6 Ways to Craft an Effective Social Media Strategy

Did you ever notice that competitors in your field are driving impactful results, finding partners to collaborate with, and even having a better sales funnel? And you haven’t witnessed any such results yet. And you might wonder, what could be the possible reason for it?

Well, it could be because you are using social media channels just for posting content without having any effective strategy.

A social media strategy helps you streamline your content across different platforms while determining how to engage with your audience.

Your social media strategy can act as the blueprint for your business’s success across different social platforms. If you do not take the time in pulling out a great social media strategy, you might miss out on a lot.

What is a Social Media Strategy?

A social media strategy outlines your social media goals, the tactics that you could use to achieve them, and the metrics you can follow to measure your progress.

An effective social media strategy is one that lists all your existing and planned social media accounts along with specific goals for each platform that you are active on. And these goals should align with your business’s digital marketing strategy.

With a social media marketing strategy, you can easily make an impact on your social media marketing, thus enhancing your brand’s reputation and reach in front of the audience.

Why do you need a Social Media Strategy?

Many businesses do not understand this but having a strategy is extremely important for them. You might be posting something on your social media accounts every day but that might not give you growth or impactful results.

You might not acquire new followers and fans or convince people to visit your website for conversions.

So, you need to know what you want to achieve and how to get that and this is where you need a strategy. With effective strategy, you can know all the “What”, “How”, and “Why” of your marketing campaign and thus can improve your performance and returns.

Social media channels should be something that drives sales and inquiries and is not vanity channels. And for this to happen, you need to have a strategy that every member of your marketing team can collaborate on.

How to develop a social media strategy in 6 steps?

Below-mentioned steps can help you develop a perfect social media strategy in just 6 steps. Keep reading to find out how.

1. Set goals for your content

When creating any strategy, it is important to set goals and a plan of action for it. Knowing what you want to achieve from the strategy is important. Or else you would be working blindly which won’t help you in the long run.

Similar is the case for an effective social media strategy. And that brings us to the S.M.A.R.T goals. Have you heard of it yet?

So, these goals basically mean:

• Specific– Goals need to be clear and specific to help you focus on what needs to be achieved.
• Measurable– You must be able to measure your goals and efforts.
• Attainable– Goals need to be realistic but challenging enough to keep you going.
• Relevant– Goals must be relevant to your business.
• Time-bound– You should always set a time frame for goals to maintain focus.

So, when starting your social media strategy, you must begin with setting the goals. Having a properly defined goal helps you align every piece of your content and the time for publishing it.

2. Know your audience type and time for posting

Having a clear idea of your audience helps you tailor your content to talk directly to these people based on their needs. After all, it’s better to have a targeted approach than to implement a single strategy for all platforms.

Besides, if you know when your audience would be online and on which platform, you can streamline your content strategy as per that. And that would help you generate higher engagement, thus increasing your reach.

3. Choose the right social platform

There are plenty of social media platforms available out there but that does not mean that you need to use all of them. Your social media strategy would be effective only when you focus your efforts on platforms where your audience is most likely to be active so that they engage with your business.

Now imagine, if you choose a social platform where you are just posting your content without any scope of conversion, would that help your business? No, right! Therefore, choosing a relevant social platform is extremely important.

Here, have a look at the different social media platforms and the business type they can be used for:

• Facebook: Effective for both B2B and B2C businesses, Facebook offers you a whole lot of different content formats, ad targeting options, and users. So, if you are looking to leverage the most benefits for your business, Facebook should be in your strategy.
• Twitter: Twitter might not be ideal for business as it is fast-moving and based on texts. However, if your business deals with high volumes of services and queries, you can leverage the advantage of Twitter.
• LinkedIn: Being a professional platform, LinkedIn is ideal for B2B service businesses and you can focus your content strategy on thought leadership here to attract more like-minded people.
• Pinterest: If your business is based on visually appealing services, Pinterest is your place.
• Instagram: Instagram is perfect for B2C businesses that have access to engaging photos and videos to grab the attention of their audience.
• YouTube: Being the world’s second-largest search engine, almost every business can benefit from YouTube. However, you need to have a strong content strategy to publish quality content regularly.
• TikTok: TikTok is a new name in the social media strategy for businesses. It is mostly perfect for lifestyle-focused B2C brands.

4. Plan Social Content and Choose formats

Once you have chosen your social platform, you need to focus your efforts on planning your content type and formats.

To start with, you must be clear in what you want to share with your audience. Whether it is educational, informational, inspirational, or motivational content. Or if you are looking to share sales-focused or service-based content, everything needs to be specific from the beginning. And regardless of the type of your content, it should highlight your brand values with visuals. In this matter, find best practices on how to add a watermark to a photo and increase your brand recognition.

The best practice is when you could maintain a balance in all the different formats that include:

• Live Streams
• User-generated content
• Case studies
• Competitions and contests
• Influencer marketing collaboration

We would suggest, do not rely on a single content format. Instead, keep on experimenting to understand what your audience likes the most and engage with. Also, maintain a regular publishing schedule.

5. Create a content calendar

Once you have sorted your content type and format, you need to set up a content calendar that your team can easily use. This is important as it keeps you accountable.

When you have set a publishing schedule and mapped it on the calendar, you can focus your efforts on the right track. Besides, it helps you work in sync with other teams to achieve the goals.

For example, if you have a campaign launch in 2 weeks, both your content team and graphics team can prepare their work accordingly by seeing the calendar and the deadline. Just make sure your calendar is updated to keep every team member on the same page.

In terms of how frequently you should post, have a look at this schedule:

• Facebook: 5-7 posts per week
• Twitter: 3-5 posts per day
• LinkedIn: 1 post per day
• Instagram: 1 post or story per day
• Pinterest: Share relevant images rather than setting a posting schedule
• TikTok: At least once per day

6. Publishing your content

Publishing your content on social media can be a time-consuming task. And that is why it is important to schedule your content in advance, to avoid any last-minute confusion. You can schedule your social content through tools like SEMrush.

Just connect your social networks, and schedule all your posts on the different platforms and your posts would get shared at the given time without any manual effort.

To Conclude

Social media strategy is your roadmap to success and it must not be underestimated. Having a clear plan of action can help you communicate across your team, thus keeping everyone on the same page.

Just be sure to follow your goals, have a clear process and checkpoints, and maintain consistency. Hopefully, this article would have helped you in understanding the social media strategy. In case you have any doubts, drop them in the comments section below.