7 Questions Before You Launch a Social Media Strategy for your Business in 2026

Many businesses use social media to build strength, customer base and boost sales among others. When your business decides to leverage social media, you have to constantly revisit your social media strategy to incorporate new platforms. But before you jump in, you need to ensure that you have clarity on what you want to accomplish and how you’re going to get there.

Here are critical questions to ask yourself before executing your social media strategy:

• Aspirations: What are your business goals, and their measurements?
• Impact: Who are your target clients, and segments?
• Content: What digital content (videos, whitepapers, blogs etc) do you have to establish your authority and help these clients?
• Outcomes: What action(s) do you want clients to take, as a result of connecting with your content?
  

In depth, here are the seven key questions you need to ask when putting together your social media marketing strategy:

What are your goals?
This question is important to answer because figuring out your goals will help you develop an effective social media strategy and will determine and give you guidelines for your social media posts. Goals to consider include:

• Building brand awareness
• Attracting new customers or leads
• Engaging or supporting existing customers more effectively
• Increasing customer loyalty
• Generating sales or closing deals
  

Remember SMART goals? If not, follow these rules:

• Specific – Make your goals clear and specific so there is no confusion on what the end result should be.
• Measurable – Make your goals measurable, so you know if your efforts are working.
• Actionable – Set up steps to reach your goals.
• Realistic – Set goals that make sense for your brand. You’re most likely not going to gain 1 million followers overnight.
• Time-bound – It’s important to set time boundaries for your goals so you don’t sit on them forever.
  

Who is your target audience?

Once you have defined your goals, you’ll have a firm idea of the types of people you want to attract on your social media channels. Discovering your audience is the second key component to creating a social media strategy, and all the content that goes along with it. You should research their demographics, including which competitors they follow, what publications and websites they’re into etc. The more you know about who your audience is, the easier it will be to create content that bridges the gap between your brand/business and adding value to their lives.

What is the current state of your social media marketing?

Auditing where your current social media marketing strategy and presence stands is another important step in creating your social media strategy. With a clear picture of where you are, you’ll have a better idea of what gaps you need to fill, or where you want to go. You should also pay attention to your engagement, what networks you’d like to be on (or drop), the quality of your content (images and videos), how consistent you are, etc.

Which social media platforms should you use?

Once you’ve determined what you are trying to accomplish and who your target audience is, you can decide which social media platforms work best for your business. Not all platforms will serve your particular goals and target audience equally well. The most important factors to consider are the behaviours, preferences, and demographics of your target audience. You can spend some time perusing the social media presence of other companies and people in your space (competitors, etc.) to see where they’re investing the most resources and where they have the biggest followings. To get started, select one or two platforms to focus on. Unless you have the resources and momentum for more, it can be difficult to launch on several platforms at the same time.

What style, tone, and voice should you use?
As is true with all customer-facing communications, it’s important to develop and maintain a particular “brand persona” that people will relate to and want to engage with.

This includes deciding what kind of writing style to employ, the tone and voice to use (e.g., informative and serious versus casual and funny) and the types of content you will create. Having an effective and consistent voice is a valuable method for attracting and retaining social media followers.

How will you measure Progress?

After launching your social media efforts, it is critical to track your progress and tweak your strategy as necessary. The first step in doing so begins before you even go online: deciding what metrics matter the most and how you will measure them. Every social media platform provides metrics that help you understand how well you are performing on that platform. Many social media metrics are the same across platforms, while there are also platform-specific metrics you might find valuable. You also need to weave in metrics from your website (e.g., using Google Analytics) to understand how your social media efforts are making impact on website traffic and activity. While reviewing the ins and outs of all possible metrics is beyond the scope of this article, it’s important to understand what’s available, and metrics will help you measure progress.

 Who will manage and execute your social media strategy?

