Do you stare in awe at beautifully designed graphics and strategically crafted messages on social media? Those posts weren’t just thrown together. It’s important to create a social media strategy for your business that speaks to your target audience. I recently hosted a webinar on the importance of creating a social media strategy and designing graphics in Canva to achieve your business goals.
Here is the formula for creating a successful social media strategy and powerful graphics in Canva to promote and grow your brand.
The Importance of Social Media
Social media is how people stay connected and network in business. If you aren’t utilizing it, your business growth will stagnate. It’s the best way to increase leads, traffic to your website, and conversions.
However, it’s not enough to simply have a presence on social media. Thought needs to go into your goals and overall strategy to be a success. Here are a few best practices for social media posts that convert, and now let’s get into the strategy behind them.
Creating a Social Media Strategy
Set Clear Goals
When you’re picking a goal, I recommend starting with one or two. Then, tailor your content to help you achieve your chosen goal. These are the six main goals to choose from:
- Brand awareness
- Lead generation
- Build an audience, network, and nurture
- Get more followers
- Deepen existing relationships
- Ask for referrals
Define Your Strategy & Pick Your Social Channels
When determining your strategy, you need to know your target audience. Some of you might be very familiar with who your target audience is. For others, you may need to do some market research to find specifics on the type of person you want to market your business to.
Once you know your target audience, you can determine which social channel is the best place to post. Yes, it would be great to be on all social media channels, but each one takes time and effort. I recommend starting with one to two channels and being the best you can be on them.
The best thing you can do for your social media strategy is to be consistent. Tony Robbins once said, “It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently.” That applies to everything in business, but especially in marketing.
The 3-H Formula Content Plan
The 3-H formula stands for Hub, Hero, and Hygiene. This process was developed by Google and it’s a model where you build your content strategy around each of the levels on the pyramid. Here is what each of the levels means:
- Hero: interesting, unique content that delivers authority, awareness, and engagement like a video or long-form content
- Hub: regular engaging content that you run once a week that improves awareness, engagement, and user experience
- Hygiene: every day, foundational content people search for that boosts content depth and site relevancy like tips and techniques
As you're building your content, consider the 3-H formula so you can deliver content at all levels. Each level is important to the Buyer’s Journey, and the formula will help guide your efforts and the overall goal of being on social media.
Canva for Social Media
Canva is a free online platform that allows you to create images, graphics, videos, and other visual elements that you can use on social media and beyond. You can also upgrade to their Pro version for $10/month, which gives you these advanced features:
- Schedule your social media posts
- Access MORE templates, images, and features.
- Upload your own custom branding kit
- Flexibility to download your images in multiple sizes and formats
When utilizing Canva to create your social media graphics, I recommend following these best practices.
- Pick a template - rinse and repeat
- Stay consistent with your branding
- Add fun elements to enhance your graphics
- Minimal text
Building a social media strategy doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Follow these proven steps outlined in this blog, and you’ll be on your way to more leads, website traffic, and conversions in no time.
Are You Ready to Build a Social Media Strategy That Works?