The Foundations of a Successful Social Media Strategy

Regardless of whether you’re publishing organic or paid content, your content must be of value to the people it is shown to, as well as being a coherent part of your brand story.

To achieve this, make sure you are clear on the following:

• Your brand’s purpose – ethos, ethics, and reason to exist.
• Your audience – interests, motivations, age, location, demographic data, media habits.
• Your objectives.

These three things will be the basis of your strategy. Ensure you have a clear and documented strategy that defines; who you are, who you’re talking to, and why. This will ensure that your content remains relevant and engaging.

This should give you the building blocks for your platform strategy and your content plan.

Platform Strategy

Your platform strategy will make sure that you’ve understood where your audiences are spending their time and what they’re doing there. You can then define which platforms your brand will put resources into, and what you will do there to engage those audiences.

You may identify different distinct groups of people across your channel. For example, industry partners on LinkedIn and online customers on Instagram. This will present the challenge of articulating your brand message to different people in different ways whilst staying true to your brand’s overall narrative and values.

Content Plan

Your content plan will be a detailed document that defines your company at a granular level. Think about how your messaging will communicate all the things you want the world to believe, feel, or think about your company. It will be clear to anyone picking it up internally, how each of your core brand values should be articulated in a social media post.

It will also include a timeline or calendar so this messaging can be planned in the context of seasons, topical events, and key company moments.

This and all other strategy documents should be:

• Owned by one person specifically – it will be their job to keep it all up-to-date.
• Available to anyone in the business at any time, preferably hosted in an easily accessible place such as Google Drive, Dropbox or a shared server.