Developing a social media strategy can be challenging for anyone, particularly for those who are outside of the Generation Y demographic. For those who are seeing to build an audience for product, information, or service awareness, a social media strategy is a paramount element of quality business management (King, 2015). This is even more true if the target audience of for the product, information, or service falls into the Generation Y demographic, who virtually have no memory of a world without social media (Bolser and Gosciej, 2015).
First, it is vital to understand the analytics of social media, which all social media networks offer some type of analytics or insights to track performance and trends (King, 2015). For instance, knowing how many people are in a given audience can be a good measurement of how effective the social media channel of choice is with a given audience, as well as how effectively the channel is being used to reach the chosen audience (King, 2015). Using information from analytics can indicate what interactions are connecting the most.
The second step is to use the analytics to create an effective strategy. For Twitter, an effective strategy contains positive tweets that are well crafted and timed well (Zarella, 2012). The most effective time for tweets to be posted is 8-9a, 2p, 3p, and 5p of the target audience; while ineffective times are 10a-1p, and 6p (Zarella, 2012). It is important to post at least once a day, and with content that shows personality rather than just links taking the reader to another location (Zarella, 2012). Social media is a personable medium with characteristics of openness, participation, conversation and connectedness, so the tweets used need to meet these needs or they will be tuned out (Mayfield, 2006).
References
Bolser, K., & Gosciej, R. (2015). Millennials: Multi-Generational Leaders Staying Connected. Journal of Practical Consulting, vol. 5(iss. 2), pp. 1–9.
King, D. L. (2015). Analytics, Goals, and Strategy for Social Media. Library Technology Reports, 51(1), 26–32.
Mayfield, A. (2008). What is Social Media (1.4 ed.). iCrossing.
Zarella, D. (2012, July). A Social Media Posting Guide. Retrieved July 31, 2015, from http://theultralinx.com/2012/07/social-media-posting-guide-infographic/
