It is interesting how day by day nothing changes and yet, when you look back everything looks different. Remember how difficult it was to reach a relative who shifted to another city or country? Or how difficult it was to get a message across to your best friend after school? Crazy how times have changed. Everyone and everything is just a click away now. Social media was popular for networking and connecting with family and friends. Fast forward to today, these platforms have become the biggest game changers for everyone. One can reach millions of users quickly with just a single post. With this approach, you can avoid investing a lot of time and money on TV ads or ad banners. To connect with their target audience, all that’s required is an effective social media content strategy. Think of your social media content strategy as your blueprint for your business’s success across social platforms. If you don’t take the time to put together a solid strategy, you will find that your social efforts lack direction and don’t deliver the results you expect to see. 

You need to dedicate the time and resources to plan your approach and map out exactly what you want to achieve, how you will get there, and how you will measure the impact that your efforts have on your goals. 

But it isn’t always easy to know where to start, especially if you have never put one together before.

In this guide, we will walk you through a step by step process to developing a social media content strategy from scratch, 

But first, we need to know what is a social media content strategy.

What is a social media strategy?

Your social media strategy is your master plan or outline for how you create, post, and engage with your social media content.It includes your social content guidelines, posting schedules, social media marketing campaigns, target audience, and engagement strategy that promote your business and brand.

You need to know what you want to achieve to figure out how you will get there. And this is what a strategy is.

When you can craft a strategy that maps out the route you need to take to meet your goals, your chance of achieving goals massively increases. Social media is more than just a vanity platform; it additionally has the potential to be a source of interest and sales. But for this to happen, you need to have a strategy that you work towards.

Here are three questions to ask yourself when you’re getting started, which you’ll want to comprehensively answer in your strategy:

• What are your goals? 
• Who’s your audience?
• What’s the competition up to? 

Creating social media strategies can be challenging, especially when you’re just starting with your brand or just building your online presence for the first time. So many channels, features, tools, and products available, but so little time to fit them all into your strategy.

It becomes even harder if you don’t have access to a full-time team of social media experts. But the truth is that having a clear-cut, solid strategy that works for your goals and resources is essential to your success.

Why You Need a Social Media Strategy

To increase brand awareness, audience’s trust, and knowledge of your offering, you need to get in front of people – and for that, you need a social media strategy.

In fact, it’s considered that one in three people in the world, including children, are active users of social media.

A social media strategy will help you to map out a plan to stand out from the crowd, build an audience of activated and informed followers, and create an environment where you can take leads, from awareness to consideration to the purchase phase.

It’s also important to have a strategy to ensure you can aim for certain goals. 

As everyone thinks creating a social media strategy is difficult but the reality is that developing a social media content strategy is easier than you probably think. 

So, here we have listed down 7 effective steps to create a compelling social media strategy,

How to Create Social Media Strategy – A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Set goals
2. Research your audience 
3. Analyze your competitors
4. Community engagement
5. Audit your current social media content
6. Build a content calendar
7. Promote and distribute your content
8. Measure results and Track performance

Let’s get started!

1. Set goals

The first step toward a long-term social media content strategy is to set your content goals.

Have you ever heard of S.M.A.R.T. goals?

It is important that you start creating every strategy by knowing what you want to achieve, as this will help you to shape the path you take to make this happen. Otherwise, you are working blindly. And that is not strategic at all.

Let’s understand what a S.M.A.R.T. goal is.

• Specific – Goals should be clear and specific to allow a solid focus on what needs to be achieved
• Measurable – You must be able to measure the progress of goals 
• Attainable – Goals should be realistic, yet should be challenging enough to motivate you
• Relevant – Goals should be relevant to your wider brand objectives 
• Time-bound – You should always set a timeframe for goals to be measured 

2. Research your audience  

You can’t create great social content without knowing who it’s for. Social media allows you to drill down and target exactly who you want.

