When 30% of millennials are saying they engage with their favorite brands on social media, it is crucial that you are one of them.
Even if you aren’t providing the high-end fashion trends of 2018, your business has something special to provide that should be shared via social media. Now the question is, what is your ‘something special’?
If you are working on the social media team for your University than you probably have a basic understanding of what your overall message is. Now you need to put that into a media strategy.
Here are 5 essential things you need to know before creating an effective social media strategy that promotes your college.
1. What Are Your Biggest Challenges?
Social media strategies are not created overnight and they are not done out of thin air. One of the first things you should do is understand what your University’s biggest challenges are when targeting its students on social media.
Some of these challenges could be:
- Finding all of the students to add as a friend on all social channels
- Crafting the right messages for the students
- Increasing social media engagement
Once you know the challenges you’re facing, it’s easier to design a social strategy that directly attacks these challenges.
2. Understand Your Audience
What does your target audience want?
One of the best ways to find this out is through a survey. Many students will take a 2-minute survey especially if you put their name in a raffle and give out a few gift cards. This does not cost much money and it will help you understand what your consumers want from your social channel.
Universities like the University of Exeter begin by teaching their students to focus on their target audiences’ needs first. With a sharp focus on your audience’s needs, the challenges your social media channel are facing will slowly diminish.
3. Know Your Competitors Before You Implement Your Media Strategy
Do you know who your competitors are? Do you know their media strategies?
Once you have figured out who your competitors are, be sure to constantly check in on their channels to see what they’re doing. Don’t shy away from copying their strategy if it’s making them successful on social media.
4. Use Visual Content
One of the quickest ways to engage an audience and increase your potential reach is to include video onto your social channel.
Even a simple video of a student skateboarding across campus can bring outside engagement from people who love skateboarding rather than the same consumers you always have on your site.
5. How Are You Measuring Success?
Metrics are the key to understanding data. They tell you the kind of people who are engaging and those who are not.
If this is important to you, figure out a metric that you can use to track your success.
Keep Up!
It is important to keep up with the evolving times no matter how hard it gets. Social media algorithms can make 1 strategy hard to stick to so be sure to always investigate new strategies.
Stay in touch by checking our blog for more social media tips and trips.
