How to Craft a Sound Social Media Strategy

Conner Hoyt:

How do you ensure your presence is felt and your voice carries weight? Depending on you’re the brand you want to cultivate, there are several routes to success, and we’re here to help with some great tips!

1. Monitor key conversations in your industry across all channels.

This first tip might seem a little intuitive, but if you want to gain a foothold in your field, you must know it forwards, backwards, and sideways. On what network does most of your desired audience converge? What else do thought leaders in your space like to talk about? If you want to grow a footprint in the Twitter space, for example, a great way to quickly organize priority conversations is to group top influencers into lists. From there, you can set notifications when these accounts tweet, so that you can respond and/or amplify the message accordingly!

But don’t neglect the news. Make a point to monitor priority news outlets (both on local and national levels; trade and consumer). If you don’t have news-tracking databases capable of doing so on a mass basis, make it a point to set Google Alerts for key outlets.

2. Learn your audience! 

While consistent volume is certainly important to creating a winning social media operation, you can’t post without direction. Just as you want to know what’s happening in your key channels, you’ll want to have a handle on who it is exactly you’re trying to reach. A good way to think of this might be to build audience profiles, both general and specific. Everyone wants to have loads of people following them, but what good does that accomplish if they aren’t primed to take action when they see you pop up in their feed? Set aside time to research and brainstorm who is most primed to take that action and invest your calories in targeting them. 

Using Leidos Digital Solutions’ native tool Intranet Quorum (IQ), you’ll have reams of constituent data at your fingertips. Along with the standard data you’d find in any CRM, we curate specialized data with an in-house algorithm (ahem, constituent engagement scores, anyone?!).

3. Diversify your content. 

Just because you’ve carved out a niche doesn’t mean you should allow your content to get stale. Allow your audience a chance to experience some variety and flavor with your brand when appropriate, so they are excited to interact with your content. Beyond getting creative with the content itself, this could mean diversifying accompanying media (don’t shy away from photos, videos, and/or GIFs).

4. Respond to your comments and messages. 

IQ’s native social media center permits organizations to do this en masse. Once you’ve integrated your social media accounts with IQ, you can efficiently reply to incoming comments/replies or instant messages with a form letter, or respond individually if you feel the message requires more attention. A response will make your audience member feel heard, key to ensuring they trust your brand to substantively consider issues important to them. 

5. Pose questions!

Rather than talking at your audience, continue to show you value their opinions by soliciting questions. You’re likely to generate more engagement, and in so doing, learn more about your audience!!

By implementing a strong social media strategy, you’ll both facilitate more brand awareness and engagement and discover more than you thought possible about your target audience with consistent opportunities to see how they behave online. And with IQ’s industry-leading social media integration capabilities, you’ll have all the tools you’ll need to do so! To learn more about IQ’s social media integrations, please contact us for a demonstration!

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