Creating a digital marketing strategy for your small business is vital to ensure you are keeping your marketing goals on track, your overall strategy doesn't need to be complicated, but it needs to include a breakdown on individual social media platforms you are using. Each social media platform has it's own individual and unique audiences and functionality.
Facebook is one of the most popular and cost effective social media platforms for small businesses.Your business will find it's easy to use, has an effective advertising functionality and a great analytics tool.
Simple tips to help small businesses create a Facebook Strategy:
Goals
Without goals, it can be hard to monitor your Facebook strategy. creating Facebook goals can help you keep on track. Think about your business strategy and use those to help mould your goals, I would recommend having approximately four to five goals.
Some goals you might consider; Strengthen Brand Awareness, Build a Relationship with your Audience and Generate Leads and Conversions
Measurements and Analytics
Facebook's insights offers you a great selection of analytics which you can use to measure your success. Take the time to understand what the analytics section offers you as this can help shape your marketing content.
Use the analytics page to help determine the best time of day to post content. You might like to read Facebook Boost, how to engage with followers on a budget.
Guidelines
Social networking is so powerful, it's anticipated the number of worldwide users will reach around 2.5 billion by 2018. Having a set of Social Media and PR guidelines for your company is important to ensure the content you are sharing it reflecting your brand.
Guidelines should also include your security policy for emails, passwords and administrators for all your social channels. You might like to read, 3 examples why your Social Media Channels need security
Social personality
Each Social Media platform has it's own personality and style, so when it comes to your business, you need to stay true to who you are as a brand, but remember it's social media and it's ok to have a little bit of fun. Determine your tone of voice and ensure you know who you are talking to, use your Facebook analytics page to help you with this.
Your tone of voice description doesn't need to be war and peace, just a simple sentence, for example if you are a Youth Charity, then your tone of voice may be "A Fun and Thought provoking voice to engage young people between 18 - 25"
Content
When it comes to publishing on Facebook, consider all your options for your content, the visual composition, landscape or portrait, location tagging, campaign hashtags, captions, boosting posts and @mentioning other users. When you plan your marketing activity in advance this can allow your business to maximize the potential of Facebook's features and functionality.
Consider having an Image Library, with approved image styles which also includes company logos. You might like to check out The Ultimate List of FREE Stock Photo Websites
Calendar and Scheduling
Having a marketing calendar and using a social media scheduling tool can really help you be more productive during the day, especially if you are a small business. Putting a effort into your calendar can save time and energy. Create a marketing calendar at least one month in advance (three months if you can manage it), schedule your content into either a social media scheduling tool such as Hootsuite or Buffer, or you can use Facebooks scheduling tool for Fan pages.
Your marketing calendar doesn't need to be created in any digital tools or fancy apps, just a simple word or excel document will do the trick.
