A well thought-out social media strategy can help you increase brand awareness, grow your community, and reach new customers.
When it began, social media was simple. The first platforms were designed to help people stay in touch with family and friends across the globe. Over the last decade, it has evolved into a complex, ever-changing world with millions of pieces of content being consumed every minute. The difference between your posts being lost in the scroll or stopping users in their tracks comes down to having an effective social media marketing strategy.
Step 1: Define Your Goals
Social media goals come in all shapes and sizes. Below, we have identified some of the most common goals that brands want to accomplish on social media.
- Increase brand awareness
- Increase web traffic
- Grow your brand’s audience
- Promote content
- Increase community engagement
- Drive sales
- Connect with your audience
- Provide customer service and support
- Track and understand competitors
It’s not necessary to pick just one goal. Many of the goals mentioned above can be accomplished together, such as increasing community engagement and growing your audience. We recommend picking two or three primary goals and building your strategy around those.
Step 2: Know Your Audience
After you’ve established your goals, you can begin figuring out who you want to reach – and why. Creating a specific, narrow audience definition is one of the most pieces to social media success because social media platforms today vary greatly in demographic, content type, trends, and behaviors. For example, if you want to reach women between the ages of 40-60 who are interested in gardening, the platforms you focus on and the type of content you produce will look a lot different than if you are trying to reach high school football players.
We recommend creating an audience profile such as the one below. Audience profiles help you visualize exactly the type of person you’re creating content for. Your audience can change over time and it’s ok to be a bit broad at first. The more narrow and specific your audience definition is, the more accurately you can reach and engage them.
Start by asking yourself who your audience is. What is their gender? Age? From there, imagine their hobbies, motivations, geographic location, personality, and preferences. You may need to create more than one audience profile if you’re trying to reach a wide range of people.
Step 3: Choose Your Platforms
You know who you want to reach (your audience) and why (your goals), now the question is: how will you reach them? Every social media platform has different primary user demographics, usage trends, tone, and personality. Identifying the best platform to use to reach your audience is crucial. It doesn’t matter how awesome your content is if your audience never sees it. Statistics on every social platform can be found online and it is well worth your time to research them before moving forward with your social media strategy.
Understanding your audience well helps you identify the types of content they prefer and which platforms they primarily use. Again, social media changes fast. Your audience’s usage preferences may change, too. Staying up to date on social media trends and news can help you stay ahead of the curve instead of clamoring to catch back up.
Step 4: Determine Which Types of Content to Share
Depending on which platforms you choose and who you want to reach, the type of content you produce will vary. Content type refers to the themes, formats, and topics you post about.
One of the great things about social platforms is the variety of media you’re able to produce. Most platforms support video, image, multiple images, text-only, and links. Some platforms also support interactive features such as polls, Q&A, live video, and countdowns. You can read more about those features in our post about Instagram Stories. In general, video performs the best across all platforms, but it is often the most labor-intensive content to create. Text-only posts generally do not receive much engagement. We recommend all posts have some sort of visual element. Each social platform has slightly different best practices when it comes to media type.
Another variable is content topic. What are you going to post about? Common topics include current events, your clients or products, your employees, industry news, and behind-the-scenes of your brand. There is no end to the number of topics you could post about, but it is important to stay true to your brand voice and goals when choosing which ones to use. For example, capitalizing on current memes and trends can be tempting, but if your voice is serious and reliable, it may be best to stay away from those types of topics.
It is crucial to define your brand’s social media voice before creating content. Ask yourself: “if my brand was a person, who would they be? What is their personality? What do they care about?” Is your voice funny and relatable, like Wendy’s on Twitter? Is it professional and compassionate, like Intuit Mint? Whatever the case may be, it’s important to keep your voice and tone in mind when creating content or else your audience may end up confused on who you are and what you stand for.
Consistency is king when it comes to social media. Posting content regularly keeps your audience engaged and boosts your likelihood of showing up in your followers’ feeds (thanks to the platforms’ complex algorithms). A good rule of thumb is to plan your content at least a month in advance and have it completed and ready to post at least a week in advance. This gives you time to make changes if needed while also being prepared and not scrambling at the last second to throw something together.
It will be easier to narrow down which content performs the best with your audience as time goes on. We recommend choosing 3-5 types of content per month to start and see which of those resonates best in your community. Based on your findings, you can continue to post that content or try something else that may be more successful.
