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When the world is changing so rapidly, it’s easy to get pulled into the current of social media. To find yourself riding whatever wave happens to hit that day instead of playing the long game.
Because social media is not an after thought and definitely not a trifle (even when it gives every appearance of being so)—it’s a strategic tool for your brand and your business.
Think of it not only as your content distribution system, but your early engagement pipeline: it’s where you first entice your sweet-spot into your orbit.
Capturing your plays “on paper” has two distinct benefits: it keeps you focused on what matters most to your business AND gives you the ability to hand it off—say to a social VA—at some point in the future.
So what’s in your social media playbook? Think goals, audience, messages and posts.
Goals: Why are you investing time on social?
Get exquisitely clear (which also means realistic) about where you truly need to be and how invested you will be on each platform.
Metrics are helpful, but deciding how effective your efforts are by follower count is not the only thing worth tracking. Are you sparking new relationships, starting meaningful conversations, seeing an uptick in your email list from your social links?
Audience: Who do you most want to reach?
The more you fine-tune your ideal audience, the better your outcomes (and the shorter runway anyone helping you will require to get productive).
We’re talking demographics, psychographics, where they go on-line, who they follow, what they consume, how they think.
If you don’t know who you’re going after, how will you know when you find them?
Messaging: What are the sound bites that reflect your belief system?
It helps to think of messages as sound bites—8-10 key sentences that capture your point of view, your belief system. Typically, these fit into no more than a handful of themes that you’re writing or talking about.
You don’t have to use your actual sound bites over and over again (how boring would that be?) Think of them more like guardrails to keep you on the track you’ve created for yourself.
Posts: What style will you use to post and interact on each platform?
Take Twitter for example. You might decide to publish your weekly blog post or podcast episodes with a unique teaser tweet every day of the week it’s published.
You might post an original gem—an unlinked sentence or two—on a regular basis and perhaps retweet (with commentary) on the news of the day where you can apply your particular brand of authority.
And don’t forget those handshake tweets—replies, retweets, thank you’s and shout-outs—since that’s where real engagement on social tends to take shape.
Once you’ve got your playbook written down, you don’t have to spend much time thinking about strategy—you can just execute.
Which means that you’ll know that engaging in the latest political tempest is either exactly on brand or a pointless rabbit hole.
Crafting your own playbook thoughtfully will let social media work for you vs. becoming an annoying time suck.
p.s. The May topic in my virtual ConsultantsNation group coaching program is Building Your Email List. If you sign up by May 7th, you can still attend both May sessions live (use code MAY2020 for $50 off the monthly price forever). You’ll also get immediate access to video recordings from our earlier topics:
Social Media (Now)
Prospecting
Building Your Audience
Developing Authority Content