Many businesses find creating a social media strategy overwhelming. There are many networks you can choose from, and new features are constantly being added for you to learn and integrate into your plan.

It is difficult to gain traction on social media without a team of dedicated experts. Your success is based on having a a strategy that makes sense and is easy to follow which matches your resources and goals.

This guide will show you how to develop a social media strategy that will increase traffic and help you feel less overwhelmed when you open Instagram or Twitter.

Your social media strategy is your plan for how you will use social media to achieve your communication goals. It covers your social media content, posting schedule, social media marketing campaigns, creative plans, and engagement strategy that promote your business and brand.

Many companies use social media to connect with their customers, provide support, advertise new products and features, and promote special offers. Social media provides companies with a way to connect with their customers and promote their products or services.

Social media strategies should be adapted to fit the brand’s voice and positioning, target audience demographics, and the limitations of the social media platform. When creating a social media strategy for your business, consider who your target audience is and what message you want to send. Choosing the right platform and format will help ensure that your message is received by the right people.

Why You Need a Social Media Strategy

The three biggest issues that social media marketers have to deal with are connecting with their target audience, figuring out the ROI, and achieving business objectives.

Formulating a social media game plan can help you surmount these issues and more. Having a social media strategy enables you to set goals, track your progress, and adapt your benchmarks as needed. If you don’t have a starting point, you won’t be able to tell what’s working and how to change your behavior to reach your goals.

Creating a strategy:

1. Helps you set goals and guardrails.

Developing a social media strategy for your business can help to establish clear expectations and goals for your social media marketing efforts. This can help to ensure that your team is on the same page when it comes to social media marketing, and can help to make sure that your efforts are more focused and effective. The following text provides a blueprint that your team can follow to keep your marketing consistent, on task, and relevant to your target audience.

2. Allows you to track goal performance.

You need to set a goal for your business’ social media marketing and track your progress. A social media strategy establishes what your business’ goals are and key performance indicators that you can use to track progress.

3. Helps you tweak your benchmarks over time.

Comparing your social media marketing strategy to others in your industry allows you to see where you need to improve. You can also compare your performance to your past performance to see if you are making progress.

Assessing your progress in relation to standards helps you identify areas of your social media marketing that require enhancement to achieve your marketing desired outcomes.

A social media strategy helps you to involve your whole team in your social media platforms and agree on what is and is not appropriate to post.

How to create a social media plan step by step

Having a social media plan is not enough, you know that by now. Now that we’re all caught up, let’s unveil the secret formula for the most ideal social media plan you’ll ever come across.

1. Define your starting point.

The first thing you should do is figure out where you stand with your social media marketing. Before you create a social media plan, take a close look at your own social media profiles, as well as those of your competitors. This will give you a good idea of what is working well and what needs to be improved. You can use this method to figure out what is effective and what is not. How to do that exactly? Here is what we recommend before you start planning a social media campaign:

• Prepare a SWOT analysis to determine the strengths and weaknesses of your business as well as the opportunities and threats it faces from the external business environment.
• Conduct a PESTEL analysis to explore and understand where you and your company stands politically, economically, socially, technologically, environmentally, and legally.
• Research your competitors as well as your industry and find out how your business can stand out from them to be unique.
• Conduct a social media audit to check how, where, and with what results you have been communicating up til now – this will allow you to assess growth, opportunities, and anything that can be done to improve your social presence.

2. Specify your target group.

It is important to understand your audience when creating a social media marketing plan. You should be creating content that your target group likes, comments on, and shares. There are a few ways to get to know your audience.

• First, check out who your content resonates the most with and see whether this group matches the ideal audience for your brand – with qualified leads you will convert your audience to customers in no time.
• Get familiar with relevant surveys, reports, and statistics to gain more insights.
• Come up with a few personas to represent that ideal audience. This will basically be a detailed description of specific people, with real wants and needs, who you want to turn into your fans and followers. Knowing your average follower’s persona will allow you to adjust your social media campaigns according to your real audience’s expectations.

3. Analyze your competitors on social media.

In order to create an effective social media strategy, you need to understand who your competition is and what they are doing. What type of content are they publishing, in what tone, and how often?

