Social Media Strategy Must Haves

Today's blog is all about what you need to include in your social media strategy to make sure you have a strong and successful presence on social media. Whether you’re a brand, business, content creator, work on a social media or marketing team, I want to help to make sure that you have a winning plan.

So, let's get right into the 6 must haves!

1. Know Your Target Audience

The first thing you need to have in your strategy is an understanding of who your target audience is.

All major social media platforms provide insights that break down who your followers are, who’s interacting with your content, when they’re active and so on.

If your brand is new to social media, experimenting with your content will allow you to determine an audience you didn't think would connect with your brand.

It’s important to know, not every social media platform will make sense for your brand or business.

For example, if you are a men’s focused company – you may want to stay away from Pinterest. (Not talking to the men’s fashion brands, btw!) On the other hand, if you are a content creator who enjoys documenting your travels through videos and pictures, you may want to focus more on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, and not LinkedIn.

2. Create Realistic Goals

The second thing you need to have are realistic goals. That's for every platform!

If you're using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, you should have goals for every one of those platforms and make sure they are realistic.

You should also have a time period associated with the goals. Adding a deadline to the goal forces you to really focus and work towards that goal within that time frame.

Say you decide you want to hit 500 followers on Twitter – instead of saying you want to reach 500, saying you want to reach the 500 followers by April 2021, allows you to really hone in on the goal.

Other goals may include creating a community around your brand, possibly increasing your brand awareness or even becoming more consistent.

3. Determine What Metrics are Important to You

The third social media strategy must have is to determine what metrics are important to you.

Not every company or social media account focuses on the same metrics. Some people are more focused on link clicks, others are more focused on engagements.

For me, I'm more focused on converting my followers to customers and clients, in addition to being able to increase my engagement.

Tracking your metrics will allow you to understand and see what works for you and what's not working, what you can improve on and what you should be continuing to do.

4. Create a Content Plan

The fourth must have is a content plan.

There are many levels to planning your content. This is the most important element in your strategy.

What kind of content are you creating? Are you creating it yourself? Are you hiring a photographer or videographer? Are you going to focus on user generated content? How often are you posting? What platforms are you posting on? Are you just going to focus on 3 platforms? What is the purpose of your content? Are you going to educate? Are you entertaining? The list goes on…but these are the types of questions you need to ask yourself.

Content Calendar

You want to also make sure you have a content calendar. This is essential when creating, planning and strategizing your content.

One of my favorite things about the content calendar is that it allows you to visualize and take note of upcoming holidays – national, local, religious, social media, federal, etc. Especially if you're working with a team, it helps to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Maybe you work for a company that sells products and they want to have a sale the last week of April. Having the content calendar helps you to plan out the content and coincide with the sale, which will help increase your sales.

Content Pillars

Another important aspect to creating your content is determining your content pillars. You may be wondering what in the world are content pillars!? They are three to five topics (the number may change depending on the person) that your brand or business will cover on your social media accounts.

Also, as a social media manager, please (!!!) when it comes to planning your content, please make room for last minute uploads and changes. Why you may ask? The world can be falling apart and you don't want to be that company posting Instagram stories encouraging their followers to head to the beach in the middle of complete chaos. Read the room!

Let’s try to avoid to ruining your reputation by posting when it's not appropriate. On the flip-side, you may need to make a quick timely post on your accounts. Allowing room for the last-minute changes will really help.

Another social media manager tip – if you’ve hired someone to manage your social media or create content for your platforms, you want to make sure you provide them with content to actually work with. That can include information about your industry or company, infographics, actual pictures or videos, etc.

Yes, social media managers can create something out of nothing, BUT the content can be next level if they actually have something to work with or pull from.

5. Create a Campaign (or two!)

Next on the list of social media strategy must haves is campaigns: creating and planning.

Your campaign will feature all the same things that a strategy has but campaigns are focused on one specific topic. You can have multiple campaigns within your overall strategy.

For example, your campaign can focus on Valentine's Day while your strategy focuses on your entire 2021.

6. Measure Your Results

The last thing you should have in your social media strategy is the ability to measure your results.

Following the completion of your strategy, you’ll want to go ahead and see how your numbers did during that time period. What worked for you, what didn't work, what you should change the next time and so on.

This is why it’s important to complete step #3 and determine what metrics are important to you. The metrics can be different on each platform, too.

Completing this six-step process when putting together your strategy will ensure that you have a successful social media strategy.