This part of your marketing strategy should garner substantial attention if you are looking to be successful online. Don't shortchange this section of the marketing budget. However, there is no perfect way to have good branded content on your social media platform.

The rules are constantly evolving and changing with trends. With this in mind, you can give yourself a fighting chance by following a basic set of guidelines that should help with any niche.

Here are five steps that will help your business to get a foothold on social media and branded content:

1. Set your marketing goals

It all starts with figuring out what you are setting out to do with your brand on social media. Ask yourself the following questions:
  • What do you want your customers to see your brand as?
  • What identity are you giving your brand on social media?
You may be looking to increase brand awareness, or just increase sales in general. You must identify these goals so that you have a basis to start your marketing strategy. Once you have figured out exactly where your new social media plan is headed, you can actually get started on developing it.

2. Study your past results

Unless you are a brand new startup, you have most likely been going at the social media strategy for quite some time. Take advantage of all that hard work and collect as much data as you can.

Analytical tools are available to make the process easier, but most of the major platforms will give you all the information you need. Start looking at what posts and what content did well in the past; this will show you when you have been on the right track.

Look at what frequency of posting worked best and peak hours to gain insight on what went well. This will be crucial when planning your new strategy.

3. Develop a schedule

With the information that you analysed from the last step, you should be able to figure out the best frequency of posts. You cannot just dump a bunch of new content on social media at one time. It just doesn't work.

People will feel overwhelmed and simply ignore it because there are a million other exciting things to look at. One post per week is pretty standard practice, but feel free to tweak that, depending on your results.

You must also choose the right platforms to go through. Again, this data should be gleaned from the analytics in the previous step. Get your schedule on track and it will give you a standard to keep to as the months go on.

4. Get your content out there

Here is where things start to get the engine roaring and the tires squealing — the content itself. You had to put in the work to get your analytics and scheduling done and now it is time to test how well you did.

The content itself needs to be well written and informative. Occasionally, it does make sense to seek out a professional to assist you with writing. Make sure to follow your calendar and only release on the days you have decided. You must also start promoting your content through as many means as possible.

This could be through social media 'Likes' and shares, blog articles, guest posts, online forums and anything else. You can join a discussion in your particular niche, even. Now it is time to sit back and wait for the results. But remember to always be analysing and tweaking the schedule based on trends.

5. Take off with the right strategy

If you have followed all of the necessary steps, you should be on the right track to garnering some significant brand recognition on social media. This is not going to be an easy or short process, but it could end up paying off huge in the end.

All it takes sometimes is one person to start a wave, and all of a sudden, you are the next big thing to go viral. That is what all of this hard work is for.

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