What is a social media strategy?
A social media strategy is your plan to tackle the social media realm. You can use it to see where you stand on social media, look at your competition, and make a plan that gets results.
A social media strategy is like a business plan, but it focuses specifically on using social media to help your business grow.
Why a social media strategy is important
Marketing your brand on social media without a strategy is like going on a trip without a map — there will be many obstacles, and you might get lost.
A social media strategy is crucial to ensure:
Your social media efforts are aligned with your business goals and strategy
You can outperform your competitors online
You can measure the success of your social media efforts
You are spending your time effectively by putting effort into the right platforms and content
The risks of not having an effective social media strategy:
You waste time, effort, and resources on low engagement and reach
You can miss opportunities for growth and competitive advantage over competitors
A lack of a cohesive brand image online can negatively impact your reputation
How to build a social media strategy
1. Set some goals
As with any good strategy — goal-setting is essential to success. Every action you take on social media should tie back to and work towards your business goals. Setting detailed social media goals can serve as a north star to get you there.
Common Social Media Goal Themes
Common social media goal themes include:
- Increasing brand awareness — Increasing the number of people who are aware of your brand or think of your brand when asked
- Drive Website Traffic — Convert social media audiences into users who visit your website, where they can learn more about your business and services or products.
- Build Community — Building connections with your audience members to drive brand loyalty and interaction on social media
- Leads & Conversion — Gaining tangible leads that can be converted into clients from social media engagement
SMART Goals
SMART goals serve as a framework to expand on the themes and ensure that your goals are actionable and effective. SMART goals are a popular means to increase your chances of success.
S - Specific — Ensure that you clearly define what you want to achieve online e.g. increased reach, engagement, or followers
M - Measurable — Your goals should have measurable metrics attached to them, such as a specific engagement rate or a set number of users you wish to reach.
A - Achievable — Here is where some research would be helpful. It’s unrealistic to set a goal to increase engagement on your Instagram account by 10% when the average engagement rate on Instagram is 5%.
R - Relevant — Your goal should always link back to your overall business goal and what you want to achieve professionally. E.g. If your business goal is to grow your market share, then a relevant social media goal would be to increase your brand awareness online.
T - Time-bound — Your social media goals should have the same time frame as your social media strategy. For example, if your social media goals are to be met every quarter, then you should also revise your social media strategy every quarter.
2. Target your audience
Your target audience online should mirror your target customers in the real world. By studying who your current customers are, you can figure out the typical age, gender, and social status of your online audience. It is important to include decision-makers in your target audience, as these individuals will be the most valuable leads.
Market Research
Tools such as Google Analytics provide useful metrics about the type of person who is already looking for your product or service on your website. If you already have an online presence, then finding out who is already looking at your content is useful for creating your target audience.
Competitors
Looking at your competitors' audiences is also useful in determining what your target audience should look like. You can find out who your competitors are targeting by taking note of client logos on competitor websites. You can also check review sites to see who has reviewed your competitors. Lastly, you can scan the competitors’ socials to see who engages with them. If you are looking for a more hands-off approach, then a competitor analysis platform is a good option.
Craft your Buyer Personas
Like characters in a novel, buyer personas are fictional people created based on your audience metrics. Creating a buyer persona allows you to tailor your marketing messaging, brand voice and messaging online. Buyer personas also humanise metrics that can often feel overwhelming to look at. This allows you to craft your business’s story around your potential customers.
3. Social Media Audit
Before you can establish where you want to go online, it's important to take a look back at what you have already created online to set a benchmark. A social media audit allows you to scan the internet to find your current brand presence, performance and potential obstacles.
Identify your brand presence
Making a list of every platform you are present on is essential to ensure that you have a consistent presence online. This also helps you keep track of potential reputation damage to your brand by impersonators. Go to each social media platform to identify and search for your brand’s name in the search bar. Write down each result that applies to you and note whether the account is an owned account or an imposter. You can now track your presence on every platform, find growth opportunities, and work with platforms to remove fake accounts.
Consistency Check
Assess each account to ensure that logos align with your current branding, the messaging in your banners and bios stays consistent with your brand, and that all links are accurate and up to date. Consistent branding across all platforms helps your target audience find you easily, that visitors get a positive first impression and builds trust.
Secure your accounts
Social media account theft is a widespread cybersecurity risk for anyone online. Bad actors use social engineering and hacking techniques to hijack accounts for their follower count. So, it is essential to have a record of each account handle, username, and password. It is also important to know the current admins of your accounts and to remove anyone once they are no longer involved with your brand. While you are at it, check if 2-factor authentication is set up for each of your social accounts as an additional security measure.
The Best and Worst Posts
Lastly, take note of the best-performing and worst-performing posts on each of your social media accounts. This allows you to benchmark the type of content your current audience likes and dislikes so that you can tailor your future content. Many social media platforms give you a rundown of your best and worst-performing content. Just ensure that you are measuring your best and worst content with the metrics on each platform. Alternatively, many social media management platforms offer lists of top-performing and underperforming posts for each in a single location.
4. Analyse your competition
Looking at your competitors' online presence helps you understand the competitive landscape in your industry and identify opportunities to explore areas that your competitors haven't explored.
