With all of the different social media channels flying around, it’s really hard to operate efficiently and effectively on social media, without a social media marketing plan and strategy in place.
How to Create a Social Media Strategy
So in this video, I’m going to take you step by step through my simple process of creating a social media marketing plan and a social media strategy from scratch.
Choose Your Social Media Goals to Align with Your Business Goals
Before we get started thinking about the strategy for your social media, we need to link up your business goals to your social media goals. Why are you on social media in the first place?
For your business/or brand building goals, for example, is it to launch a new book, or become a thought leader in your industry, or perhaps increase your email subscriber by x% by next month, or maybe increase sales by 20% by year-end?
When I have meetings with clients, before we even start working on the strategy, this is the first question I would ask them. Because then the social media goals are then created to be able to assist in achieving these business goals.
Your Target Audience on Social Media
When you are on social media, it’s hard to remember that the person on the other side of that screen is a real human being.
And this person has challenges that she/he is going through, things that keep them up at night, they might fall into a certain demographic, gender, age group, they read specific newspapers and magazines, buys from specific brands they like and enjoy different interests.
So you see how each audience is so inherently different from others? And for your brand, you know your audience best because maybe you were once them?
Or perhaps you have previous clients and customers and you know what they like, dislike and what demographic groups they fall under. Or if you are just starting out, it’s a good idea to do research on questions forums such as Quora, Reddit, Facebook Groups, AskthePublic, these are great places to get insights on questions that your target audience might be asking, and what kind of people are they?
Your Competitors on Social Media
Aside from working on your own social media audiences, it’s also a great idea to look across at other competitors in this space who are on social media and what’s working for them, not working for them.
Having competitors, in my opinion, is always a good thing.
Because this means that your business idea or what you are working on is viable and that’s why other people are also doing it. Embrace the collaboration over competition spirit and that there is always enough business for everyone.
Also, the good thing about social media, is that by looking at their social media accounts, content, you can learn from what are their audiences saying about them, what strategy they are using, content formats that are working well or not so well, and you can borrow some of these inspirations to create a strong start for your social media strategy and online presence.
Or maybe you found that there are channels that your competitor may be missing out on, let’s say a large number of audience of your industry is on Instagram but your competitor isn’t there, then that’s also a great opportunity for you to shine there and become dominant on that platform.
Do a Social Media Audit of Your Existing Accounts
If you or the brand you are working on already has an existing social media presence online, then I would use the information you gathered and look through what are the baseline metrics, meaning where are the accounts at the moment in terms of average engagement rates, follower counts, click-through rates, and etc.
If the account wasn’t set up correctly, what can be improved on it and write down all of these to keep track of where you started vs. your end result. In social media, it’s always a good idea to keep track and measure, and that’s how you’ll know whether what you are doing is working, then learn from that, and double down on it even more.
If there are key things that are working well, do more of that by incorporating it into the new strategy, if there are things that are wrong (like using the wrong hashtags to reach the wrong audiences, rather the target audience you researched), then these are the type of things that you can include in your strategy going forward.
Create a Social Media Content Workflow and System
This is where you’ll want to create a system that works, especially when you have multiple team members or even just for a team of one yourself.
I recommend the following tools, having a scheduling tool for social media that will help you schedule all of the content you created beforehand, at least 1 week to 2 weeks in advance so that you can then use the space and freedom to work on your business while you know that the content is being shared and scheduled.
Also, have a folder system based in the cloud that anyone can access from anywhere in your team or yourself on your phone on the go, I recommend either Google Drive or Dropbox both work really well.
Lastly, a password management system such as LastPass, allows you to give your password access to someone on your team, without actually letting them see what the password is and you can take away the access anytime a team member leaves the company, very useful especially if you hire a lot of freelancers.
Organize Content in One Place with a Social Media Content Calendar
Content calendars are where the magic happens when streamlining social media, making it so much easier to create content, never running out of ideas, and knowing exactly which content is going where on each platform on different dates.
If you want a deep dive into content calendars, I’ve linked in this video to a social media content calendar tutorial.
Content calendars usually are built-in spreadsheet formats or in social media scheduling tools. I like using a simple spreadsheet format, and recently have also experimented with using Notion for that as well. If you are interested in seeing more about Notion from me, do let me know in the comments below.
You can also download a free social media content calendar template here.
If you are just starting out, then I recommend keeping promotions to a minimum because no one likes to be sold to all the time, but rather focus on creating valuable content that helps your audience which will ultimately build the like, know and trust factor, to eventually go from follower to loyal fan, and from fans to customers and clients.
I hope you found this video helpful in creating a social media strategy and marketing plan from scratch.
Let me know in the comments below, which social media platforms do you think your audiences are hanging out on, or are you including in your social media strategy? I look forward to hearing from you.
To your success,
Laurie
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