If you want to truly create a social media brand and business that stands out you need to know not just how to reach your audience, but what they want to talk about, what content they are interested and develop a plan that you can roll out to connect with them. Here are a few key steps to follow when developing your social media brand.

1. Know your audience and where they spend time online. There is no point to doing social media unless you’ve done your research. Where are your customers spending time? What are they talking about? How can you connect and engage with them? Until you know the conversations they are having you won’t be able to join them–so study up!

2. Find only the best content to share. If you continually self promote or only share the same type of information over and over people will lose interest. It’s your job to hunt for the best photos, articles, blog and videos that will do two things 1) have an impact on your fan base and 2) get them talking about it. Share less, but it make it more valuable and engaging.

3. Create a detailed social media strategy. It’s easy to think you can hand the reigns of your social media accounts to a college student and expect it to go viral overnight, but that almost certainly won’t happen. You need to think about your goals, your audience, your voice, your message and what you hope to accomplish. What do you hope to achieve through social media? More sales, interaction and engagement, or brand awareness? Hope will you accomplish this? Get crystal clear on what you want and it will be easier to reach.

4. Steal and camouflage. Want to excel at social media? Well, look to the brands that are killing it. They don’t even need to be in your field. Study what they are doing that’s successful, what makes them stand out? Read case studies on different brands that seemed to launch overnight, but really was a carefully planned out strategy. What content do they share? What channels are they on? Do they have their own hashtags? What Tweet chats are they participating in? The more you see how other people have achieved social media success the quicker you will too.