Search for your competitors
Firstly, you have to find out where your competitors assemble online. Some platforms lend themselves better to certain industries, products, and services than others. By finding out where your competitors are located online, you can find the best platforms to invest your resources online.
Looking up your products or services and industry on social media platforms can also uncover new competitors online.
Benchmark
Analyse your online competitor's performance to find out how you compare and benchmark against them. Look at which posts perform the best on your competitor’s pages and how they interact with their communities online. This can help with content ideas and ideas of how to approach platforms you may not have a presence on already.
There are various competitor analysis tools available online. They can provide you with insights into your competitors’ engagement and post performance. Some social media platforms also have competitor features built into their analytics.
Create a SWOT analysis
Now that you have compiled a decent amount of data about your social media and competitors, it's time to combine all your findings in a SWOT analysis. This exercise can help you establish a direction for growth in your strategy and set priorities for actions.
S - Strengths — Take a look at your current social media presence and identify the strengths of your accounts. Strengths can include a strong following across platforms or a consistently high engagement rate on a platform.
W - Weaknesses — Once you have identified the strengths of your online presence, take a look at your weaknesses. This can include a lack of engagement with commenters or an inconsistent posting schedule.
O - Opportunities — Opportunities can arise as a result of gaps left by your competitors online, or can stem from your weaknesses. For example, a competitor’s lack of presence on a social media platform can be an opportunity to target their audience on that platform. An example of opportunities based on weaknesses includes building a strong community base on a platform to mitigate the lack of engagement with your audience.
T - Threats — Threats can also either result from competitors’ presence or strengths. Threats include a competitor’s presence on a platform you are not present on. Threats from strengths include diminishing engagement on your page due to algorithm changes on a platform.
5. Make your choice of platform
Now that you have defined all your parameters on social media, the choice of which platforms to invest in becomes much simpler. Make a list of pros and cons for each platform, based on the previous steps to determine which platforms you should invest in. This step should include a review of platforms you currently have a presence on. It may also be useful to research platforms, as each platform has a purpose it is best suited for and an audience it appeals to most.
6. Plan your Content and Engagement
Content Pillars
Content what now? Content pillars! Content pillars are a few broad topics or key themes that your content online is based around. They provide structure for your content online and give your audience a clearer picture of your value. Main topics can flow into more specific content about your industry and audience. Also, include specific keywords and topics that your audience may be searching for online. You can use online SEO and content marketing tools to see what people are looking for under your pillars.
Schedule it out
A content calendar is an essential tool to help you keep a consistent and cohesive content schedule. Planning out your content monthly on a calendar helps to curate your content to align with the buyer’s journey and reach customers where they are. Once all your content has been planned out on your calendar, you can batch it ahead of time and schedule it on social media platforms or via a social media management tool.
Stay a while
Did you know that algorithms reward you for engaging with your audience? Yeah! Your content can reach more people if you engage with commenters in your posts. So, stick around for a while after you’ve posted your content to reply to any comments that might pop up and enjoy the feeling of interest in your creation.
Track your Performance
Social media metrics are the key to a successful social media strategy. Metrics allow you to keep in touch with the actions you have strategically taken and measure whether they have brought you closer to your goals. Importantly, metrics provide insight into failed actions and when you should change your strategy.
Vanity vs Value
Before getting into the ‘How’ of metrics, you should understand the difference between vanity metrics and insightful metrics. Vanity metrics are measurable but usually are not indicators of Return on Investment. E.g. Follower growth is a vanity metric as having a certain number of followers does not indicate a guaranteed amount of engagement or more importantly, any indication of future sales. Rather, it would be more useful to measure your page’s engagement rate, as this is a good indicator of the quality of your social media content.
How to measure success
There are several ways to measure your performance on social media channels. Firstly, you can make use of the analytics features built into your social media platform. These features are user-friendly and free to use. But, they are also limited and lack cross-platform comparability. You can also utilise a social media management tool, which allows you to track your social media profiles on one platform and provide very detailed reports. The drawback is that these platforms are often expensive and free versions have limited features. Lastly, you can use analytics platforms such as Google Looker Studio that are customisable and allow you to pull data straight from social media and other digital platforms. The drawback of this option is that these tools are complicated and have a steep learning curve.
7. Adjust and Stay Informed
Use metrics to adjust
Metrics provide a wealth of information over time. Be sure to look over your strategy yearly, considering all the metrics you have collected over the past year to revise it. This includes performing a new social media audit and setting new goals.
Keep a finger on the social
The pace of change on social platforms is exponential. Platforms are constantly introducing changes to their algorithms, removing or adding features and changing core audiences. This is why it is so important to keep up to date with platform updates, algorithm reports and social media news to ensure that you are not basing your strategy on an outdated benchmark.
Crafting a successful social media strategy requires a comprehensive understanding of your brand, audience, and competitive landscape. A well-developed strategy not only aligns your social media efforts with your business goals but also provides a roadmap to navigate social media platforms successfully. Using the above framework can help you optimise your time, efforts and resources to achieve success online.
Rather want to use a template? Click the button below to access a FREE Social Media Strategy template.
Comments