Having just spent a morning teaching a room full of ambitious business people in the Ciy of London all about creating their own Digital Marketing strategy I thought I would share with you the best way to get started with building your business online.

Social Media for business is very different to Social Media for fun. If you’re on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram just for the the fun of it then you can be a lot more relaxed with what you post and how you share information. You can spend 1 hours sharing videos of cats or photos of what you had for breakfast without any problems whatsoever.

If you are looking to grow your business, build your brand and be successful online with a business social media account then you need to have a plan. It doesn’t have to be a hugely complicated plan, Im all about coming up with something that works for you and that is perfect for your business RIGHT NOW. That’s not to say it will still be perfect for your business in a month’s time but if it works for you now then that’s great.

The 3 things that you need to remember all the time when working on your businesses social media presence are:

Branding. Make sure that all of your social accounts are branded correctly, with the same image and look and feel as your website.

Consistency. Choose a posting schedule that works for you and stick to it. If you can only blog once a month then that’s great, don’t start off by saying that you want to post 10 times a day on twitter unless you are confident that you can maintain it.

Content. Share your own content, share content from other people. Share amazing awesome content and give good value to your followers and you will build a tribe of dedicated customers more quickly than you can imagine.

A digital marketing strategy can be really simple. Start with a blank piece of paper and write at the top of it what your goal is over the next 3-6 months in terms of you social media. Do you want to double your mailing list subscribers Increase the hits to your website? Maybe your goal is to set up and brand and use all of your social media accounts Whatever your goal is, write it down and make it SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and with a time attached to it)

Next you need to understand who your target customer is. Write down who you are trying to attract to you with your social media campaign. What size business are they? Where do they shop if they are an individual? What social media platforms do they use? What time of day are they online? You can never know too much about your ideal client, write it all down.

Which social media platforms will you use. Write them down. Linkedin, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest - which are right for your business.

Then lets look at how often you will share information on each. Write it down. Be realistic, don’t over stretch.

Now lets look at what you are going to share. You really need a strong blog in order to be able to share your own content, decide how often you can commit to blogging and write it down.

In addition to your blog make a list of all the there pages on your website and write 2/3 different ways that you can link to each page. So 2/3 for your about me page, 2/3 to your testimonials page. The more content you have the better.

You also need to be sharing other people’s content. Make a list of all the places you could go to find industry relevant news to share. The Huffington Post is a good one as are some of the main news sites. Think niche, are you part of a professional body or organisation, can you share articles form them as well?

Your digital marketing strategy is now taking shape. Print off a blank calendar and start to mark on there the days that you are going to post on each platform. Make it easy for yourself not to forget. Make it part of your routine, every morning after breakfast or at lunchtime or when you stop for the day - make it easy to remember your social media and it will become part of your routine.

The final area to consider is reporting, how often are you going to check your progress and see what needs to be changed? I recommend monthly - make a list of the key metrics you want to monitor and pop these into an excel spreadsheet. Once a month take a few minutes and just check in to see how you are doing with meeting your goals.

The main thing to remember is to be flexible, yes your goals might change and that’s OK. If something doesn’t seem to be working, do it differently - its your business and its OK to change and do things differently every day if you have to until you find what works for you.

Don’t be afraid to take action every day, small steps lead to big achievements.