Aim to create a strategy that answers all of these questions:

• Is your strategy respectful of your audience’s backgrounds and experiences, and what value does it add to their lives?
• What are you hoping they take away from your content, and what are they hoping to take away from it?
• What existing knowledge do you expect them to come with, and what can you teach them?

Understanding your target audience will help you determine which social media platforms they use, how they engage with content, what times and frequencies work best what kind of ads would resonate with them best, etc. And, before you start brainstorming ideas for content and engagement strategies, you simply need to do your homework and  audience research.

Check the demographics of your ideal target audience – age, gender, interests, location, language, and other relevant factors.

While there are many reports, surveys, trend compilations, and industry studies that you can use, it’s always best to get feedback and insights from your existing followers and analyze your first-hand data on audience demographics.

3. Analyze your social media competitors

To understand how your social media content strategy is performing, you need to look beyond your own data. A competitive analysis will help spark ideas for your content and create better benchmarks and goals for your strategy,

i.e. what are they doing that you can do better? What formats do they use?

Conducting a competitive analysis in the social media space is about finding out who’s doing what;

• What content are they creating?
• What topics are they covering?
• What social media channels are they focusing on?
• What content strategy are they using to engage their social media followers?
• How often are they posting?

You don’t need to analyze 20 competitors in bulk – Pick a few competitors, and run the comparison with Competitor Analysis. Usually, three is enough to get an idea of what’s happening in your industry. Start from your direct competitors and then move on to other creators in your niche, if needed

4. Community Engagement

People don’t use social media platforms for a one-way experience. They’re seeking connections with people and with brands. And there comes community engagement. Community engagement is the action of interacting with your audiences on your social media platforms with the purpose of building a positive and loyal community. Community engagement is often associated with social media engagement which is the measurement of how people are interacting with your social media accounts and content. You can see how these two terms go hand-in-hand, the more community engagement you engage in, the better your social media engagement numbers should be.

For example, engagement might include:

• Likes and Favorites
• Comments, Direct Messages, Replies
• Shares, Retweets, and Reposts
• Saves
• Clicks
• Mentions

Engagement is a great way to measure whether the content you’re creating is actually resonating with your audience or not. 

Here are some ways to boost your community engagement

1. Be truly social
2. Have a consistent, authentic voice
3. Know your algorithms
4. Make it personal (share your stories and listen to theirs)
5. Communicate with your followers

It’s important to engage people in their online communities rather than assume they will find yours. That means developing a strong online presence on the most popular social media websites for your community. 

If community engagement is what troubling you or you are confused about what strategies to apply in community engagement then Rigi is a one-stop solution for all your problems. Created for creators, Rigi is one of the trusted platforms to grow your online community and boost your game with its unique features like Private groups and Channels, where you can create a trusted space with paid private groups and channels to enhance your engagement.

Rigi – Empowering creators & their community

Audit your current social media content

Once you are clear on your audience and goals, it’s time to conduct a social media content audit on what you’ve created so far.

One of the most effective ways to figure out how to create a social media content strategy that’s effective for your brand is to conduct a content audit. 

Evaluate the posts you made on each platform and observe which one worked well and which one didn’t. Your content goals should be directly aligned with what you look for in the audit. 

For example, if one of your goals is to improve brand awareness, look at your follower count and impressions or reach on each platform, and identify which posts resulted in new followers.

If you’re using a platform like Rigi that helps you to grow as a creator or social media influencer, you can look at all of your social media data and analytics in one place. 

5. Create a Content Calendar

Once you have started planning out your content, you need to set up a content calendar that you or your team can use for organizational purposes. And this is important for a simple reason; it keeps you accountable.

You have made a commitment to yourself, Once you have set a publishing schedule and mapped it out on a content calendar. And this is often required to maintain the focus and direction of your efforts. 

It also helps you work with other teams to complete goals. For example, if you know in 2 weeks, you are launching a new campaign and need graphics, your content team and graphics teams can both view the calendar and ensure tasks are done on time.

Read this blog on Content Pillars For Social Media to craft your social media strategy effectively.

