Social media strategy

Before you embark on your social media journey, you should spend time defining your social media strategy. This would typically consist of your social media goals, the ways in which you plan to achieve them and the metrics you will track to measure your progress.

A well-defined social media strategy is the cornerstone to success for any business navigating social media because it can help set your online marketing objectives, and identify which tools you can use to achieve them. Nowadays, more than half of the world’s population uses social media, so the right social media strategy will increase your brand awareness and put you on the fast track to success! Look at the infographic below which shows you how you can build out your social media strategy.

Social media strategies always start with defining your key goals. You want to set realistic social media goals that are achievable and consider factors such as the size of your business, industry type and audience. For example, do you want to prioritise increasing brand awareness and engagement? Or is generating leads and sales more important to you? Regardless of what your goals are, these will define your social media strategy and shape how you go about achieving them using social media.

Next, spend time researching your target audience. Think about their likes, dislikes, what sort of content they prefer and which social media platforms they most frequently use. There are many social media platforms out there, all of which cater to a different audience type. For example, channels like Instagram and Snapchat are more frequented by younger generations due to the heavily visual and aesthetic feel of the content on there, whereas LinkedIn is more frequented by a more mature, professional audience. By understanding your audience, you can determine the right social media platforms to use. We will talk about this in more detail later in the course.

It’s important to have engaging content that appeals to your target audience, and the different content types available on each social media platform can help you vary your content. For example, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are great for written content such as blog posts or articles, whereas Instagram and TikTok focus heavily on visual content types like images and videos. Choosing the most suitable content and media type is essential to communicate your brand’s message to your audiences effectively.

For example, Millennials and younger generations might prefer social images and videos over text communication formats because it provides a more unique experience. Younger audiences might also prefer more slang and jargon terminology, so it’s important you speak their “language” to really connect with them! On the other hand, older demographics might appreciate more traditional formats, such as news articles, emails or newsletters. Tools such as content calendars and social media management tools are a great way to help you plan when and where to publish content and help you keep track of your campaign.

Lastly, measuring the success of your social media programme is important as it shows you how successful a campaign is and if it is achieving the objectives it set out to. Once you have defined your social media goals, you can determine which KPIs (key performance indicators) will effectively measure your success e.g., follower count or engagement rate to demonstrate social media performance. We will talk about performance measurement in more detail in Week 2 of this course!

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