Your social media strategy is a key element of your overall content marketing mix. The right social strategy will enable you to build your brand, speak directly to your target customers and to build and engage a loyal following among your key audiences.  

Know your audience 

  • Knowing your target audience is key.  What social media channels are they using? Twitter and Facebook are frequently used by businesses as customer service channels, LinkedIn is the go-to b2b platform whereas Instagram’s product tags and links make it the perfect platform for selling b2c and TikTok offers opportunities to build brand awareness and grow your online community 
  • So, how do you find out where your audience spends time? There are numerous free services that can give you information on broad audience demographics, like age, location and gender 
  • Your own social media profiles will also give you insights on who is looking at and engaging with your content the most, and competitor research and an analysis of your competitors’ social platforms is also a great way to figure out how to reach your audience 
  • Spending time on different social platforms and seeing who’s engaging with what is also key. Demographics on social media channels can often fluctuate and change as users drop off, age in (or out) of certain channels and adopt new platforms – we’re looking at you, TikTok 
  • Knowing your audience will tell you what platforms they’re using, what content they’re consuming and what content ultimately resonate and build impact 

What is your objective? 

  • What are your social strategy objectives? Why are you using social media? Is it to reach new customers, or build brand loyalty and a community, to drive direct sales?  
  • Knowing your objectives will also help with goal setting, your social content strategy and measuring the effectiveness of what you’re doing 

Content strategy 

  • Focusing your content on specific topics or themes will help you to meet your objectives. Your content pillars should support the way you structure and schedule content, keeping your social media profiles cohesive. As social media scheduling platform Later says ‘content pillars will help you get clarity on your niche. Being an expert in one area or a few specific things will help your audience grow faster.’ https://later.com/blog/content-pillars-for-social-media/ 

Have a plan and keep a calendar 

  • An achievable strategy combined with a content calendar will guide the frequency with which you create content and publish to your social media profiles 
  • Building a social media strategy often requires input from multiple departments, such as copywriters and designers and social media managers. A content calendar will ensure everyone is on the same page and aware of upcoming plans 

Get creative and build for the platform 

  • Social media channels are visual platforms, and your content is competing to catch the eye of millions of users 
  • Each social platform has different rules, so you need to play by them. Social media content needs to be built for the specific platform it’s on, for example, Instagram only permits vertical videos while LinkedIn posts with images perform twice as well as those without  

Amplify with paid social 

  • Promoting content through paid social is a good way of reaching a target audience and driving specific actions, such as filling out a lead generation form or clicking to a website landing page. 
  • Targeting on social media channels can be as broad or as narrow as you like, with options to reach audiences based on their interests, their age, location, industry and job title.  

Measuring success 

  • Measuring your successes and failures, is the best way to develop your profiles and build your online communities. All social media platforms are equipped with an easy to access analytics page that can help you track pretty much any metric you like 
  • Regular reporting on things, such as engagements (likes, saves, comments), reach (the number of people who have viewed your content) and page/profile views, is important to ensuring an effective social media strategy that is delivering against your overall objectives 

Stay ahead 

  • Social media is constantly evolving and staying at the forefront of platform updates and new features can ensure your content is being seen 
  • For example, Instagram is pushing to get users to publish more video content to their profiles as it tries to ward off competition from TikTok, and as such the algorithm tends to favour video posts over static images 
  • As well as keeping ahead of the algorithm, staying on top of platform updates can provide ample opportunity to test out fun new creative formats too 
  • To help you stay ahead, we publish a monthly blog featuring all the latest social media platform updates  

 

Blog Footer_MakeanEnquiry

Rostrum is a full-service communications agency, offering PR, content and influencer marketing, social media, training and design. We are among the UK’s top 5 B2B agencies and a PR Week Top 100 agency, specialising in financial services, professional services, consumer and corporate work, as well as crisis management, content and influencer marketing and social media. Rostrum creates campaigns and content to help our clients punch above their weight and we measure everything we do, delivering exceptional value for client budgets.