4 Steps to an Effective Social Media Strategy

Social media can be a difficult beast to tame. Clever, sharp-witted posts are prerequisites in this world and a social media strategy is the key to finding social success. Without a quality strategy and implementation, you may quickly find yourself in over your head. There are no guarantees in social media, but rest assured, if you stick to these four steps, you will be effective in both your social media marketing efforts and business goals.

Four effective steps for social media strategy

Lay The Framework

We all know the social media urge. All of your platforms are set up; you should just post away, right? Wrong. The first step in any marketing effort is to identify and understand your personas, or your ideal audience. Once you have these clearly defined, it is time to strategize and begin defining your messaging to them on each individual platform. Creating social strategy & tone documents will allow you to define who you are and who you want to be on each social platform.

Strategy Document:

• Lay out your follower demographics by each platform using tools like HubSpot or Followerwonk.
• Conduct an audit of competitors, relevant brands, and effective social messengers on each platform. Break down the specifics of what is effective and what isn’t – content, copy length, use of imagery, tone, etc. This will also help with how you use hashtags strategically. 
• Refine and determine your own social strategy, incorporating best practices and brand-relevant messaging techniques for each platform.
• Set quarterly goals for each social platform.

Tone Document:

• Define what your brand’s voice is; use as many adjectives as possible. Use these helpful exercises for finding your tone through Pyxl’s resources like Creating a Socal Media Calendar.
• Craft this so that someone who is totally unfamiliar with your brand could read this and not only understand it but could envision potential posts.
• Define your role on each platform, as well as your messaging goals and tone for each platform, all while maintaining your defined brand voice.

Once you have defined personas, strategy, and tone, you are ready to begin your social messaging.

WARNING: Skipping these steps is like going on a date with someone you have been friends with for a long time. You may know your brand, but not in “that kind of way.” Be thoughtful about these steps and do not skip them. If you want to grow a genuine following, speak to your followers clearly and accurately communicate who your brand is.

Consistency

There is no step in your social strategy more important than the consistency. Whether it’s the frequency of posting, use of tone, or response time, consistency is king in social. Your effectiveness in your social goals depends on your ability to provide quality, consistent content across all of your platforms. To make sure every post is crafted to perfection, keep your tone and strategy documents close by, make sure your content is in the correct voice, and that you’re hitting your frequency goals. For some inspiration and professional opinions on frequencies, take a look at this blog for pointers on each social media outlet.

Schedule

Scheduling has changed the way that brands do social. If used correctly, scheduling can decrease the typical bandwidth required for managing social accounts and free you up to focus on timeliness, research, and strategy.

At the beginning of each quarter, come up with a social editorial calendar for each platform. Using your strategy and best practices for each platform, craft a posting schedule for each week. This will allow you to execute your strategy and break up the responsibilities (copy, design, scheduling).

Scheduling through a platform like HubSpot will allow you to put all of your weekly or monthly posts in at once and not worry about them again (not to mention, all of the post data will be seamlessly added to your social analytics dashboards). Scheduling ensures the consistency and reliability that are required in managing an effective social presence.

Review

If gathering data surrounding the performance of your social posts are not currently part of your social strategy, it really needs to be. Data is how you know what is working and what isn’t.

Tools like HubSpot as well as Facebook and Twitter tools will help you understand the effectiveness of your social strategy. Test everything. Try new copy length, imagery, post time, and social CTAs to determine the most effective way to reach your personas.

To be effective in your social strategy you have to be thoughtful about the way you are analyzing and reporting your data.

Interesting in talking more about social media? Ready to take the first step to develop a social media strategy of your own? Let us know!

Updated: Nov 15, 2024