Create a successful social media marketing strategy in 9 steps
A social media strategy is an outline of everything you plan to do and achieve on social media. By detailing the specifics of your goals, processes and specific strategies, it gives purpose to every post, engagement and piece of content you share, while also allowing you to measure the overall success of what you’re doing on each platform.
A successful strategy should live in an evolving document that outlines the specific details of your plans and processes, in order to guide you through execution and measuring results. We say evolving, because it’s crucial that you tweak your strategy as you continue to learn more about what works and what doesn’t on each platform.
Now, let’s talk about what all goes into creating a social media marketing strategy that works for you, your team and your company. Follow the steps below to get started.
How to create and implement a successful social media marketing strategy
1. Set SMART goals that align with business objectives
The first step to creating a successful strategy is to identify what you want to achieve on each platform and how those efforts align with overall business objectives. This not only gives you a way to measure the success and ROI of your social strategy, but it also allows you to give each of your strategies a business purpose.
Each of your goals should be:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound
This is the SMART goal framework. It gives you a way to track and measure your strategies with business objectives in mind. Below are a few examples.
2. Track the right metrics
When creating your SMART goals and overall strategy, you need to be specific about which metrics you’re going to track on each platform, in order to ensure that you are tracking and collecting valuable and meaningful data.
For example, vanity metrics like retweets and likes are easy to measure, but it’s difficult to determine their real value. Instead, consider focusing on things like web traffic, conversion rate, engagement and lead generation. These metrics give you specific, measurable data regarding the effectiveness of your strategies.
At the same time, you should also consider using different metrics for different goals on each platform. For example, you may have different goals for your paid campaigns vs. your organic ones and each strategy and goal needs to be measured by the right metrics. If brand awareness is the goal, the strategy and metrics for success will look different than for a campaign with a goal of engagement. So once you determine what the goal is, then decide how to measure the success of your strategy to achieve it.
3. Get to know your audience inside and out
Defining who the target audience is — as well as their unique needs and wants — is absolutely crucial to delivering a compelling message on social media. You need to understand who they are, what they want or need from you, and how to deliver the content/message in a way that engages them on a personal level.
Creating audience/buyer personas is a great way to personalize your audience and turn the consumer into a real life person. When you do this, you can begin to better understand who the ideal consumer is, what his/her needs and wants are and how to best communicate what it is that you have to offer them. Understanding these people will allow you to see things from their perspective and then speak to them in ways that not only resonate, but also compel them to take your desired action.
Things to know about your audience
Even if you have a pretty good idea of who your customers are, that's not enough. Data will always reveal at least something that you haven't considered, didn't know or didn't think mattered. It will also confirm some of your assumptions and help you identify your blind spots. Figuring out exactly who your target customer is – along with what they want/need, challenges they face and more – will allow you to create a customer-first strategy that aligns with your business goals and social strategies.
In general, here are a few things to consider when deciding what data to gather on your target audience:
Specific demographics: Exactly who are these people? You can't be everything to everyone, so you must decide who your target consumer is and define their characteristics. Consider things like: married/single, age, income, job, kids/no kids etc. This will help you visualize your customer as an actual person.
Values: What do they want in life? You need to know what's important to them, because these are the things that influence their purchasing and other behaviors. Examples could include family, financial stability, joy, free time, security, growth, travel, health, exercising, wealth, etc. How will you help them attain one or more of these things?
Challenges: Knowing their challenges will allow you to communicate how your brand can solve all (or at least some of – or even just one of) of them. So maybe ask what challenges they face in their job, day-to-day routine or whatever other process is relevant to your product/offering. For example, a car subscription service might ask: what challenges do you face when it comes to buying or renting a car? To get someone to consider another option, the company must know the challenges they need to help their customers overcome in order to design the right messaging that will fit it into their lives.
Desires: What do consumers want from you? Or more broadly, what do they want out of life and where does your brand fit into that? If it's not a new concept, you need to figure out the gaps that competitors don't fill that your brand can. If it is a new concept, what do consumers hope this new product/service can do for them that existing options can't or don't offer?
How will you improve their life? Maybe your consumers don't realize they have a problem, because they haven't considered that a solution even exists. By determining where their frustrations are in life – or in a specific aspect of life – you can communicate how your brand makes life easier for them.
Goals: Depending on what your product or service is, your customer's goals may be a factor in whether they convert to and/or adopt what you have to offer. By figuring out what your users are shooting for – in life, their job, their relationships, long-term career etc. – you can build your messaging in a way that shows them how and where your brand fits into the mix.
