Social media are essential to a good communication strategy. However, it is necessary to use them wisely to achieve results. How can a successful Social Media strategy be created? Please follow these seven simple steps.
Social media are essential, and it is obvious today. However, getting results and gaining customers with it is much less so.
Many businesses invest time and money on social media but quickly give up because they don’t see results. Worse, some companies even degrade their brand image with social media.
The problem is always the same: a company lands on social media out of fashion or apes the competition, without any strategy. On social media or elsewhere, to go to war without a strategy is to run to ruin.
Creating a Social Media strategy is not complicated
Naturally, we tend to think that thinking is a waste of time and that it is better to act quickly. This comes from our need to generate short-term results, to reassure ourselves.
For many, creating a Social Media strategy before taking action is a waste of time. It’s time-consuming, and we don’t know where to start.
What is the TOASTER model?
The TOASTER model (Target, Objectives, Message, Strategy, Technologies, Evaluate, and Resources) is a 7-step roadmap to create a Social Media strategy adapted to your objectives, image, strengths, and weaknesses.
The TOASTER model allows you to create a tailor-made Social Media strategy to optimize your results.
The seven steps to creating your Social Media strategy
1. For an effective Social Media strategy: define your target (T)
Normally, you would know better than anybody your target market.
Who are your products for? Who do you want to direct your communication to? The answers are essential to properly define your Social Media strategy.
But these questions are not enough. It would help if you went further to understand your target’s expectations, problems, questions, and behaviors.
The challenge of this job – Persona’s job – is to collect all the information you need to send the right messages, to the right person, at the right time, and on the right social media.
Examples: your target evolves in B2B? It will be wise to use LinkedIn professional social networks. Is your target population of retirees? You may be able to avoid integrating Instagram or TikTok into your Social Media strategy.
This Persona work will allow you to identify the right social networks and the formats and themes of content to be disseminated to attract with certainty the attention of your target and arouse their commitment.
There are two problems you need to be mindful of when using Social Media.
2. For an effective Social Media strategy: define your objectives (O)
It is impossible to create an effective Social Media strategy without having defined specific objectives. Now is the time to figure out what are the reasons you want to invest in social media.
What do you expect from social media? Do you want to improve, develop your image? Do you want to increase your sales? Generate qualified leads?
And all this to what extent?
Goals are essential to creating an effective Social Media strategy. To succeed at your task, it is necessary to outline your objectives with precision and determination.
Better still, these objectives will allow you to identify the performance indicators to follow to validate the relevance of your actions over time and optimize them if necessary.
This is the advantage of a Social Media strategy compared to a traditional communication strategy: you can not only follow the performance of your actions in real-time, but you can also adjust them immediately.
It’s not easy to modify an ad page in a magazine or modify an e-mailing that has already left!
Social Networking marketing has become a very critical aspect of running a successful brand.
3. For an Effective Social Media Strategy: Determine Messages (M)
Social media are tools for initiating discussions and developing social interactions.
In other words, social media are today essential to attract and especially retain the attention of the modern buyer, always more connected, autonomous, and solicited in his purchase thinking.
And the competition is tough on social media:
Today we are faced with 1,200 advertising messages every day, compared to 200 in the 1980s. However, our attention span has not changed! Therefore, your Social Media strategy’s effectiveness relies on the correct definition of the messages you want to send to your targets to achieve your goals.
What do you want to highlight? What content do you want to broadcast on your social media? To answer these questions, you can use the AIDA method.
It’s nice to know that different age groups can view the material differently. If she is at the start of the reflection process, her questions and expectations will be different than if your target is in the middle or at the end of the purchase phase.
This is where Persona’s work done previously will help you create the perfect Social Media strategy.
4. For an effective Social Media strategy: build your ecosystem (S)
The benefit of social media and networks is that they don’t normally cost much to use. Unlike a traditional media campaign, which incurs monumental costs, you can constantly use social media throughout your exercise.
Therefore, it is important to determine a current, daily Social Media strategy and integrate ad hoc operations (Google Ads, Affiliation, Influence Marketing campaigns, etc.) into it.
Thus, you will constantly develop your community, and your ad hoc campaigns will always be more efficient.
For example, a hairdresser/make-up artist will decide to operate social media pages on Facebook and Twitter and maintain this schedule with Google Advertisements to attract more customers.
This hairdresser’s community will have taken on another dimension between two exceptional operations, and the potential customers will therefore be more numerous during the next action.
To generate a return on investment with your Social Media strategy, it is essential to understand that social media must be used and integrated into a more global digital ecosystem.
Social networking alone would not be enough to make the software perfect. Both will make your other digital marketing actions more powerful and effective.
5. For an effective Social Media strategy: the tools (T)
Now that you have defined your target, your objectives, the message to convey, and the strategy to put in place, you can determine which social media to invest in – where to develop your presence to meet your potential customers – and which tools to use to industrialize your actions.
At this point, you will realize that taking all the actions essential to your Social Media strategy’s success will take a long time. Too much. Fortunately, there are a whole bunch of Community Manager Tools available that will save you valuable time.
Some tools are paid but quickly pay for themselves. Many online applications offer free trials and full-fledged accounts. Tools are a big part of the success of your Social Media strategy.
There is a multitude of possibilities here, and to make the right choice, you will also have to think about the activities you are planning: competition, serious games, community animation. It all depends on your target’s behavior and the Internet (see the different types of Internet users and consumers.
6. For an effective Social Media strategy: define the indicators to be monitored (E)
Taking action is fine, but it is good to assess the effects because several variables are analyzed (Return on Investment).
These key performance indicators (KPIs) must be determined as soon as your Social Media strategy is created so that they can be analyzed from its launch.
A Social Media strategy won’t be perfect on the first try.
Readjustments will be necessary, as much to be able to do them instantly. Besides that, you know, things move fast on social media. It is therefore essential to regularly update your Social Media strategy to continue generating growing results.
What indicators can you use to study the performance of your Social Media strategy?
Via Google Analytics, your business plan can be protected in this phase.
7. For an Effective Social Media Strategy: Identify Resources (R)
Your Social Media strategy is now well designed.
To finalize it, you must determine the resources that this Social Media strategy will require to be implemented and generate results.
What budgets? What deadlines? What skills? What workforce? Is recruitment necessary, or do you have the skills in-house? Do you have all the skills in-house?
If not, do you think you need to outsource certain actions or take training on social media?
Without sufficient resources, your Social Media strategy will be perfect, but you will not be able to carry it out properly. And therefore, the results will not be there.
Another problem: if your eyes are bigger than your stomach, you will wear out, and you will lower your arms too soon to generate results.
To gain customers with your Social Media strategy, you must carry it out with sufficient regularity and patience. So take your resources into account to make rational decisions.
Create a Social Media strategy, a business opportunity
As you have been able to see, social media are therefore interesting for your communication and turnover. Still, their use must be considered beforehand to foresee, anticipate, and control their impact and characteristics.
Without a strategy, you won’t be able to achieve results on social media, or, in the event of luck, you won’t be able to replicate your rare successes.
By following the TOASTER model’s seven steps, you will be able to determine a coherent Social Media strategy. Still, you will not be exempt from constantly analyzing it and making the necessary adjustments if necessary.
Media and social networks are a force but beware of the dark side. Do you want to promote your business in the social world? We offer Social Media Marketing in Pakistan at an economical price. Our social media marketing experts learn all the ropes. Moreover, they keep an eye on the latest tools and techniques to provide you a brilliant quality of services.
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