Once you’ve answered all of the above questions and have a basic strategy in place, it’s time to execute. Many skills are required to successfully use social media to build a business. These include strategic thinking, product expertise, content creation, visual design, community management, customer service, and analytics. It is important to build a team with a clear structure and a clear division of responsibilities. Like in any team, each member needs to have both responsibility and accountability for his/her particular duties. If you’re executing across multiple social media platforms, you might need to divide responsibilities for certain activities across multiple people.

 

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How to Find Your Target Audience on Social Media

There are many businesses that provide perfect products and services but simply cannot succeed on social because their content doesn’t reach the proper audience, no matter how engaging it is. Christopher Newman, a professor of marketing, says, “Too often marketers create a campaign first, and then try to identify a target market they hope will be receptive to it”.  It doesn’t work this way. First off, you need to find out who your social media target audience is and go there to market to them.

How To Identify Your Target Audience

• Find Your Target Audience in Facebook Groups
• Tailor Content for Your Target Audience
• Create a Well Balanced Content Plan
• Identify Your Target Audience
  

1. Survey your Customers

Before you can seek out your audience, you must identify them by asking questions around what age groups are you trying to reach? What’s their average income? What are their common values? and other relalted questions. Questions like this will help you picture your ideal customer.

Today’s marketing world is full of, “build content people” like pieces of advice. But people don’t usually get the content they may be interested in. This is despite the scary fact that Instagram and Facebook listen to real-life conversations. So if you’re providing social media services for small business, mid-size, or large brands, you have to help them figure out their target audience. It’s wise to create questionnaires with your client. We can make it easy for you — download this free framework.

Now, the platforms. Are you sure you’re investing into the right channel? You have to figure out what social network your audience uses the most and create content for this channel in the first place. That kind of work deserved detailed research too, especially if you dream to find your target customer in any social media corner. Check out this recent demographic research.

The Channels
Let’s look through the major channels and understand what we can do to find your target audience on social media.

Facebook Audience Statistics 2019

Facebook audience research shows it’s still the most frequently used social media platform, with 2.23 billion people log in to the platform every month. Based on the total population, (not just internet users) a full 30% of Facebook ad audience, is aged 25 through 34. Per We Are Social, America is the second-biggest population on Facebook having around 270 million users. Because of that, it’s a safe bet that your brand or your client’s brand will be on Facebook — all you need is to target them in the right way.

Twitter Audience Statistics 2019
According to Cision, 326 million people use Twitter every month. Statistics also say that 37% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18% and 25% while 25% of users are 30-49 years old. That means, younger Americans are more likely to be on Twitter than older Americans. When you’re planning your social media calendar and you have a heavy Twitter user ratio, make sure you create some compelling Tweets — the ones which will be interesting for an audience of this age.

Instagram Audience Statistics 2019
It’s already 1 billion of monthly active Instagram users, Omnicore shows. Interesting fact: women more than men use this photo-sharing app, and being perfectly precise it’s 39% of women and 30% of men. However, there are plenty of millennials on the platform, so if you have people in that age range (under 35), who are a part of your demographic, it makes sense to find your target audience on Instagram.

Survey Your Customers
Even if the available statistics allows you to see a blurry picture of the audience you’re going to target, the information isn’t enough to draw a portrait of your buyer persona. Finding target audience on social media needs strategy. To get the full information, it’s necessary to ask people the right questions. Surveys are a big component of content marketing best practices. It is a good idea to survey your real customers and find out which social networks they prefer. As a part of your survey, ask your current customers the following questions:

What is your favorite social media site?
Do you regularly read blogs? (please, name them)
What people do you follow on social?
Use free Google Forms to collect your answers or TypeForm
Determine Your Target Audience Size

Facebook ads are not just a place for your promotions, but they also show you some clear data about your target audience and its size. For example, if you want to reach men and women in New York interested in social media marketing, you can find out that 240,000 people on Facebook match that audience. If your audience is too large like this one, you might want to target a narrower niche to start. I recommend you to narrow your audience and search for exact niches. For “social media marketing” it can be content curation, advertising, search engine marketing (SEM) and many others. Any Facebook marketing guide for 2019 will tell you that it’s better to spend your advertising dollars on a smaller, more engaged niche than to blast a large demographic.

