Even though you might be itching to jump on the latest trend, meme, or posting scheme and just get started, the truth is a social media strategy is needed for long-term guidance and success. The outline below will guide you in building that long-term social media strategy. Be aware that some of the questions will not be relevant to your brand, project, or idea. Some will be difficult to answer, which is part of the challenge.
Who are you talking to?
Try to gain the most profound knowledge possible about your audience. You might have a clear idea of who they are, but I encourage you to ask others. Doing this can help reveal additional layers and considerations. Building buyer personas will also help you better visualize your target.
1. Audience Demographics – Consider age, location, language, civil status, life stages, and careers.
2. Audience Interests, Behaviors, and Expectations
What intelligence will you gather?
Before publishing content, you must have a solid knowledge of the playing field you are about to get into. Who are the key players? How are their audiences responding? What shared issues or opportunities exist that you can leverage or create differentiation?
3. Monitoring – What competitor or related social channels will you be monitoring? What keywords and hashtags are relevant to your strategy and worth tracking?
4. Social Listening – Identify conversation themes, influential users, and high and low seasons of activity/interest. Is your audience actively using the platforms you want to pursue?
What do you need to say?
5. Key Messages – Which themes or messages will lead the strategy? Think of this as buckets, for example, brand awareness, sales, support, people-centered, etc.
6. Message Mix – What percentage of the content will be dedicated to each theme?
7. Crisis Plan – Identify possible crises, who owns possible responses, and establish guidelines to when not to engage, when to respond and how.
Where and how are you going to say it?
8. Content Types – (short-form video, long-form video, photography, podcast, Video, Photo, Text, etc.)
9. Brand Voice – Define tone, brand keywords, hashtags, emoji preferences, and everything that would define the brand’s voice, including responding privately and publicly.
10. Channels – Be where your audience is most active. Avoid being on platforms just because they are popular. If your audience is not really in it, is it worth investing time? Also, consider searchable platforms like Twitter.
11. Design Guidelines – Include any high-level design guidelines, brand colors, and styles.
12. Frequency – How often will you post to each platform?
13. UGC – How are you promoting earned media? How are you going to find it or incentivize it? Are giveaways or similar contests within your strategy?
14. Paid Media – Are you considering investing in your social media content to reach a wider audience? How much? How will you decide what gets promoted? Define budgets and thresholds for deciding when to boost.
What is success?
Success without measurement is unknown. Set your goals and expected results with reality in mind. We all want to shoot for the stars, but social media presents a scenario that we don’t fully control. We depend on the latest algorithm changes, content providers, and the mood of our audience, so make sure to set realistic goals!
15. KPI – What are your key performance indicators? Are you looking for awareness? website hits, conversions, engagement?
16. Benchmarks – After establishing your presence, review how your KPIs perform over time. Establish benchmarks that help you better gauge your performance.
17. Reporting – How often will you report, and what exactly will you report. Remember to offer a heavier report on insights versus just numbers and totals. Use these instead sparingly to support your insights.
Reviewing and Optimizing
Once your KPIs are set, make sure to come back to your plan often so you can tweak and optimize accordingly. Your strategy, for the most part, should remain stable, but the content executions and messages will vary and evolve. Be flexible with your plan, and don’t be strict with it. Social media evolves quickly, world events influence it heavily, and these are extraneous factors you can’t control, so make sure your strategy considers that. Good luck with your planning!
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