What is the number one reason that business owners do not have a successful social media strategy?
They overcomplicate it.
Many people think that developing a social media marketing strategy involves a massively complex process that takes a ton of time and effort to complete. Not only that, but after you have a strategy, the thought of spending hours and hours creating pieces of content, writing copy, and getting things posted makes most people stop before they even start.
But what If I told you that by simplifying your social media strategy, you can create something that is effective and easy to execute?
Whether you have a social media strategy right now that is very complex and you’re looking to make things easier, or if you are starting from scratch, here are our tips to help you simplify your social media strategy.
1) Clearly Define Your Ideal Customer Profile and Use It Often
The first step to creating an effective and simple social media strategy is to create an ideal customer profile. I know, it feels weird to ADD a step to your process to make things simpler… But creating an ideal customer profile makes the process of creating your overall strategy much easier.
Why? Because you always have something to refer back to and ask, would this person actually care about this post? If I were them, would I engage with it? How would I feel?
This makes the process of working through all your ideas much easier and allows you to feel more confident going into a post that it will work. This eliminates the thought of failure in your strategy and will help you get started in the first place.
We wrote a step-by-step guide on how to create an ideal customer profile.
2) Simplify Your Content
One of the biggest places people overcomplicate things is with their content. Most small businesses I know never think their content is good enough. They see all the amazing content pieces that big brands put out and think that they need to do exactly what they are. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
The amazing thing about social media is the fact that people WANT you to be authentic. It is not a place where everything needs to be polished and perfect.
When looking at your social media strategy, identify places where you overcomplicate things. Have you been planning on doing a 10-minute video? How about a massive eBook? Struggling to find time to take professional photos of every single one of your products?
Once you have identified these content pieces, figure out how to make them easier or break them up into smaller chunks. By creating content that is easier to do, you will be less likely to put them off and they might actually perform better than something more complex.
If you’re struggling to get a start on creating content in the first place, we put together a few examples of creative post ideas for you already.
3) Select Only A Few Social Media Platforms
A common mistake we see with a social media strategy is when a company tries to be on too many platforms at once.
A small business may decide that its social media marketing strategy needs to include Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tiktok, and even more! Even for big companies, keeping up with that many different platforms can be a struggle, let alone a small business that is already thin on resources.
When dividing what platforms are most important to you, refer back to that ideal customer profile. Where are the people who would be your best customer going to be? From there, pick only 2 (maybeeee 3) and ignore the rest. We would much rather a company be extremely consistent on 2 platforms than be all over the place on 6.
Want to know what social media platforms to choose for your business? Check out the Develop Your Social Media Strategy chapter of our social media guide.
4) Set A Goal That Is Attainable
Another thing that stops people from executing their social media strategy before they even start is by setting goals that are impossible to attain.
We know, Gary V told you to post 30 pieces of content a week and share constantly to your story all while replying to every single comment… But is that something that is actually attainable for anyone?
Quite frankly, no it’s not.
So when developing your strategy, think about what is actually attainable for you. Is it 4 posts a week? Only 2 and a few stories? Whatever it is, figure out what is something you can realistically accomplish from week to week.
When a strategy is more simple like this, it seems less daunting and you are more likely to keep up with it.
5) Simply Pay Attention To The World Around You
“I don’t have any ideas.”
I can’t tell you how many times that I have heard this over the last 5 years. When you feel like you are out of ideas, it can feel impossible to put out content that you are proud of.
However, there is a secret to helping yourself come up with ideas: Pay attention to what is going on in the world.
This can happen in a few different ways. One of the easiest is to look at a calendar of national days and figure out which ones fit your business. Can you talk about national middle child day? What about national take your dog for a walk day? Or you might want to celebrate national have a beer day.
Whatever it is, this makes it really easy to fill gaps in your calendar and stay relevant.
Another way is to just pay attention to what is going on in pop culture. What shows are people watching? What is going viral? What is the newest meme of the day? Keeping your eye on these trends and asking yourself “how can I relate this to my business?” makes getting engagement and having success much easier.
So what do you think? How are you going to simplify your strategy?
I know we went over a lot of things at a very high level today, but did you know we have a Simplifying Social Media guide for small businesses that covers this topic in a lot more detail?!