Narrowing your audience will also save your budget spent on ads.

You can also narrow your audience by another similar, competitor pages. For example, McDonald’s would point out KFC, SubWay, and Burger King. It means that they will reach those people who aren’t interested in those other 3 fast food chains. While you’re targeting that audience, take a look at some content creation examples used by competitors of your brand. That will give you an advantage once you’re looking into social media marketing automation with a social media content generator like PromoRepublic.

You should also know the influencers of your niche, platforms, and blog where your customer hangs out. Facebook Ads will help you with this, and you will narrow your list up to those who are really interested in your page.

2. Find Your Customers and Connect with Them

It’s important to note that you can upload your email database to almost every social media platform to find your customers. With Facebook Ads Manager, you can create a custom audience. Make sure to choose CRM software that works in unison with your social media management tool to reach out to, and engage with customers almost instantaneously.

Once you’ve created a custom audience, you can then ask Facebook to create a “lookalike audience.” Lookalike audiences are similar to your most valuable audiences. That means Facebook can put you in front of more people who are like your current audience.

Find Your Target Audience in Facebook Groups

If you’re using Facebook as an individual and you want to find your audience online, use Facebook’s search bar to find groups that match your ideal customer’s interests. If you’re providing social media marketing services for multiple clients, find a way to segment those audiences properly so there’s no confusion.

3. Tailor Content for Your Target Audience
Now when you’re done with basic preparations, you can start tailoring best content for them. There are several rules for you to remember, taken right from the best social media marketing guides:

No more than 1 post of curated content a week
No more than 2 promotions a week
At least 1 engaging content a day
Does your page engage with its followers? They do not follow you to buy your goods every day, so, please, make your page a source of inspirational and useful information for them. Otherwise, you’ll lose your target audience. A content creation template can help you create the right types of posts for the right audience.

Your optimal content plan should contain different types of social media posts according to what they prefer: are these funny videos, motivational quotes, polls or educational blog posts/infographics?

Your social media goal is to generate traffic, leads and sales from social, but never forget about relationships you build there. Robust content is definitely not a reason for them to follow you, so spend some time and create a well-founded content plan. This is important if you’re setting up a social media calendar for small business, yourself, or a larger brand. It’s one thing to schedule posts. You have to be present to engage the audience through social media.

Create a Well Balanced Content Plan

Having run a PromoRepublic Facebook page for a while, I’ve discovered some types of posts that work perfectly for my business page.

Engaging Posts
While there is a lot to think about in the social media space, being a social media marketer is more than knowing Facebook 2019 post size changes or what demographics to target with Twitter ads. You have to create great content on every channel you’re using. Engaging audience through social media is an art, and here are some tricks that work great for PromoRepublic.

Ask Questions

If you ask yourself, “Why they do not comment on my posts?” you should also ask yourself whether you ASK them questions in your posts! Sometimes, your followers just do not understand what you expect from them. It’s ok to let them know what you want them to do.

Such type of content will be interesting for your followers. By the way, it won’t take much time and effort if you try PromoRepublic’s Graphics Editor. This tool allows you to create and edit pictures per your liking. So to say, it will take you several minutes to “draw” a perfect Q&A post and schedule it to any page you want. But keep in mind, the message should be clear and the picture should be appealing.

Q&A posts are good for polls and communications. Don’t be shy! Post some questions you need to know to provide better service to your fans and followers.

Motivate With Visual Quotes

When it comes to ads or engagement posts, people are more likely to notice text with a picture. The thing is, we see a picture and decide within ⅕ of a second to read or not to read the text associated with it. Use this information to your advantage and offer them visual posts to motivate and inspire with great sayings and quotes. Why are these types of quotes so popular? We are all fighting with inner questions all day long and when we find something that speaks to us and our situation, our finger instinctively taps that all important “like” button.

