5 ways to improve your social media strategy

With 7.7 billion people in the world – 3.5 billion of us are online and with the digital and social media landscape continuously changing it can be a challenge managing your business whilst keeping your eye on social media. Some businesses in Tourism choose to opt-out of investing resources into social media, however, it should remain an integral part of an overall marketing strategy to see any return on investment and to see tons of guests walking through your doors. To be successful on social media you need to rely more on a clear strategy than just random postings and hashtags. In this post you will learn the 5 ways to turn your business from zero to hero on social media:

Step 1: Audit your current platforms

The mention of the word ‘audit’ can run chills down anyone’s spine, however, a social media audit can be a quick and painless process provided that you understand its purpose, to identify what’s working and what’s not. Create a spreadsheet to help with your research and findings. It just makes it easier whenever you need a quick reference.

Some detective work is required during the process, and so here are some guidelines to assist you:

Step 2: Identify your Goals

If you were to reach a target, set your sights, take aim, and fire. Having no goals and nothing to work towards to market your business reflects poorly on your brand.

As this phase/step will have a direct impact on your ROI, you should ask yourself:

Step 3: Create a persona

In this step, you create your most ideal persona based on information from your social media insights and your google analytics. Try and be as specific as possible, the more you define your persona the better. For example, if you have identified your target market as singles who travel – it would be okay. However, if you have taken it a step further and identified your target market as singles, who live in England, between 25 – 34 years of age, and earn over $60 000, primarily use Facebook, and have interests in outdoor activities you will have much more success.

Answer the following questions when creating your persona:

Step 4: Competition Analysis A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.”  – Ovid

Well said, Ovid! Sometimes a competitive analysis is never fun because your competition could be way ahead but at the same time, it helps put things in perspective and helps you finetune your strategy and see where you rank amongst your competitors. Important points to consider when conducting a competition analysis: This process should never be overlooked and requires continuous monitoring to make sure that you don’t lose sight of your competition.

Step 5: Using all your findings create a content calendar

A content calendar is usually in a spreadsheet format (although there are other platforms to schedule content like Hootsuite), it is used to schedule content across all your social media platforms. Why is a social media content calendar important? Because it provides an overview of your content over months, weeks, and days. It allows you to visualize how your content according to your overall strategy. The other benefit is to allow you to prepare content around specific days that are important to your brand, public holidays, etc.

This is just the beginning! To be relevant and on top of your competition, it does require you to continuously re-evaluate these steps to be a success. Having a rock-solid strategy now in place, imagine the impact your reach could have on your business!