Research!
That might be a word you haven’t heard since college and all of those papers you had to write.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but writing a social media marketing strategy is a lot like writing a college paper. You have to do your research to find vital information to make it all come together.
3 Things You Must Research for Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
To make your research tasks easier, I’ve broken them up into three topics.
#1 Research the Competition
You can’t skip this one! Even if you really, really want to.
Find out what other businesses in your industry are doing. How are they using social media and how do they measure success?
Researching your competitors can be both eye-opening and confidence-building… but you need to know. Look at their websites and social media platforms. Google them and look at their reviews.
In building your own social media marketing strategy, what can you do different and better than the competition?
#2 Research What Your Customers Need
Are there customer service issues that you could better address? This is a key research angle for this step!
Spend some time researching what your customers need. What words are they using to search for you (or the competition)? What questions are they asking? How can you answer the unanswered questions or provide better customer service?
#3 Research Success Stories
The final research step is to discover what is currently working out there and figure out how you can make something similar work for you.
Facebook has a great list of “Success Stories” that you can search here.
Focused research will ultimately pave the way for your own success stories!
Research is just one of 6 steps for a great strategy.