Promotional Posts
There’s an art to creating promotional posts. Let’s take a lesson from the content marketing best practices I’ve picked up while marketing for PromoRepublic.

Stop being salesy

Promotional posts are not often about discounts or special offers. This is a type of content that represents your brand. Do you remember that the initial goal of social media is to build your brand presence and relations with your followers? Think about company news, webinars and other content that will lead them to your page without being salesy.

The initial goal of social media is to build your brand presence and relations with your followers

Finding the way to speak the same language isn’t hard, just keep in mind the things your clients like and dislike — and that’s what is actually called identifying the target audience.

Get Personal

Promote your brand through its story, show your office or the place you work in. Share your plans and intentions. If you are an offline store – let your online audience get to know your staff and evoke the desire for them to come in and meet them for real. You need to become friends with your followers and be open to get real engagement.

Educational Content

Blog posts, informative visuals, and infographics fit pretty well.  Determine the topics that your audience might be interested in (you can ask them before with the help of visual Q&A post, remember?).

Curated Content

Curated content is good if it brings value to your brand and your followers. It can consist of mentions, hot topics or influential points of views.

PromoRepublic’s Post Ideas

Content creators admit that coming up with ideas for whatever topic is challenging. That’s happening because ideas don’t come easy, despite the abundance of information offline and online. Books, articles, and, probably, colleagues may recommend to solve this issue by writing about every single thing you’re seeing, experiencing or realizing daily. This works. Also, you can surf the web searching for inspiration. We’ve been there too. For that particular reason, we’ve created Template Library and filled it up with ready-made ideas for 0+ industries, 6 categories from trendy content to promotions.

You can choose any picture and let your creativity flow by editing it with Graphics Editor. Then use Advanced Statistics to find out which posts your followers liked most.


I think the most helpful part here is the point about actually defining the buyer persona first and foremost. You need to understand who they are, then - understand their habits online, then - choose social media platform which they use the most and go there!

The latest stats on social media platforms and the excel template are very helpful for my own exercises on how to describe and document the TA portrait. Thanks again!

Found this article (and dozens of others) while googling on “how to find your target audience online”. The more I read, the more I understand that before doing any marketing on social, it’s important to know to whom you’re going to talk. So easy and so hard. That’s more likely to hit the bull’s eye if to draw a portrait of a buyer persona — a potential client. The portrait should include such metrics as age, geography, job, interests, needs, fears and dreams. Keeping them all in mind will help to create the right message.

I have recently started with social media marketing and understanding target audience is the most important part of social media .

How to Grow Your Social Media Audience

 

Social media is one of the best tools technology has offered to the human race over the years and it has proven to be very much indispensable in our lives today. So many people use the social media for several purposes; some use it to market their products which could be knowledge, material things, non-material things, just to mention a few.

Even after having so many things to use the social media for, it is very important that the circle built across your social media pages are people that you need in your everyday life. I am not saying you only need people, of course, people also should need you. The main point I am driving at is that, are your audience the people you need? 

Or are they the people that need your services?

Or are they the people you expect to be among your circle?

Being on social media is not just about having the most fun and catching cruise everyday; well, at least for some people. There are a lot of positive uses that could be a turn around to someone’s life; hence, the importance to take it without negligence. Sometimes, the quantity of your followers or the audience you have does not even matter but it is the quality that matters. Imagine having the audience that cares less about what you give, and that is what happens when you do not grow your own personal social media audience.

Therefore, in this context, we will be discussing on how best you can grow your social media audience.

Let’s dive in!

1.       You need a Solid Plan

Before you can build your social audience, especially if you are going to be serious with it, you definitely would need a solid plan. This plan is to keep your activities in check and see the results it would bring forth.