4. Do an internal social media audit
Before you can identify areas for improvement and growth, you need to first understand how your current strategies are working (or not working). Define what “working” means, and then start by asking yourself (and team) a few questions:
What’s working on each platform? (Ex: what types of content/formats are creating the most engagement, website traffic etc.)
What’s not working on each platform?
Who is engaging with our content most?
What platforms do our target buyers use and do we have a successful presence there?
Which platforms are we missing out on?
Answering these questions, and others like them, will allow you to identify ways to improve your strategy and new opportunities for growth. It will also show you where you need to boost your presence, as well as platforms that may no longer apply to your brand and target audience.
5. Identify & implement key branding elements
Your social media accounts are extensions of your brand, so you want to make sure that your overall presence and messaging are aligned with your company’s brand strategy. This will create a consistent experience for users, regardless of where they interact with your brand — whether it’s on the company website, social media, in person etc. So when you’re developing your social strategy, there are a few key elements to consider when it comes to how you communicate about your company, products/services, values and more.
Here are a few things to consider:
Voice
Tone
Style
Values
Personality
Image (specific logos/typography on graphics etc.)
You want your audience to feel like an actual person — not just a company — is talking to them on social media. Identifying these key branding elements will help you develop a voice and presence that’s aligned with your overall brand, mission and goals.
6. Figure out what the competition is doing
Gaining a solid understanding of what your competitors are doing will not only give you an idea of what’s already working, but also allow you to identify gaps and new opportunities for your brand.
Start by doing a competitive analysis. This will show you who the competition is, as well as what they’re doing well and where there’s a need for improvement. You’ll get a better idea of what consumers expect from brands in your industry and where other organizations are falling short.
For example, maybe there are no dominant players from your industry on Instagram — that would be a huge opportunity for you. What are others doing on Facebook that you can do better? What are users saying in the comments and about your competitors in general? Are they asking for things they aren’t getting? Answering these and other questions about your competitors’ strategies will allow you to improve your own and identify new opportunities for growth.
7. Set up and optimize your accounts
This is a crucial aspect of your social media strategy. Your accounts are an extension of your brand, which means it’s important to ensure that your branding, image and messaging are consistent across all platforms.
As you decide which platforms to use, consider your goals and how you want to use each one. For example, is one primarily for customer service? Keeping your goals in mind will help you create profiles/accounts that offer users the right resources, information and tools.
Here are a few steps to take before publishing your public social media accounts:
Create a mission statement for each platform: How are you going to use each platform and what are you hoping to achieve? This will help you build out the right strategy and tools you need on each account. Here are a couple of examples:
We will use Facebook to target a specific audience in order to increase conversions (sales, sign-ups — however you define conversion).
We will use Instagram to increase brand awareness and offer users an inside look into our company culture.
Create profile & cover photos: Your brand image needs to be consistent across all platforms, which means you need to chose one main look and feel that allows users to recognize your brand regardless of which platform they’re on. Make sure the profile and cover photos are professionally designed and created to fit the specific dimensions for each account.
Write profile Bio/About/Summary for each platform: How you position the brand needs to be consistent across all platforms. The language doesn’t have to be exactly the same, but it must remain consistent when it comes to key words, voice, tone and specific language related to your company.
Use keywords: Using keywords related to your company/industry will help users find you on each social media platform.
8. Look for inspiration
What types of posts do you engage with on social? Whether they’re in your industry or not, there are tons of brands that are doing great things on social and you should take the opportunity to learn from them!
Check out each social network’s official business website for ideas and more resources, as well as brands that have won awards, like Shorty Awards. Here are a few places to start:
Shorty Awards: Best on Instagram
9. Create a content calendar and workflow
A large part of being successful on social media is simply being consistent — posting on a schedule that fits the needs and wants of users on each unique platform. First, do some research on recommended posting frequency for each platform, and then begin to build your content calendar.
A social media content calendar should outline every single post that’s scheduled to go out on each platform. There are tons of tools that you can use to upload, schedule and post content across several different platforms — all from one place. This gives you an overview of what’s happening on each platform, and most tools also allow you to track the analytics associated with each post from within that one platform.
You also need to outline the workflow for content creation, production and distribution. Who approves ideas? Who creates which types of content? Who is responsible for writing the post copy? Who actually schedules and posts the content on each platform?
Including these details in your overall social media strategy will allow you to implement a seamless execution strategy when the time comes.