How to create a social media marketing strategy

A social media strategy is a marketing plan. It describes how you can achieve your brand's goals using social accounts.

A social media strategy is the first marketing plan you create when you decide to present your brand on the internet. All future social media marketing plans are created in accordance with it.

Assume, your goal is increasing brand awareness. Social media can help you to reach people who don't know about you yet. You should decide what social networks to choose and what you will say to the users. This is your social media strategy.

First, let's see why you need to create a social media strategy. Understanding this will help to build a better strategy and get back your eyes that may have rolled up when you were charged with this red tape.

Effective social media marketing plans. A social media strategy is a path you choose. When you see your way clearly, you know how to make another step to come closer to the goal. Besides, you can plan the steps ahead.

If you have a strategy, then social platforms you choose and posts you schedule in future planning are never random. You can figure out the best options. And everything you do contributes to your success.

React quickly. Even the best plan can't cover all the unexpected. When you know your current priorities, you can come up with a solution that turns the unexpected into another step toward your goals. Even if the unexpected is usually considered something negative.

For example, you got a bad review in the comments. If you look at your strategy for social media marketing, you can tell what is important for your brand. Thus, you know how to react. There is no hesitation to laugh it off or apologize.

Objective results assessment. You may be disappointed with how some metrics are changing. Or you may be blinded with happiness seeing the changes in other metrics. But you should focus only on the metrics that are important for your current social media marketing strategy.

Objective assessment is important to make decisions that are good for your brand and to say whether you are going the right way.

As you can see now, creating a social media strategy is worth your effort. It can be a great help in promoting your brand on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and other social networks effectively. And it's not difficult if you follow the guide below.

Here are 6 steps to create a social media strategy for better marketing results. They are mostly searching and analyzing information. No worry, we explain everything to make this homework as little head-hurting as possible.

Define your brand's goals to create a social media strategy. We want all your eyes here. These are goals that go beyond social networks. Remember, the whole marketing hustle and bustle is for promoting your brand, not just social accounts.

Here are examples of a brand's goals to include in your social media strategy:

Choose 1–2 goals at a time when creating a social media strategy. Then, you are likely to arrive at success. Choose more only if you are sure you can pull them off.

You can create a social media strategy that will cause organic growth only if you know your audience. You already know what you want. Now let's find out what the audience wants. Because your success lies where the wants meet.

These are what you should know about your audience on social media:

When you understand your audience, you know what works for it best. You know what platforms it resides on, so you know where to post. And you know what it likes, so you know what to post.

Put two and two together and you'll know how to use social media to achieve your brand's goals. For example, you will know what to post to increase brand awareness or build a reputation.

Learn how to put the two and two together:

Use your statistics on social networks that you are going to include in your social media strategy. Then, you will be able to create a plan for your audience specifically. Such accurate customization means the best results.

You can also ask people in your posts and Stories directly. Ask what they like, what they think about a hot topic, etc. Not all followers will answer, sure. But the most active will do this. And they are the part you may want to focus on because they are the most interested in your brand and the most likely to buy your product.

For example, in Instagram Insights you see sections for age and location. You can know the interests by checking the number of likes, shares, comments. The more of them a post gets, the more interesting the post's topic to your audience is. You can know the attitudes by checking the polls' results, besides, reading comments is also a good option.

If you are just starting out, you can use average industry statistics. Statista.com is one of the websites to check. Use these average figures to create a social media strategy for the first time.

Check social accounts in your niche to create a social media strategy. You may also get useful insights from spying on your competitors' ads. Pay attention to what they do for marketing success. You can try doing the same. But only take after good examples:

Don't follow the rivals' social media strategies blindly. You should understand why they do this and not that, and why it works. Then, you can know whether this will be good for your account. Include in your marketing strategy only what will work for sure.

Now you've got all the information you need to create a social media marketing strategy. At this point, you should use this information to "translate" your brand's goals into social media marketing goals.

Think about how social media can help you to achieve the brand's goals. Back to the example with brand awareness. The awareness increase is a brand's goal, and the social media marketing goal is increasing impressions, follower count in this case.

Here are more examples of marketing goals you may want when you create a social media strategy:

Use the S.M.A.R.T. approach when you set goals for your social media strategy:

When you create a social media strategy, you need to make a rough content plan. It should answer the two main questions: where and what to post. The details must be then specified in the content calendar. But first things first, let's look closer at this step of building the strategy.

The most important thing is choosing popular among your audience networks. But there is more. Which and how many social networks to choose depends on your brand's goals and opportunities.

For example, if you are creating a social media strategy to increase brand awareness, you may want to choose one or two most popular social networks. This will help to reach the biggest possible number of people.

At the same time, you may want to focus on one social network in your social media marketing strategy. This will allow regular and frequent posting, higher content quality, running competitions with prizes, which are also good for brand awareness increase.

When you've studied your audience, you've learned what it likes and what it doesn't. Include in your social media strategy posts:

Post more of what your audience prefers. For example, you may have noticed posts with video reviews on celebrities' bags get more likes. Try posting more video reviews about celebrities.

If you are an affiliate, read our Instagram affiliate marketing guide. There are insights that help to create an effective social media strategy for selling brands' products.

You can call it a day at this point. You know what to do on social platforms to achieve your brand's goals. Arrange your social media strategy into a comprehensible document that you can present to others.

Create a social media strategy file that includes the information and ideas you've come up with. They are what you've got when following the steps above. Divide them into sections to make them easy to read. Here is a plan:

We believe you need no help to write a text according to the social media marketing strategy plan, or even make a vibrant PowerPoint presentation with bells and whistles so that your team won't fall asleep while you broadcast. But you can use a social media strategy template below as well.

If you create a social media strategy for the first time, you probably don't have a good example or a draft. No worries, follow the link below to get a social media marketing strategy template, start with it.

Social media strategy template.

Download the social media template or copy it to your Google documents. Then, you will be able to edit it.

Adjust the social media marketing strategy template to your brand one time, and you will get a custom template for your brand.

After creating a social media strategy and implementing it, you need to track metrics. You defined them when you were setting marketing goals.

Try different metric tools if you create a social media strategy for the first time. Instagram Insights is to give just one example. You can get more accurate data if you set up a Facebook pixel and Google Analytics. With time, you can know which tool works for you best, and choose it.

Check the metrics to estimate whether your social media strategy works. If they change as you expected, you can say it works well. If you see the metrics change differently from what you expected, you need to take action.

For example, you created a social media strategy to increase the impression rate. But the rate seems to stick to the bottom. Think why it is so and what you can do about it. Maybe, you use wrong hashtags, then read how to use Instagram hashtags. Or your account may be shadowbanned, read how to avoid shadowban. The audience's interests may have changed, after all.

You may wonder how often "regularly" exactly means. It depends on you. You usually need to check them to create a monthly or annual social media report. Or you may need to check them to motivate your team with the results.

You can create a social media strategy in 6 steps:

Make your strategy for social media marketing more effective with organic growth tools. These 5 tools optimize your account activity, and you have time for other matters that contribute to your brand development.