How To Create A Legit Social Media Strategy

Anika Watkins
Jul 27, 2016
3 min read

Whether you are a solo entrepreneur or the owner of a Fortune 500 company, having a social media strategy is no longer an option, but a necessity. And if that sounds daunting, we understand. Social media never takes a day off, which has its pluses and minuses.

On the plus side, it affords you the opportunity to continuously engage with your customers, which is a healthy prescription for developing and expanding your brand. On the downside, it means you need to keep up appearances - at least every week, which takes time and effort away from other things your business needs.

Developing a solid social media strategy isn't really that difficult. It only appears difficult. Follow our 5 steps to help you strategize your efforts so you can get back to focusing on what matters most - your business.

Step 1: Research Competitors

Before you start posting away, take some time to do some research. Make a list of like-minded businesses and competitors and find out what platforms they are using and see what's working best for them. What type of content do people seem to respond to most? Images? Videos? Links to articles? Sales and Promotions? While you browse through their content, make sure to actually read what they are posting. It will come in handy later when you need to create content of your own. Just for the record this isn't spying - this is about time management. No need to reinvent the wheel.

Step 2: Decide on Platforms

This is where you want to be as realistic as possible. Most platforms allow you to schedule content in advance. If they don't, there is always a third party site like Hootsuite that will schedule it for you. A couple of platforms that don't allow scheduling are Instagram and Snapchat. These platforms have huge potential, but they do require a lot of attention. Though you can't schedule and walk away - you can always pre-plan your posts to make it easier. Buffer has just a released a great app to assist you on Instagram.

We believe you should determine how many platforms you tackle based on the manpower you have. If it's a small team of just you, don't worry about conquering them all - just focus on one and master it. It's better to do one thing great, than fail at many. If you have team members to help you, start with 2-3 platforms and determine what works best for your business and audience. We recommend committing to a platform for at least 90 Days before deciding to jump ship.

Step 3: Define a Goal

Simply put - what do you want to achieve with your social media? Are you looking to grow brand awareness? Do you want to connect with your customers? Do you want to increase sales? Determine realistic, measurable goals and write them down. This will help you track your progress and utilize each platform to its full potential.

Step 4: Map Out Your Content

This is where you need to decide when and how often to share content. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to post multiple times a day every single day, but you do need to stick to a schedule. We suggest reserving one day each month to build out the next months' worth of content. That’s right, pre-plan your efforts a whole month in advance. This is helpful in so many ways! If you know of sales, specials, national holidays, or events that are coming up - compile all the images, text, and hashtags you will need so you’re ready. This way you never miss a beat.

Step 5: Analyze Your Efforts

Make sure you are checking in regularly to see what kind of response you are getting on your platforms. Did your website traffic increase? Did your sales improve? Facebook and Google Analytics offer powerful free insights to help you track your progress. This can also help decide what is and isn’t working for those goals you defined earlier. We prefer to measure progress for our own clients on a month by month basis so we can measure results and tweak our strategy on a regular basis.

And by the way – yes – it’s totally acceptable to change up your strategy. Especially if you find one platform isn’t performing as well as another. At the end of the day you want to make sure your social media strategy is working for you and you're not just wasting valuable time spinning your wheels.

Ready to put your plan into action? CLICK HERE to download our FREE CONTENT STRATEGY CHECKLIST to help get you started!