You’ve decided to take the plunge!

But hold on there! While you want to take advantage of this up-to-date venue for promoting your personal or business brand, are you properly prepared to take on a social media campaign that will accomplish your goals?

Actually, you may not be! It’s not enough to establish Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media accounts and just expect good things to happen without any more effort.

First things first:  You need to lay the right groundwork. The following are necessities for properly leveraging social media for branding purposes:

• A website is a must. On social media, you’ll tweet, you’ll post and you’ll share. But the ultimate goal is to drive your target audience to your professionally designed website – or at least a quality landing page – so they can learn even more about you and/or your business.
• Be ready with content worth viewing. When your followers click on your links and are directed to your website, they should be rewarded with something more substantial than a sales pitch.  Share your valuable expertise with them so that hanging out on your website is worth their while. Maintain a blog or provide useful information in tips articles, video blogs, infographics or a white paper. Include a call to action.  Invite them to sign up for worthwhile information via your mailing list.  This enables you to stay in front of them whenever their need for your product or service arises.
• Someone needs to take charge. Social media isn’t something you set and forget. Someone needs to oversee your social media; otherwise it’s likely to die on the vine. So, how will you handle this? It’s not the best idea to assign it as an additional duty for someone already slammed with responsibilities.  It needs to be handed to someone for whom the work will be a priority.  A successful social media campaign requires knowledge, skill and persistence.  Effective social media marketing simply cannot be treated as an afterthought.

That third bullet point is perhaps the most crucial because – regardless of how well the groundwork is laid – nothing is accomplished without the right person executing a smart strategy to build your brand.

And just any random person is not likely to do this well.

Sure, most of us have become at least marginally adept at liking, commenting, sharing and tweeting, but a genuine social media expert will have a formal and professional background in their craft. This is vital for ensuring that your social media channels play a legitimate role in the overall marketing strategy behind your brand or product.

Social media managers continually hone their knowledge and keep up to date with trends in both social media and marketing. Such experience and focus are vital to ensuring your social media follows a well thought out and effective strategy.

So if you haven’t already, start getting those pieces of a successful social media campaign lined up.

With your website or landing page humming, with terrific content ready to give visitors valuable information, and with a person or team in place to oversee the strategy, you’ll be ready to launch.