4 Steps to a Social Media Strategy during Covid-19

Social media is one of the avenues where businesses and other organizations that seek continuity and success during and beyond this period of the outbreak and spread of covid-19, need to turn to, to ensure their agenda (whether making profit or being charitable) is seen through. This is especially because the only way to survive covid-19 is to stay away from public gatherings, as this will help curb its spread from person to person. Social media then becomes the avenue to continue conducting business without risking exposure to this killer virus. This is so because in as much as we are keeping distance from everyone else, and staying home, we still have contact through various sites in the internet.
With social media as an avenue for conducting business, it would not be any prudent to use it without any strategy, or plans. It’s best to first understand how social media works, which particular sites attract what kind of people, how do these people think, and how often they are online. These among other statistics will then help find a way of getting products to the people they were made for.
Companies need good strategies in order to reap the benefits that come with a good social media presence. There are a good number of ways of going about this, and here are some few examples:
The first thing to do is to find out all there is to know about your target audience. Knowing your audience is key as it will enable you to create content that they will like, comment on and share. This way you also get to turn your social media followers into customers. Some of the things you need to understand about your followers are their age, location, interests and job title among others. This way they cease to be some vague statistics in your social media handles, and turn into real people with real needs that your product will solve for them.
Secondly, you need to know who your competition is. Get to know which areas their strong suits are, and which areas they are falling short in. This will also open your eyes to understanding what the market wants, what’s already in supply, and what is lacking. And just like that, you know exactly what to provide for them. So knowing what your competition is not only teaches you about the ins and outs of the trends in the market, but also opens your eyes to what chunk of the market share you can actually auction for yourself and reap major profits.
The third thing to do is to build a strong, vibrant online presence. You will need a very good plan about what your content is going to be, how you are going to go about posting it, for instance, will a short video communicate best a particular message as opposed to a photograph? You will also need to plan out how often you are going to post your content, and ensure you do that consistently. These among others are just some of the ways you can plan out and execute a strong online presence that will in turn get you more customers at the end of the day.
The fourth and final social media strategy that will benefit you is building a good relationship with your supposed clients. Many businesses embrace the social media platforms to sell their products but fail to relate well with their customers. Be open and clear about pricing and provide honest payment and delivery methods that will help make sure that your goals are well covered.
Building an online brand is a means to the end that is achieving whatever business goals that you desire. A good strategy is like map to an explorer. Instead of working randomly at your goals, not knowing how well or poor you are doing, it will point you to the direction you desire, and ultimately reach you to the destination (goal) you intended.

Jiten Thakkar is a Digital Marketing Consultant who specializes in SEO, paid ads, content marketing & growth hacking. He is the founder of Local Forever, a complete directory platform for local businesses that helps them in online presence, marketing and complete website creation. He has consulted various brands and business owners in multiple countries to guide them towards actionable result-oriented digital marketing strategies.