5 Must Do Tasks Prior to Creating Social Media Accounts

Social media, when done right, can have a profound effect on an organization’s brand. We’ve all experienced the positives or negatives of a company’s single tweet going viral.

We never hear about what specific preparation companies perform before posting on their Instagram account. As with every journey, it all lies in preparation and planning.

Before creating your organization’s social media accounts, ask yourself these five basic, preliminary questions:

This should be easy, but my experience in getting a detailed answers from companies has proven otherwise. Especially in the sports tourism industry, we must often be everything to everyone. Therefore, who are your social media efforts targeting? Within your overall marketing plan, you have defined a target audience.

The same goes for your plan’s specific emphasis on social media. Because, of course, how can you leverage social media if you don’t know who you’re speaking to? Are you interested in reaching destinations, rights holders, your membership base, maybe even local stakeholders? Maybe taking geography into account is important to you. Whatever the audience, make sure you have precision from the beginning.

Now that you have decided upon who you are planning to target, you must locate where they spend their time on social media. The last thing you want to do is waste resources by placing prominence on the wrong social media platform.

If you’re focused on a chief executive officer of a national governing body, most likely, Tumbler is not the platform to concentrate your efforts. Alternatively, if you’re targeting current athletes, you would be wasting your time on LinkedIn.

We’ve seen so many in our industry create social media accounts without having concepts for content. Social media as a marketing tool can be effective, but it’s a must in our day in age. Do not create a Facebook Event for your organization without knowing what content you plan to share.

Your content should limit organizational promotion, but instead, be aspirational-oriented. To be blunt, give your target audience a compelling reason to become one of your followers. Telling your story is paramount.

You must ask yourself what you are seeking to achieve on social media? Increased acquisition of events? Distribution of RFP? Increase membership? Your strategies and goals will significantly influence the type of content you’ll generate on your various accounts.

So far, you have crafted your target audience, researched your target audience, located where they spend time on social media, mapped out content to share, and set strategies and goals. So what’s next? Before you begin your social media journey of posting and tweeting, how will you know if you’re having success or need adjustment? Decide if you would like to define success by counting total followers?

Is it engagement in the form of shares or replies? Possibly it’s by traffic to your website? Without starting by defining your benchmarks, you’ll never know if you’re on a path to success. Brass tacks, social media can be an inexpensive and effective tool, but you cannot jump in and show impact without proper planning in advance.