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The first step of social media marketing

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Kevin Sandlin

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We had a fun class today at General Assembly for “Advanced Social Media Strategies,” and we’ll be holding this class again on Tuesday, June 30, from 1-4PM. One question that came up several times, because several of the attendees were in a similar position, was this:

When you’re just getting started with a new business, and you know you’re going to be using social media, what’s the first thing you do? Where do you start?

The context of this question is important, because if someone is starting from a blank slate, then the first place is with their core values and brand. But in today’s question, those pieces were already in place, so the marketers were interested in determining their first step with social media.

The way I answered the question fits in well with the positioning of this particular class. The first step, assuming you have your core values and brand well buttoned up, is to create a content strategy. In other words, start with:

  • What kind of content will you produce? When you know your audience, you know what kinds of content will resonate with them. Produce this kind of content.
  • What channels will you use to publish and share? If you’re creating video, you used to just go straight to Youtube, but Facebook now has more daily uploads and views of video than Youtube. If your content is written, what blog platform will you use? 
  • How often will you publish & share it? There are best practices for how often you should share the same piece of content, whether it’s video, images, or text.
  • How will you define success? You have to set goals for social media. Too many times, people just jump on Twitter or Linkedin for their businesses or setup a Facebook page without any way to determine if their efforts are yielding any results at all.
Then create some content, with a solid understanding of where and how your target audience consumes content. Once you have content, then you share it using best practices for social media.
We take this approach because social media marketing should be viewed as a subset of content marketing. Every word, image, video, graphic, photo, etc., is your content, whether you publish it on a blog or a long Instagram post. All your content should reflect your brand.

Social media marketing is content marketing, and content marketing is an outgrowth and reflection of your brand in the form of educational, engaging, and exchange with your target audience.

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