Organizations, SME/SMB, celebrities, individuals – we all need and use social media to drum up business, to find work, to fight for a cause, or to be part of a community.

But before starting to use LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, it’s important to formulate a strategy.

Formulate your goal
Why do you want to use social media? What do you want to achieve? Do you want to brand your company or do you want to establish yourself as a brand or as an expert? Or do you want to leverage the power of social media to find a job?

Identify your target audience
Once you know what you want to achieve, you can now define your target audience. Are you looking for work? HR managers and companies use LinkedIn to find new employees or freelancers. If you want to launch or support a cause or start a social campaign, your audience is mainly on Facebook. If you want to build your brand, the general public is your target audience.

Determine your USP
To be successful, you need to analyze both your strengths and your weaknesses. Define your Unique Selling Point (USP) – each one of us has unique assets (e.g., experience, skills, offering a great product/service).

Identify the best social media to succeed
For entertainers such as musicians, YouTube is ideal. Job seekers are advised to use LinkedIn and Xing. For cause marketing, Facebook is the best choice. Twitter is excellent for branding. For market research, all social media are effective to get quick and reliable results.

Formulate your strategy
Using social media means building an online presence. To be successful, a strategy must be formulated that outline how you want to present yourself, build your brand or represent your company. Decide on the content of your message (links, tweets, posting) and the frequency (monthly, weekly, daily, ongoing).

Stay active
Social media are real-time. Users must stay active to get their message across. You need to keep on communicating with your target audience.

Check what works – does your target audience find you? Do you get positive feedback?

Do you need to invest in promotion such as advertisements? Do you need to leverage Word of Mouth (WOM)? Do you need to adjust your strategy?

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