It may be beneficial to take some time to analyze your competitor’s strategies to see what you can learn and apply to your own business. Additionally, monitored their respective statics including reach and engagement rates. The strength of your competition and the potential for you to break into this market can both be determined by how many other businesses are present.

Use that information to improve your own strategy.

You should always be aware of what your competitors are doing so that you can stay ahead of them.

4. Set the objectives.

Well-structured campaigns come from smart, detailed goals that you can measure your progress with and optimize over time. An objective is specific, measurable and attainable whereas a vague objective is not. See the difference for yourself:

I will gain more Facebook followers by posting interesting and interactive content.

I will try to increase the engagement rate on my Facebook profile by 2% by the end of the year.

The SMART model is a helpful way to design objectives for a social media campaign. According to this model, your objectives should be:

Specific – sensible, significant, and simple

Measurable – meaningful and motivating

Achievable – agreed and attainable

Relevant – reasonable, realistic, results-based, and resourced

Time-bound – time-based, time-limited, and time/cost limited

In order to make it all work, you should:

• Establish your expectations and specific goals derived from a social media marketing plan. What would you like to achieve through your social media presence? Do these goals line up with the overall marketing strategy for your brand?
• Set relevant social media KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that should accompany your social media marketing strategy at all times.
• Make sure you will be able to achieve those objectives.

5. Pick the right communication channels.

Social media is so much more than just Facebook. When looking for the best platforms for your business, take into account the benefits of each one. The goal is to pick the social media platforms that your target audience uses most and that also fit your brand’s image. After you have chosen which social media networks you want to include as part of your social media strategy, it is time to create a social media marketing plan for each one.

• Be where your target group is. That doesn’t necessarily have to be Facebook or Instagram – you can find your target audience on other social networks as well. Check out some of the other most popular social media platforms in 2021 worldwide such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, or even Quora.
• Get familiar with the requirements and unique features of each platform. For example, some social networks offer live video streaming options, while others let you make good use of groups,
• Once you have finished creating a social media plan, set up the “missing” accounts and improve your existing profiles.

6. Think of the best communication lines and content formats for every platform.

To create diverse content, create posts that are unique to each social network and feature the network’s key characteristics. Some examples of content that you could include in your social media strategy are user-generated content, live videos, stories, and polls. There are numerous possibilities that could be pursued, but it is essential that at least some of the content promotes the desired outcomes for the business. For example, you could have content that is designed to generate traffic to your blog, another section that is meant to create leads, and the remaining content that is created to educate and entertain your audience. The ratio here is entirely up to you, though.

• Decide what you want to communicate. What would seem the most attractive for your target audience?
• Identify the content formats you are going to take advantage of and make sure they are all well-designed,
• Specify how often you are going to post on social networks.
• Define your brand attributes, if you have any. These can be certain hashtags, using your logo on every visual, or even developing a specific template for all of your social media posts.

7. Put your social media marketing plan to work: designate tasks.

A successful social media marketing strategy often requires a dedicated and enthusiastic team. It is important not only to have the best people on board but also to distribute tasks between them wisely, and then ensure seamless collaboration in order to actually complete those tasks effortlessly.

• Define your social media workflow and name specific tasks,
• Decide who is responsible for what part of the whole social media content strategy (i.e. creating copy or visuals, approving and scheduling posts, moderating the profile),
• Take advantage of dedicated tools to ease collaboration between team members,

Be sure to include your client in the approval process to maintain a consistent brand voice. This solution makes your work less complex and time-consuming. You can do all your tasks in one place, which is convenient for everyone.

8. Start blogging.

Quality content is key to a successful social media strategy, so make sure to regularly create new content. create a list of questions that potential customers commonly ask, and make a plan to address these questions with a new blog post once a week

If you want your content to reach more people, consider combining your blogging and social media strategies. You can create a social media post with a link to a blog post that expands upon the post. The social media post will help promote your blog by making it easy for readers to share the blog post with their followers, thereby increasing the blog’s audience.

9. Focus on a few key social channels.

Most startups and small businesses can’t keep up with creating and maintaining a presence on every social media channel. trying to figure out the etiquette for each social media platform can be daunting.