What you write for social media needs to be bulletproof. Most social network sit

Question

What you write for social media needs to be bulletproof. Most social network sites provide a feedback mechanism for users to comment on what others write, so writing that has inaccuracies or that is persuasive without being grounded in fact may be quickly criticized by users. It can be difficult to control the commentary. Accurate writing is the first step in avoiding criticism. Finally, good digital writers are invisible and are not a part of the story.

Based on this information, you will write a digital article for a start-up company. Imagine your audience is anyone and everyone. Your audience can range from a teen to a 70-year-old and all in between.

Write the following to provide the public awareness about the company:

• Provide the background about the company

• Identify key services offered

• Identify their clients and success stories

• Provide any other items that you could use to effectively promote the company using best practices

Assignment Requirements: • Write between 1000 – 1,250 words

Explanation / Answer

Bulletproof Your Social Media Strategy By Following This Framework:

If you want to do social media right, you need to be strategic. Many of us don't start out that way. We sign up for a site to try it out and fumble around till we understand how it works and what we can achieve.

But what if you were starting from scratch, knowing more about how social media works than when you started? In that case, you'd probably take a different approach. This social media strategy checklist will help even newbies to build a social media presence from the ground up. It will cover everything from deciding which sites are right for you to tracking results.

1. Set Goals

Before you can succeed with social media, you need to know what you can achieve, and which of the possible achievements are most important to you. Goals for your social media strategy could include:

2. Do Competitive Analysis

One way to prime your social media strategy for success is to check out examples of good practice. That's not just about seeing what the most successful brands are doing overall - there are plenty of resources to help you find these - but about checking out your competition and seeing what they are doing well.

3. Define Your Audience

Before you start creating content, you need to know who your audience is and what they want. Data you can use for this includes:

4. Choose Your Handle

Your social media handle is part of your brand, but with billions of social media users out there, you can't guarantee that the username you want is still available. For a quick check, go to Knowem and type your desired username in the search box. The results list shows the availability of the name on the most popular networks.

5. Pick Your Best Social Networks

You can't be everywhere. It just isn't possible to give the same focused attention to every social network, so you have to choose the ones that best match your business goals and your potential audience. The mix will almost certainly include Facebook, as the most popular network out there, but beyond that, check out this roundup from Buffer, which suggests ways to make the decision. In addition to audience demographics, you need to consider the type of content shared predominantly on the network, the focus of the network and more. There's a world of difference between social media activity on LinkedIn and on Instagram.

6. Trick Out Your Profiles

Once you decide on your networks, brand them so they match your business, creating similar cover images, profile avatars and business descriptions across social media sites. Optimize your descriptions, because they will show up in search results. Here's a guide to an optimized social media profile from Kissmetrics to help you get started.

7. Define Social Media Guidelines

If you're not handling social media yourself, then you need to set guidelines for anyone handling social media on your behalf. This could include guidance on:

8. Decide On Content

Now it's time to get to the nitty-gritty of your strategy, by working out what you are actually going to post on social media. In part, this depends on what you already know about the audience and on what's best for the particular social media platform. This infographic from Social Media Today tells you that the five most shared types of social media posts are photos, opinions, status updates, links to articles and personal recommendations. It also includes a breakdown on the top activities by social media site.

9. Curate Content Selectively

There's no rule that says that you have to create all the content you share yourself. Content curation allows you to promote yourself while promoting other people, which is a good thing, because social media is not all about you. Share content created by your current and potential customers and you relieve the content creation pressure while enhancing your relationship with them. For best results, add context to the content you share via a comment, an introduction, a summary of key points or an introduction. Check out the posts by Chris Herbert, who runs the Connected Business Center group on LinkedIn, to see how to do this well.

10. Streamline Content Length

Your content has to work hard - and that includes social media content. Not only must it meet your goals, but it must be optimized so that people and search engines love it. Even when you're crafting a tweet, you need to pay attention to content length. That's because you must leave room for people to put their own comments and quote your Twitter handle.

11. Post Regularly (And Get The Timing Right)

To get the most from social media, show up and post something. And if you can't be online all day (who can?) use tools to help you reach your audience no matter what time zone they are in.

