4 Critical Steps in Creating an Effective Social Media Strategy

Developing a social media strategy is key in order to reach your social and business goals. Think of your social media strategy as the ‘grand plan’ in which you will create and outline your goals and how you will post and engage with your content and audience in order to achieve them. Additionally, look at your social media strategy as a way you will measure your success and your return on investment (ROI). “Your social media strategy is the key to getting noticed, engaging people, and boosting your sales through social media marketing” (Sharlov, 2020).

Before you do anything, you must define your social and business goals and what you hope to achieve through your social media campaign. You might want to increase your sales or generate new leads. Creating a strategy will allow you to plan and implement your social media content while creating expectations for your team and getting everyone on the same page.

As a social media marketer, there are several goals in which you strive to achieve:

1. Increase brand awareness.
2. Reach and grow your audience.
3. Generate leads and traffic.
4. Reach your social and business goals.

An effective social media strategy will help achieve these goals and conquer these challenges. “Social media strategies also equip you to set goals and guardrails, track their performance, and tweak your benchmarks over time. Without a starting point, you can’t measure what’s working and how to shift your activity to hit your goals” (Hubspot, n.d.).

What happens when a business doesn’t create a social media strategy?

Diving into a social media campaign without a social media strategy is like building a house without blueprints. You might understand the essentials and what you hope to achieve, but you have no real plan for how to get there or how to measure your success.

Not having a social media strategy can result in the loss of revenue, customers, and real estate for your brand with online searches (SocialMediaToday, n.d.).

So now you have a sense of why social media strategies are important for your business and the disastrous effects of not having one before diving into a campaign, but how do you develop an effective social mediate strategy?

4 Critical Steps in Creating an Effective Social Media Strategy.

1. Identify your SMART goals.

Having a clear set of SMART goals and what you hope to achieve will guide you in developing and implementing your content to achieve those goals. Some of your goals can be: increase your revenue, generate leads, or drive more traffic to your site (SocialMediaToday, n.d.).

2. Define your target audience.

Before beginning your social media campaigns, it is critical to know who you are marketing to. You need to define your target audience and document your buyer personas by defining “the key demographics of the audience you’re trying to reach — age, gender, occupation, income, hobbies, and interest” (Hubspot,n.d.). Only focus on the type of people you know that represents.

3. Choose your platforms. Once you know who you are marketing to, you can choose which platforms you will launch your campaign. Are you hoping to reach a younger generation? Perhaps Instagram and TikTok are where you need to allocate your time and funds. Maybe you are trying to recruit working professionals age 30 and up, then Facebook and LinkedIn would be worthwhile. Pick 1–2 platforms and tailor your content to naturally utilize the appropriate voice to fit in their feed.

Hubspot Academy explains all the social channels in which you can post content for your business below.

4. Determine your Key Performance Indicators (KPI).

There are numerous things to track in your social media accounts. However, you will first want to determine how you will measure the success of the goals you have defined in step one. “KPIs are an essential component to a successful social media marketing strategy. They provide real-time insights as to how your digital efforts are performing and if you’re meeting your goals” (ShareLov, 2020). KPIs will help you determine whether you are implementing is working and whether you should continue with your strategy.

Most importantly, you will want to choose the KPI’s that best align with your social media goals. Some examples of KPIs that measure your audience engagement and ROI include (ShareLov, 2020):

1. Organic vs. Paid Reach
2. Total Engagements & Reactions
3. Likes, Comments & Shares
4. Conversion rate
5. Profile visits and active followers
6. Time spent on the website