How exactly do you intend to build a social media audience? What social media platform exactly do you make use of? Why do you need to build your audience? All these questions drive you to come up with the best strategy. It gives you the measure on how you want to do this and what you want to do in order to build your social media audience. Remember, planning makes action easier.

2.   Who do you think is your target audience?

After discovering the purpose of why you want to build your social media audience or why exactly you are using the social media, it is necessary you know your target audience. Is it the old people, or the youth, or business owners, or some certain group of people? This is of great importance because it also makes you know what type of plan you can set up to achieve your goals. It allows you to engage in platforms you can find these set of people. It also gives you an idea of activities that can be set in place for you to gain the audience you want. 

3.       What social media do you want to use exactly?

Do you want to use Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or whatever social media platform? Or do you want to use everything at the same time? Although, they all have a thing in common in order to gain audience but they would need different strategies. If you are using Instagram, you would need to follow a series of steps either by using hashtags, constantly posting your stories and the likes. For Facebook you can join public groups and make yourself known. Different social media platforms, different strategies but it is you that determines whether your desired audience will get attracted to you or not.

4.       How rich is your content?

Another attractive thing you can use to increase and grow your audience on the social media is the quality of your content. Based on your audience or whatever niche you are into, your content must be rich and relevant. If you cannot give valuable content, you don’t give people any reason to follow you or want to connect with you.

The content you give can attract audience and retain audience. It can also do otherwise. Therefore, this needs wisdom and a bit of discretion to evaluate.

Read: How to Solve Problems Using Story-telling and Content Writing

 

5.       Be Flexible

If your content is about fashion for example, you don’t just have to be post clothes everyday. Instead of being rigid and boring, add something fun, educational and add something intriguing to your content. Sometimes, you might have to do something fun that can even activate your audience and attract them to your page or whatever. It doesn’t matter what your page is all about, you have to go outside your comfort zone a quite number of times and entertain people as it makes them feel more excited to come back to your page at anytime. However, this doesn’t mean you should do this all the time or it should not be relevant to your niche. Whatever fun or entertainment you offer in terms of you being flexible should never be to your detriment and it should have meaningful boundaries so you do not look so unserious.

6.       Use Hashtags

Popularly used on Instagram and Twitter , hashtags are very important as it makes you visible. On Twitter, making use of trending hashtags makes your post visible at that point in time. On Instagram also, having to use the right hashtags also gives room from users to see your post and probably get attracted to your page if they are willing to see more.

7.     Leverage Current Trends

We all know Nigeria is a dramatic country. This particular way is an amazing way you can build your audience and it is something I have seen people tried in which it worked for them. 

Since, a lot of drama goes on in this country, it is usually good if you can make use of the opportunity and state your opinion about whatever incident at that moment. It could be as a form of comment on popular people posts or you could post it in your own page as well. Your opinion might be different from other people but you will surely attract people who have similar opinion with you.

Then, they will be like, ‘this person have sense, I will definitely love to see more of this’. This method has been proven very effective especially on Twitter. 

8. Engage your Audience

This is almost the same thing about what content you offer and how flexible you are. You need to engage your audience. It is one thing to grow your social media audience; it is another thing to grow an active audience. You need to constantly engage the audience you have and this can extend to the audience you don’t have. You can organise gift events, referral-and-win events, giveaways etc. This brings more people to your page... I mean, who does not like free things?

Also, according to our recent research at the NELOC Media Academy, about 73% of Nigerian social media content is gossip. The fastest way to grow your account on Tik Tok Nigeria is via gossip, another way is to repost movie clips while on Facebook Nigeria, it is easier  to retain engagement on Facebook by putting up gossip here and there. On Instagram, the fastest way to gain visibility is to flaunt luxury and show some flex in good condition. Lastly, on Twitter, you grow fast when you know how to give savage replies, mostly derogatory replies.

