaited moment, a practical example for implementing social media in your strategy.
There are two different types of targets:
- Tangibles: increased sales, quotes and leads
- Intangibles: increased customer awareness, satisfaction rate and loyalty.
Generally we are inclined to pursue tangible goals because they are the ones that provide us with the economic return in the short term.
But let me assure you that intangible goals are just as important and are the ones that allow you to have economic returns in the medium and long term.
So your social media strategy, in my opinion, must take into consideration, both goals.
In simple words, it means dosing the level of communication, to convey both commercial information and information of interest and useful to your target audience.
All, of course, within the budget you have available.
Let’s move from words to actions and try a practical example to understand how to implement a social media strategy.
Mr. Mario Rossi has a store selling gardening supplies and lawn mowers.
He decided, after discovering that his competitor is blowing up on social media, to try this route as well.
He doesn’t know how to do it and asked my advice on how to set up a proper strategy.
I summarize the main steps to be implemented.
Item 1. Analysis of the Company
Through an interview that generally lasts a couple of hours, I understand what the strengths and weaknesses of your business are. What kind of service he offers the customer. What brands it distributes. How and where the store is located.
What is the after-sales support etc. At this stage I ask Mr. Rossi to provide me with the names of four companies he considers to be competitors.
Step 2. Social Analysis of Competitors
The first step is to check how his company’s competitors are positioned on social and the web. Not only that.
Here at Factory Communication, we perform a check to see if there are other competitors that Mr. Rossi does not know about.
For each competitor we check the structure of its social channels, the number of posts, interactions, content published etc…
We also identify any strengths (positive comments) and weaknesses (criticisms and complaints) made by followers.
Item 3. Expressing Corporate Values
This is the most difficult step. Because every entrepreneur, he would like to sell all his products to everyone.
But it doesn’t work that way.
Social media strategy is like any other branch of marketing. It falls under the same rules.
So it’s hard to sell everything to everyone, otherwise we risk selling nothing to anyone.
Obviously, if you have unlimited budgets, this limitation can easily be ignored.
The case I propose today is extremely concrete and relates to a small business.
I define with Mr. Rossi what products to push via social, what commercial campaigns to carry out, and what indispensable technical and practical information he needs to provide me with in order to structure useful content for users.
Step 4. Plan the right social media activity
The first step is to define which social networks we want to be present in. In this specific case, since it is a garden store, the advice is to create pages on Facebook and Google My Business.
Clearly, it would be even more performant to open social channels on Instagram and YouTube right away as well.
Be careful, however: the more social media you preside over, the larger the budget you have to invest.
My main goal is to create, right from the start, an effective web marketing plan at a low cost.
The Customer is not a cow to be plucked, but a person to be respected and a plant to be grown.
As he grows, so do I.
So: few social channels, but well-managed and manned.
N.B. Creating a social channel and neglecting it is the worst investment you can make.
Step 5. Why Facebook and Google My Business?
For so many reasons. I report below only the main ones.
- Being found by the potential Target.
Facebook can reach our potential target audience since it is used, primarily, by people over 25/30 years old.
- Leveraging geo-location in our favor.
Facebook and Google My Business allow you to geo-locate your business. This allows you to be found more easily by possible users.
In addition, after I properly train Mr. Rossi, he will ask customers to “sign up” in the case of Facebook or leave a comment in the case of Google My Business.
Let us give an example to explain this passage.
Mr. Bianchi goes to Mr. Rossi’s store to buy a grass cutter.
Having concluded the purchase, Mr. Rossi offers Mr. Bianchi a coffee, meanwhile asking him to register on his pages.
If Mr. Bianchi is on Facebook, he can register on Mr. Rossi’s store page and possibly leave a review as well.
In an instant, all of Mr. Bianchi’s Facebook friends will know that he is right there in Mr. Rossi’s store.
The recording technique has an incredible, viral, and free impact.
If Mr. Bianchi does not have a profile on Facebook and Instagram, or if he was pleasantly impressed, either by the grass-cutter or the coffee, he can also write a review on the Google My Business tab.
Google My Business is connected with Google Maps and allows you to be found by everyone who is doing a Google search.
In our example, the search could be “gardening store” “gardening supplies” or “lawn mower sale” etc.
All those who perform such searches will find both the Google My Business tab with all the information about Mr. Rossi’s store and the reviews left by the user.
I dare to say crazy cool. What do you say?
Step 6. Planning the type of content
In order to plan content in the right way, it is essential to be clear about how much and what information we have in our possession.
Remember that a good social media strategy must convey both commercial offers and useful information to users. If possible, more the latter than the former.
This point must be extremely clear to Mr. Rossi, because you will be the one, then, to help us prepare all this content.
How? By taking photos and videos of various products, making short video clips on how to use a particular herbicide or how to safely handle a hedge trimmer etc.
Once the type, structure and format for content creation is defined, the editorial calendar for publishing content on social channels is prepared.
After making the first publications, thanks to channel statistics, I can figure out what generates the most interest (engagement), what is the best time to publish, what topics are of most interest to users.
Point 7. Competitors can be our best allies.
If you keep track of your competitors’ social pages, you may find that, for some products or services, they are really poor. And there-go strike.
Throughcompetitor analysis we can together discover that competitors are strong on some products and decidedly lacking on others.
They have a fragmented business proposition, poor support because they do not know that product well, and perhaps we find that they are also more expensive than we are.
Well that’s where it pays to start the war and plan the right web marketing strategy, to distance the competition.
Let’s take a practical example.
On the Facebook Page of a Competitor of Mr. Rossi, we found several criticisms of the lawn mower repair service. “They are incompetent,” “they don’t know what they are doing,” etc.
In our social media strategy, we can include a series of posts, where we explain how we perform the lawn mower repair business, obviously supported by positive reviews from our Customers and potential customers. What do you say? Do we defeat the competition this way?
I hope I have addressed in a direct, clear and practical way this thorny and complicated topic that is social media.
If you need more information, please feel free to leave a comment.
I’ll get back to you as soon as I finish cutting the grass with the new mower I bought from Mr. Rossi.
Happy gardening to all.
Donato Cremonesi
Social media examples
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