Weeks one and two: Market research made easy!

This is the second stage in your journey to social media success. If you haven't seen the first stage yet, check it out on my blog! Follow this four step, two week plan to market research to ensure the best results for your brand.

Step 1: Research your Market!

I know, I know. You probably have all sorts of ideas in your head already and you just want to get them out there.... but this is the most important part of any social media branding. So, as much as your fingers might be twitching over your keyboard, you'll need to slow down. You can thank me later!

Now, how you approach your style of posting will depend on whether you're working with a pre-existing brand, with a pre-existing following, or not. If you're not, the main questions that you have to ask yourself at this stage are who the target audience is, and what similar businesses are doing (see my previous blog post). If you are, you will have to bear in mind a few extra factors:

• Is your target audience currently following you online?

• Who else is following you online?

• Which posts in the past have received the most positive responses, and which have received the most negative?

• Where is most website traffic coming from?

• Which past posting times have been the most successful?

You can monitor all of the above information with apps like Hootsuite, although sometimes social media platforms already come with tools to provide insights.

Finally, if your website or branding has a pre-existing following (even if it is on a different platform to the one you're aiming at), you have the opportunity to ask them what they want! If you want to appear more professional and distant you may be able to do this subtly, asking Linkedin appropriate questions like 'what mistakes do you think businesses tend to make on their social media platforms?' However, if your branding is more informal, you can just ask! You have the perfect opportunity to use polls, story responses and twitter re-tweets to your advantage. Don't be afraid to talk to your followers!

Step 2: Segment your audience.

Once you've figured out who you want to target your posts at and who is (possibly) already following you, it's time to decide who and what your priorities are.

A couple of months ago I had a chat with the leader of Surrey University's social media team and she had plenty to say about the importance of segmenting audiences. They had been targeting most of their posts to a British, Southern audience, but when they came to analyzing their data they found that over a quarter of their followers were from Nigeria! This meant that they then had to adapt their posts to maintain this international follower base, whilst still engaging with their previous audiences and encouraging new students from other countries to join the university. That's where segmentation comes in!

When you develop your social media plan, you have to decide what percentage of posts you want to target at which group of people. For example, you may want to target 40% of posts at potential clients, 30% at maintaining current followers and another 30% at securing new followers.

In other words, don't leave anybody out - and prioritize!

3. Categorise your posts.

Once you've segmented your audience, it's time to target them!

Within your allocated percentages, you will then want to find types of post that suit each audience.

For example, in the University's case, within their allocated percentage for maintaining following, they would likely then break that down further: 35% of posts may recognize international holidays and on-campus diversity to include international following, 20% may discuss student-living to appeal to potential students and their parents, 10% may appeal to current students, and so on.

Breaking down your posts may look like this:

Facebook content:

You can use more complex apps like Microsoft Excel, or simpler apps like Canva to create your graph. It doesn't have to be complicated, just clear!

4. FINALLY... make a posting schedule!

Okay, so you know who your audience is, and how you're going to reach them. All that's left now is getting organised!

There are two steps to this:

1. Find a post scheduling app - I recommend Hootsuite which I mentioned earlier because it also provides you with data insights and it's multi-platform.

2. Decide how much you want to post!

You might decide that every weekday you want to post twice on Instagram, twice on twitter and once on Linkedin, or maybe Friday is your Facebook maintenance day. This is your chance to book that in! If you want recurring themed posts (perhaps you want to post a historical female figure every Monday), or you want to spam videos on the weekends, write it down in your diary or on an organisational app like Trello, ready to fill in on Hootsuite!

And don't worry!

All of this may seem like a lot. Like I said, I know you just want to get started, but it's worth it! These four steps should take two working weeks to complete, and they leave you well on your way to excelling at social media branding.

Trust me, this will all pay off in the end!