Create a social media strategy
Create a social media strategy
1. Define attainable goals that align with your overall marketing strategies. Make them specific, measurable, attainable, related to your company's overall strategy, and with clear deadlines.
For example: Increase Facebook page followers by 25% in the next 3 months by posting 3 times per week with images and videos that connect with your target audience. Grow a 5% average CTR on Tweets by the end of 2021. Achieve 3 mentions per week on Instagram by the end of Q2 by engaging daily on Instagram and encouraging customers to tag your brand.
2. Create audience personas to represent segments of your target market, using data from existing customers and followers on social media. Tailor your messaging for each social media platform.
Tips for creating your audience personas: Imagine your ideal customer. Create a list of demographics your target market shares. List any challenges or goals your product or service helps resolve.
3. Focus on the social media channels your target audience is most active on. Optimize your profile and content to master those networks and have the best chance of connecting with the right people.
4. Assign roles for your team to successfully execute the social media strategy. Create a roles and responsibility matrix to ensure everyone knows their part in executing the social media strategy.
5. Decide the ratio of paid and organic content to include in your social media strategy. Consider your budget, timeframe, and the importance of relationship building to your marketing goals.
Promote top-performing organic content, those with high conversion rates or an increased number of profile views, to reach more of your target audience with minimal risk. Budget: for limited budgets, focus more heavily on organic posting. Timeframe: organic content is often a slower method for achieving business goals, whereas paid can help drive leads and conversions faster. Relationship building: organic content effectively builds brand awareness and creates a connection with current and potential customers.
6. Conduct a social media audit of your current social accounts to establish strengths and weaknesses. Use a social media audit template to streamline the audit process.
To conduct a social media audit: Identify your company’s strengths and any areas you could improve. Determine which social media networks you are most active on and on which ones you can improve your presence. Make a list of top-performing posts on each social media channel and determine what made them perform better than other posts. Include performance stats for each of your social media networks. List recommended action steps to improve your social media strategy.
7. Create a content calendar to outline social media activities and create a consistent posting schedule. Use Excel to create your own template or use HubSpot's content calendar template.
8. Use social listening tools to watch your competition online and monitor mentions of your brand.
Social listening tools to try: Hootsuite Buffer Mention BuzzSumo Keyhole.
9. Monitor your social media strategy to track the effect it has on your company and ROI. Adjust as needed to improve growth and achieve your goals.
Use spreadsheet software to create a sheet to track your progress over time by listing key metrics and performance data for each of your active social media networks.