How to successfully communicate on social networks?

The MOST strategy, what is it?

Like many people, chances are you’ll be interacting on social networks, at least in your personal life.
But what about your business? Do you ever have to post information yourself on the social networks of your agency? To ensure its good e-communication?
Before embarking on this path, you must know that there are certain rules to respect and that there are keys to succeed on social networks.

Community managers, or community managers, are people in an agency responsible for communicating via social networks. They help and help to create and federate a community (more or less) around the company. For this, they use social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, Viadeo … Each of its social networks have their own features and their type of user. You will not, for example, post the same things on Twitter, as on Linkedin which is a professional network.
But still it is necessary to know how to use all these different networks to ensure a good e-communication

The 4 stages of MOST

MOST is a mnemonic to remember the 4 important steps to succeed on any social network.

Mission, the long-term vision, where your communication intends to go
Objective, the key goal that will help you carry out your mission
Strategy, the plan you will follow to move forward and reach your goals
Tactical, the tools used to implement your strategy

1. The Mission

First you need to determine what you are there for. What are you doing on this network?
Who will be your actors on these social networks, who do you mainly want to target? Is your main target or ideal client on this network? Are your competitors and partners active?
Then determine what these people are doing on these social networks. If they prefer to post things by themselves, if they share them, if they rather express their opinion or if they try to sell their skills. Primarily, define whether they are active there or not.
All this will allow you to understand the environment of the network on which you have registered and will help you to better use it. You will be able to target your actions according to what your target is doing on this network and you are inspired by what works or does not work on the pages of your competitors.

2. The Objective

In any project, it is essential to always have clear objectives in mind from the beginning. They allow you to stay on track and not scatter. So after analyzing the market, you need to determine what your ultimate goal is on this social network.
Some examples of objectives that you can set according to your activity:

improve and develop your brand image
encourage people to sign up for one of your events
make sales
and many others

To define its objectives, it is wise to use the SMART method. It allows to reflect and validate the character of each objective. A goal must be:

Specific; clear, simple, understandable and unambiguous
Measurable; that we can easily measure whether or not we have reached the goal
 Accessible; not too ambitious
Realistic; verify the human and material means of the company useful to the achievement of the objective
Temporarily defined; give if possible a start date and an end date

Creating goals allows you to have a strategic vision of your use of social networks, to have a goal. Before you do anything, you know where to turn and how to get started.

3. The Strategy

Having to find your goal is good but still need to know what strategy to adopt to get there!
For example, if you want to attract new prospects, you can choose to create a business blog. Indeed, by hosting your blog on your corporate site, this will allow you to capture new visits. All you need to do afterwards is find a way to guide the people entering your blog to the other pages of your site that describe your activity and to end up leading them to a contact form to turn them into customers.
On some social networks, you also have the opportunity to advertise, like on Facebook or Twitter. This will allow you to give a better visibility to your page.

4. Tactics

The last point of the MOST is the tactics, that is, the tools and techniques that you will use to succeed in your strategy.
So, tactics are the concrete way to reach your goal, the means and tools you will use. What types of content will you publish? What are their formats (rather videos, text, photos)? When to publish, what time and what day depending on the network and your target? At what pace?
All of these questions should have answers before you start posting on social networks.

To sum up, start with a global scan of the environment on the network you want to use, then set your goals, your strategy and finally your tactics to put it in place.
The MOST strategy is finally applicable to any project and can help you on several levels and not only with social networks.