But even at that, people are still buying and selling on the internet. The few percentages

Another thing is how interested are you in your audience? How well do you know your audience or how well do you know what they want? People will want to do more for you when you can create and establish a personal connection with them. 

9. Use Promotions

Promotions make you more visible. Do not be afraid of using paid promotions. That is why we have influencers and different ads for different platforms (like the Facebook and Instagram ads). They are very effective in helping you grow your social media audience. 

10.   Be Worth following

There is an audience for every kind of content. While some content may be unappealing to a group of social media users, others may not be. This is as a result of personal principles, religion, societal validation and morality among other issues. You need to be careful so you don’t lose important audience. I recently unfollowed a popular comedian, He is always posting skits where female always expose their body. 

No single decency! You can make me laugh without me seeing such, so there is no point in me following such a person when he does not have any valuable content I can enjoy.

Some people are like me too. Please do note that everyone have different choices and preferences, it also happens in other aspects too. But then still remember, it is your page and you can do what you like. I mean who cares?   

 

People are interested in what they see and what they can gain from it, therefore, it is important to make use of every opportunity out there as no one knows what could cause you to get a hit growth to acquire your desired audience. 

 

5 Ways to Connect With Customers Using Social Media

 

In this era, it's no more news that social media plays a huge part in our brand and lives. Apart from its benefit of being able to reach the world and see things happening, it plays a greater role in growing our brand and connecting us with people most especially our customers as we will be dwelling on that in this blog post.

It's one thing to have a brand, it's another thing to be on social media platforms, and it's a different thing to know one's target audience, and also a very different thing to connect with them. However, this blog post is to share with you five ways to connect with customers using social media.

1. Be Human; Don't Make Everything Be About Business

It's fine to want to be known for what we do and what we live for, but amidst all that, you don't want people to think it's a robot behind the scene. Always meet them at that angle of relationship, post-non-business related things. Post things that will make them laugh and feel the need to want to come to your space to just relax.

If you're a video creator, you want to show them behind the scenes. Make funny reels. It helps them lose their guard of “S(he) just wants my money.” They get connected with you that way.

2. Interact With Them

A great way to connect with customers on social media is through engagements. You shouldn't just post and move out of your page.

Like their comments, give replies to the ones that need to be replied to, and follow back with your customers at intervals.

Don't just leave them with the assumption that you're just one of the brand owners that just want to get likes and move. You want to interact with them and answer questions they have per time.

Involve them in your business.

3. Dish out Value

No one wants to connect with anything or anyone that gives them no value. Ensure that you build your pages up with valuable posts and content. You can do this by educating and nurturing your audience with content related to your niche. Survey your target audience to ask questions about how best you can serve them. You can as well create an email list, a Facebook community and so on where you add up customers and share tips regularly. 

4. Be Consistent

A brand that shows up consistently is most likely to connect with customers on social media than a brand that only comes up once in a Blue Moon. Inconsistency pulls back your target audience and you might come off at them as a brand that is not in the best form, hence, they get to cut off. Consistency is a great value you want to imbibe in running your brand. Show up at all times. Setting a content calendar will make this much easier and more strategic.

5. Understand Each Platform

You may begin to wonder what you're doing wrong when you post valuable content but you seem to get no feedback. If this is the case, then you need to understand your platforms to be able to make the most of them. Simply put, the way you handle LinkedIn is way different from the way you make use of Instagram, and that of Facebook is a different way from that of Pinterest. You must try to understand each platform before setting out to maximize them.


These five ways are sure to help you get connected to your audience and make the most of your connections. Here are a few tips on how to build your social media presence

How to Fix Common Faults in your Social Media Strategy

 
Common pitfalls of a social media strategy

The following are

i. Not having a clear goal

ii. Focusing on vanity metrics e.g 

1.the number of followers you have 

2. the number of likes and comments 

3. the number of  shares or retweets

4. Wrong audience

5. Neglecting other marketing channels

6. Not using social media to its full potential