It's worth knowing that your potential reach extends if you time your shares correctly. That's why so many people are obsessed with finding the perfect time to post.

12. Build A Community

Every social network has a way for you to segment your audience and most offer the chance to create communities. Whether you're talking about lists (Twitter), groups (Facebook and LinkedIn), circles (Google), or another kind of community, these functions on the different social sites allow you to unite your audience around shared interests.

It's not easy to create and run a community successfully. Peg Fitzpatrick says communities are like puppies, both adorable and hard work. Done right, communities can enhance your authority and bring new business your way as well as serving as an online hub for those interested in your niche. Check out Peg's tips on successful community building as a starting point.

Remember, social media is not all about you. Take the time to regularly share tribe members' content and they will return the favor without you even having to ask.

The best communities are inclusive and help your social media fans and followers to feel like they belong. If you're looking for another way to create that community feel, consider using Triberr to connect with your most committed followers. You create a tribe where you can choose to share content automatically and there's group chat, too.

13. Increase Reach With Influencers, Advocates And Ads

Once your strategy is in place, you can extend your reach in two ways: first, by attracting the attention of influencers and advocates and second by using social advertising. What's the difference between influencers and advocates?

Advocates are the people who love your stuff, love your brand, and love your personality, and are motivated to share that love with others. They're not looking for compensation and will comment on every post, retweet every tweet and share every social post. They are raving fans, and being able to connect with you on social media and be part of your community is reward enough. They may not have a huge audience, but they know people like themselves who will love you too.

14. Monitor And Track

As previously mentioned, social listening is part of your social media strategy. It's important to know when people mention your brand or share and discuss your content. Tools like Google Alerts, Talkwalker Alerts and Social Mention will help with this. You can also turn on notifications for mobile social apps, though if you're getting a lot of mentions, this can get annoying.

15. Review And Tweak

No strategy should be set in stone, especially if something isn't working. Make sure you are getting what you need and expect from your social media strategy. If not, go back to the beginning and look at your audience and goals again.

Startup Secrets:

Many people who have always wanted to start their own business never do, simply because they're overwhelmed by the process and unsure of what specifically is involved. With a to-do list that includes everything from writing a business plan to coming up with a name to hiring employees, startup can seem daunting.

A solid plan can help you start off strong and stay that way.

Writing a business plan is one of the first steps you should take toward startup, well before you launch your business. "A lot of businesses fail to write a business plan at all until they get in a jam," They come across a requirement for business planning, and all of a sudden they're panicked.

1) Back up your concepts with numbers. Keep in mind, a business plan is both qualitative and quantitative. "A business plan is not just writing about what your vision of your business is," Pinson says. "It's interpreting it in financial terms that you can measure." That means you'll need some numbers--as precise and accurate as possible--in addition to verbal descriptions of your plans.

Start by writing the conceptual part, then move to the financial part. "Interpret those concepts in terms of dollars," says Pinson. For instance, starting with an idea of how frequently you'll advertise, how large the ad will be and where it will run, you can find out how much it costs. This will give you a number to plug in for advertising costs. Says Pinson, "The conceptual or text part of your plan has no validity without the financial part."

2) Be realistic when making projections. "One of the most frequent errors made when writing a business plan is over-estimating revenue and under-estimating expenses," Pinson says. Improve revenue estimates by narrowing your target market down to a realistic niche, then interpret revenue and expenses in terms of that market, Pinson advises. Start by identifying potential customers, then slice off those who aren't ready to buy, can't be marketed to effectively, can't afford your solution or don't consider it a need.

3) At minimum, include monthly cash-flow projections for the first year. "Cash flow is the critical issue," Pinson says. Also prepare an overall projection of profit and loss for three years, as well as a projected balance sheet. Calculate the break-even point at which sales will cover costs. Research financial ratios specific to your industry, and look at published industry-specific ratios to make sure your assumptions are realistic. Says Pinson, "If grocers make a one-half-percent profit and you're grocery store a 28 percent profit, you'd probably better rethink your projections."

