You’re social, but do you have strategy?

So you’ve bit the bullet and you’ve finally begun to establish a social footprint. Maybe you’ve created a Facebook page, you’re pinning on Pinterest, and you may even be sharing your industry-related thoughts on Twitter. These are all noble efforts that have you moving in the right direction, but do you have a digital strategy?

You know you need to focus on SEO, newsletters, and social media, just to name a few, but do you also know that acting in these spaces is more effective when you fully understand their purposes and how they can directly impact your specific desired outcome to grow your business? Only you know what your business needs, and what you hope your internet marketing efforts will do for you. But have you defined your overall strategy?

Here’s why you need to do just that.

Target the Right Market: The internet provides you a million and one ways to truly understand who your prime customer is. Outlining your digital strategy can give you the opportunity to clearly pinpoint your prime customer to ensure that you’re marketing to the right people. Every company’s website has analytics, but do you have the resources and bandwidth to understand, review, and act on the information derived from those analytics?

Gain Market Share: What’s your approach to staking your digital claim within your industry? If you’re slow to the game or allot too few resources, it’s almost guaranteed that your competitors will beat you to it. How are you going to maximize your space and ensure your brand and messaging is properly represented online?

Be Prepared and Focused: Where are you? Where should you be? Carefully inventory your internet marketing efforts and put in the hours needed to fully study and identify the efforts of your competitors. With that in mind, don’t lose focus. Ensure you know and understand your audience and effectively learn to communicate with them — not to them. Ensure your online efforts and your offline efforts mirror each other. Be consistent.

You may feel confident in your internet marketing — but ensure that you’re even more confident in your internet marketing strategy. Doing this will save you valuable resources in the future.