As a fellow marketer, it is always a challenge in this new day and age with the rise of social media. According to studies, over 90% of businesses use social media. APAC accounts for almost 55% of the total world population and host under half the world’s Internet users while accounting for 52.2% of the world’s active social media users.

There are many methods in optimizing your social media strategy and unfortunately, there is not just one cor rect or incorrect plan for it all.  You just need to adapt and test one that works for your business and industry.  Here are some tips we found useful in our social media planning:

1)     Understand your industry, target audience and local markets. You need to know who you are targeting. What makes your industry ticks and how each market differs?

2)     Understand your competition.  Do your research and understand what your competitors are doing.  What works and what doesn’t work for them. Use this knowledge to your advantage.

3)     Prioritise your market.  Unless your objective is to plan a mass marketing campaign, it is wise to always priortise your corporate objective with your markets.

4)     Understand what you want to achieve in each market and target audience through the social media platform.  Do you want to increase your website traffic? Do you want to gain better brand awareness? Do you want to generate sales leads? Do you want a platform to engage in customer communication and influencers?

5)     Understand your local markets social media platforms. Not all social media are suitable for each market. Like most companies, there are limited resources and budget allocated to the Marketing Department. You want to focus on the digital media platforms that will allow you to maximize your resources, budget while hitting your target audience.

6)     Choose the owner for all social media and social media management platform.

7)     Plan your digital media strategy.  It is always good to have a plan and to create a social media calendar that you can stick to.

8)     Establish your brand messaging and tailor your message to the different social media platform. Determine your social media voice as the audience in each social media differs, your brand message and strategy should also be different.

9)     Work on your SEO efforts.  Once you have decided on your social media platform, tie it in with your SEO efforts to reap the most benefits.

10)  Employ or outsource social media experts. You may choose to manage your social media in-house or outsource certain jobs to experts to free up time and resources. These may be copyrighting, social media analysis, general maintenance, research and intelligence, etc.

11)  Most important – Always monitor, measure and analyse your social media platforms.  Whether you decide on corporate blogging, twitter, facebook and or other social media, you need to understand what work or not work for your campaigns. By analysing the metrics for your social media platform(s), you will gain invaluable insights on your target audience, your campaign and eliminate those that do not work.

12)  Lastly, test. Test and test again until you come up with a formula that works for you.

Mabel Lee works as the Head of Marketing & Digital Media (Global Markets) for the Royale International Group, an international logistics courier company that helps with one stop integrated courier solutions.  More information can be found on their corporate website at www.royaleinternational.com or on their corporate blog (blog.royaleinternational.com)