So you finally decided to create a social media strategy, but you don’t know where to begin. It may sound like a problem, but we love working with clients to create their first-ever social media strategies.
While no two strategies are the same, there is a foolproof system that you can follow to create an expert strategy from scratch. Today, I’m going to take you through those 10 simple steps.
Author and inspirational speaker Simon Sinek proposed simple yet powerful questions in the titles of his bestselling book: “Start with Why” and its sequel, “Find Your Why.”
When creating a new social media strategy for a business, I always inform the client that we need to “start with why.” In other words, we need to figure out what the main objective is. Oftentimes, the client will respond by saying they want more. More brand awareness, more followers, more impressions, more engagements, more clicks to their website, more sales. The list goes on. However, it’s important to not let the primary objective get lost. First, you need to establish your singular, main objective and make sure you are choosing it for the right reasons. For example, do you want to get to 10,000 Instagram followers so you can activate the “Swipe Up” feature on Instagram Stories? Or do you simply want more followers because you like the ring of “800k”? From there, you can always identify a secondary objective(s), if needed.
Once you have pinpointed your why, host interviews with all key stakeholders of the company. These meetings serve several purposes. First, we always want to get a temperature check on the company’s needs and goals from a few different perspectives. We also want to hear their opinions on who is doing things right in the space, and get a better idea of where they want to be in the next few months or years. We then use insights from these meetings to inform the strategy.
Evaluate your current social performance. Note what is performing well, what is not working, and what is missing. Define attainable goals based on your current standing and historic growth.
Check out what the competition is doing. Decipher how you can learn from them (the good and the bad) and how you can get ahead.
Create a manifesto or what I like to call, a “rallying cry” for your audience to get behind. The manifesto can be a hashtag or tagline, and is something that encourages people to want to support your cause or brand. This is your North Star that grounds the strategy and should set the scene for everything else in your campaign.
Assess which social channels are the best fits for your company, your goals and your target audience. Just because it’s always the way you’ve done something in the past does not mean you need to keep doing it the same way.
Pinpoint a few broad (but pertinent) categories that all of your content should fall into. These content pillars might focus on topics such as: education, product benefits, lifestyle content, and ultra shareable or viral content, like humorous memes or videos. The content pillars will vary greatly depending on the company, brand, and product.
Research relevant hashtags. Avoid using the most common hashtags in your industry, as those will get lost in the vast, virtual sea of hashtags. Utilize available tools, like Hashtastic, to find important and unique hashtags for your industry.
Without research and statistics, your strategy is just one person’s opinion. To give your strategic recommendation depth and value, you must dive into trends, market data and consumer analytics to ensure the strategy will resonate with your target markets.
These are the foundational blocks needed to create a social media strategy. Once established, you can build upon this with different strategies for influencers, paid media, production, etc. All of these complementary strategies should ladder back to the overarching strategy that we just created.
If you’re ready to elevate your social media presence, get in touch with our experts for strategy support! Email us at [email protected].
Written By: Becca Sass, Associate Director, Strategy & Accounts