4) Pay special attention to marketing. First, develop goals. Second, do a market analysis, including identifying target markets, researching competition and assessing market trends. Then prepare a marketing strategy, including your approaches to sales, promotions, advertising, PR, networking, community building, customer service and other marketing channels and tools. Develop a plan to implement that marketing strategy, and include benchmarks to see if what you planned actually happened.

5) Find the perfect match. "The most important thing a small-business owner can do is figure out what kind of customers will help them get to the goal.

6) Identify different segments. After you've outlined whom your best customers will be, recognize that you may have more than one profile, says Fortini-Campbell. For instance, the catering business we mentioned may find lucrative market segments in cooking and presenting elaborate holiday meals for affluent families, as well as providing simple, daily heat-and-serve meals for busy working parents.

7) Use free market-research tools. "The internet is a wealth of information," says Fortini-Campbell. "Search on any topic and you will find websites, blogs and discussion rooms on everything imaginable." In addition to the great number of books available on market research and targeting customers (including her own), she recommends checking out the free market-research resources available in your state, county or municipal economic development offices to see which market segments are growing in your area.

8) Service, service, service. "More small businesses lose customers (due to) poor service than bad products," says Fortini-Campbell. Your business's most important marketing tool is the way you conduct sales and service customers. Every time you do work for a client, you are marketing yourself, she says. When you do that well, customers pay you back with loyalty and referrals.

9) Think marketing. First, decide on the advertising that will drive 90 percent of your business. Will you rely primarily on print ads, signage at your location, word-of-mouth, the internet, Yellow Pages, radio or some combination thereof? "Depending on your answers to these questions, certain criteria become very important," Yudkin says. Overdone alliterations, foreign words and domain names with hyphens are the kiss of death for websites and radio ads, where spelling and easy pronunciation are critical. If your business will be driven by the Yellow Pages, an old trick is picking a company name that starts with A, B or C so your ad will be placed toward the front of its section. But not every business can be named Aardvark or Abba, so you'll have to get creative.

10) Scan the competition. Compiling the names of local competitors offers a starting point for differentiating yourself. Do your competitors' names really fit the target market? Are the names too traditional while the customer is hip and cool, or vice versa? The answers will tell you what doesn't work, which can help you narrow your list of possibilities.

11) Think about your tolerance for paperwork. "A sole proprietorship is simple and elegant," DuBoff says. "There's almost no compliance." Business licenses and assumed--name certificates are all the red tape sole proprietors face in most jurisdictions. State, local and federal regulation, compliance and filing requirements rise sharply when you set up a partnership, an LLC or a corporation.

12) Know the tax implications. As a sole pro prietor or partner, you have full, personal tax liability for all the business's profits. The upside is that you can deduct the business's losses on your personal tax return.

13) Account for it. Meeting with a CPA to set up the financial backbone of your company is time and money well spent. "One of the keys to being successful is to really have nailed down from the get-go how you're going to track the financial story of your business," says Linda Hunt, founder of Sum Solutions, a Trumbull, Connecticut, financial management firm that works with small and midsize businesses. Financial software packages such as QuickBooks can be useful for a few years after you've set up basic financial controls. You can also hire a freelance bookkeeper. Look for someone with "full charge" bookkeeping skills, meaning they're able to converse knowledgeably with big-picture types like CPAs.

14) Look to friends and family. No matter how well you work stakeholder financing, most new businesses still need more cash, and your best source of the green stuff is friends and family. Parents, siblings and other relatives are obviously more motivated to help you out than a disinterested banker. The interest rates and terms attached to money from family and friends are also much better than institutional sources will offer.

15) Start a relationship with a bank, even if you don't yet need or want a loan. "Drop in and meet your branch manager," Caplan says. "Tell them what kind of business you're starting so when you need to do some banking, you'll have someone to rely on." When you are eligible to get a line of credit, it's not a bad idea to get one, draw it down and pay it back. Then you'll have a history of repaying it. "A line of credit you retire in full is probably better for a startup than a longer-term loan," Caplan says. "You don't end up borrowing money that you won't pay back for a couple of years, and [that] may stretch you with debt service."

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