Your social media content calendar should include the following information;

• Social media channel – Which social media platform you’re going to post on.
• Posting schedule – When and what content should be posted.
• Content type – What kind of format (e.g. GIF, video, photo, text).
• Target audience – Who should you reach with this post?
• Performance tracking – Have you achieved your desired goal?
• Topic– You might want to separate educational content from engaging video content or pure social media ads 
• Social media budget – Associated with each post

In terms of how frequently you should be posting on each platform, we recommend a baseline schedule;

• Facebook: 5 to 7 posts per week
• Twitter: 3 to 5 Tweets per day
• LinkedIn: 1 post per day
• Instagram: 1 post or story per day
• Pinterest: Focus on creating interesting boards and sharing relevant images rather than a set posting schedule
• TikTok: At least once per day

You have to maintain consistency in posting your content on social media, as consistency is the root of anything you do on social media in order to grow.

Suggested Read: Consistency Is The Key

6. Promote and distribute your content

There is more to your social media strategy than just what you share on your social media platforms. To increase brand awareness, an effective strategy involves finding ways to actively distribute your content. 

Here are a few ways to plan your distribution;

• Schedule your content ahead of time
• Encourage others to share your posts
• Use platform-specific features
• Collaborate with other creators

7. Measure results and Track performances

The last step to craft an effective social media content strategy is measuring the results and tracking the performances. Proper tracking is essential to create a long-term strategy. 

Analyze your content every month to keep track of what’s working. Take a top-level view of how each piece of content performed and the variables that contributed to it. 

Evaluate how well the content supported the goals you set in step one. 

KPIs – Key Performance Indicators are specific metrics that track your progress towards these.

Keep them real, measurable, and as specific as possible.

A few good KPIs that you could match with an effective social media strategy are;

• Engagement rate of your video content
• Reach of your posts among your target audience
• Number of leads generated from social media campaigns
• Cost per lead per social media marketing channel
• Number of new subscribers on your YouTube channel

By measuring analytics each month, you’ll just have to make minor modifications to keep optimizing your social media content strategy.

Putting it all together: Craft your social media content plan

Effectively planning a social media content strategy is an ongoing cycle, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. Plan your process with the ideas and steps mentioned above and stick to these essential strategic steps to develop great content.

Conclusion

Wrapping up, remember that the success lies in the perfect blend of creativity and analytics. By understanding your audience preferences, utilizing the power of engaging content, and keeping a close eye on performance metrics, you’re not just building a strategy; you’re creating a digital symphony that resonates with your audience. 

Stay versatile, adapt to changes, and let your strategy evolve organically. Social media isn’t just a tool; it’s a dynamic canvas waiting for your brand’s masterpiece. So go on, paint your digital canvas, connect authentically, and watch your online presence grow!

FAQs

1. What is a social media strategy?

A social media strategy is a plan of action to boost your brand across social media. It is a comprehensive plan that outlines how you will use social media platforms to achieve your marketing and branding goals. It includes objectives, target audience identification, content planning, posting schedules, and metrics for measuring success.

2. What should I consider when choosing social media platforms for my strategy?

While selecting a platform, check for your target audience’s interests, demographics, usage, etc. For instance, if your audience is business professionals, LinkedIn works best. And if you are targeting millennials, Instagram could be a better platform.

3. How does social media affect marketing strategy?

Social media has a significant impact on marketing strategy by providing a dynamic platform to reach and engage with audiences. It allows for real-time interaction, customer feedback, and content sharing, making it an essential component for building brand awareness, driving leads, and fostering customer loyalty.

4. What factors should companies keep in mind when developing social media strategies?

When developing social media strategies, it’s important that companies consider their target audience, platform selection, content relevance, consistency, competitor analysis, and the use of analytics tools to measure performance. Ensuring alignment with overall business objectives is crucial.

5. What should a social media strategy include?

An effective social media strategy should include clear goals and objectives, a detailed audience profile, content creation and distribution plans, posting schedules, engagement tactics, crisis management guidelines, and methods for tracking and analyzing performance metrics.

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