In 2018, Social Media is a critical part of your greater marketing strategy. But it’s difficult to engage new customers and differentiate from competitors. Partner with a social media strategist to maximize your social media success.

Creating a social media presence is simple. Facebook makes it easy to build a page for your company. You can open a Twitter account and begin tweeting about your company immediately.

But it’s unlikely these basic efforts will generate results. Without a clear strategy, potential customers will overlook your presence. You will waste your team’s time on these efforts as well.

The best social media campaigns add value to consumers’ lives. They capture consumers’ attention and continue to do so regularly. But building these campaigns strategically across multiple social channels requires a deep understanding of how consumers use social media.

What is a Social Media Strategist?

If you’re a small business, you may not have all the expertise you need under one roof. Perhaps your marketers can manage social media campaigns from an operational standpoint. Bringing in a strategist maximizes their efforts and builds long-term value for customers.

A winning social media strategy will help you build brand awareness. It will help you build relevancy and appeal in your market. You have opportunities to surprise and delight your customers in a visible way as well.

A social media strategist helps you incorporate human elements into your marketing strategy. You will learn that social media marketing is about adding value, not selling. Many marketers struggle with this difference without the proper strategy.

This may seem like a simple premise. But sustaining ongoing social campaigns is unrealistic without a comprehensive strategy. Social media strategists help you deliver value that translates into business success.

7 Reasons You Need a Social Media Strategist Now

If you’re not leveraging social media, you’re already missing opportunities for long-term sales. Invest in a professional now and enjoy the benefits of customer loyalty.

We’ve identified seven reasons you should partner with a social media strategist. We’ve considered your business needs and opportunities in making this investment. We’ll show how this investment will pay off in the long term as well.

1. Identify Your Goals

There are several ways to measure the success of your social media campaigns. You must determine how you measure performance now so you can improve campaigns later. But aligning goals with social performance can be a challenge.

Most companies fall into the pitfall of measuring vanity metrics. These are metrics that don’t reflect the true business value of your social media efforts. Your team can waste a lot of time measuring ‘likes’ and pageviews that don’t translate into sales or loyalty.

No one set of metrics is right for every company. A social media strategist can help you drive the right engagement metrics for your business. These can include anything from visitor frequency, star ratings for service, or conversion rates.

2. Develop Greater Insight into Your Target Audience

The general rules of marketing still apply on social channels. You want to optimize your exposure to target audiences and boost engagement with them. But that engagement won’t always directly drive your sales.

Your social media strategist will help identify target markets on social channels. The strategist will bring analytics to the table to help you align your messaging. They will identify specific trends that will help you refine your techniques as well.

Later you can measure your brand penetration in target audiences. You can see how social conversations about your brand compare to competitors. You can use all these insights to improve your strategy.

3. Choose the Best Channels for Your Brand

As you add channels, you add to your workload. Not all channels will be a good fit for your business.

A strategist helps optimize your efforts by focusing on only specific channels. Facebook is a great customer service channel that boosts satisfaction and loyalty. Twitter helps build a following and provide shareable content.

You must know how to combine these efforts. Your content strategy will revolve around how they coordinate with one another. Your strategist will understand these dynamics better than anyone.

4. Develop a Winning Content Strategy and Calendar

Your social efforts will fail without a content strategy and calendar. You must be prepared to update your accounts regularly. You must also actively respond to customers or you could actually hurt your brand.

Your social media strategist will help you determine the best scheduling solutions. They will help you determine a content strategy that will maximize value for customers. You can set up your strategy and count on it for long-term performance as well.

5. Add Value to Boost Customer Engagement

Your strategist will show you that quality content no longer revolves around sales. You must add value to your visitors’ lives with the content you produce. This is a challenge for brand marketers who base success only on conversions.

A strategist will help you design and plan this type of content. They will identify what is valuable about your message and your brand. Building engagement and loyalty is the social strategy that ultimately drives success.

6. Measure the Resonance of Your Brand

Your strategist will help you measure campaign success and make improvements. The strategist will be equipped with recent advances in measuring social brand performance.

These methods provide insight into social chatter about your brand. You can compare this chatter to that of your competitors as well.

You can also identify audiences where you are not making an impact. Your strategist can help you adjust your messaging to reach these audiences as well.

7. Foster Brand Loyalty and Advocacy

Social marketing is about customer engagement. More importantly, it’s about building meaningful relationships. Your team’s willingness to do this with customers will determine long-term success.

Successful brands use Facebook as a customer service platform. They provide great customer service that is visible to everybody. In doing so they are building trust with not just one customer, but all of them.

Let your competitors waste their time on getting ‘likes’ and page views. You’re spending time on getting lasting relationships. That original investment in a strategist will make your brand a success.

Get a Free Strategy Session

You need to be serious about your social media strategy before investing. But you can strategize with an expert to identify your needs and goals.

Book a free strategy session with me to get started. If you’re serious about social success, I can take your business to the next level of online performance.