How to Build a Social Media Marketing Strategy (with Examples!)

First of all, social media should be non-negotiable in a company’s marketing efforts.

Not convinced? Let’s take a    and see what social media marketing can do for your business:

• Establish your brand and give it a personality. (People relate and care much more about your product this way!)
• Helps with market research.  Social listening gives insights into what your target audience likes about your brand and products.
• Social media is very cost-effective compared to other marketing efforts. 
• Helps generate traffic to your website.
• Social media also has a very high conversion rate.

And, sure, anyone can post consistently on social media, especially with the help of a social media management tool.

But having a strategy and tracking what does and doesn’t work will help you get where you’re headed even faster!

And the best part? Building a social media marketing strategy isn’t nearly as hard or time-consuming as you’d think! In fact, I’d say with a few tips you could go from sporadic growth to a steady climb in reach and engagement. 

Curious to know how? You’re in luck because we put together a real social media strategy template. 

What is social media strategy?

First things first! What is social media strategy? This is a marketing practice used to promote your business and boost business goals, such as brand awareness, on popular social media platforms. It includes steps like outlining KPIs, goals, and of course content!

Consider how your business goals align with your social media marketing efforts

If you’ve already nailed down how your business goals translate to your marketing goals, skip ahead to how to set up your social media marketing strategy goals.

Though it’s true almost every business does benefit from having a social media presence, not every business is the same. In crafting a social media marketing strategy, it’s important to consider your business’s specific relationship to social media. 

Speaking of relationships, let’s ask some intimate questions.  

Do you have the right business for social media marketing ads? Is the effort toward posting across every platform relevant to your business’s brand? Are your targets highly engaged in other brands’ content like yours on social media? 

Not every business needs to do it all, and your social media strategy will largely depend on your targeted audience. But, how do you know what’s right for your business? Well, friends. Just like dating, you’ve got to know who you are and what you want in order to go anywhere. So, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty and discuss the 3 business love languages (sometimes you just gotta keep running with a metaphor) to put together a social media strategy.

Branding

The core of knowing how your business should use social media has to do with understanding your brand. If you’ve yet to create a brand, check out our resources on tips to build a brand. Branding before any marketing strategy is incredibly important, especially with social media marketing. Branding is knowing who you are, which is crucial to knowing your audience.

Social media is content-centric. The aesthetics, the voice, and the posting style of your content will represent your brand across the internet. It’s vital to decide this before posting content so there aren’t major brand inconsistencies in what is being posted on your social media accounts. This can confuse prospects, prevent them from remembering you in the future, and cause them to unfollow you.

Target Audience

Once your branding is established, it’s important to know your target audience. Where do they spend their time? What social media apps is your age demographic on the most? This is important to consider when drafting your strategy. We wrote an article on which social platform is best for your business. As it addresses different demographics tend to spend time on some platforms more than others.

Go deep into understanding what your target audience is interested in, where they live, what their living situations are like, what the problems are that they are facing, what their relationship status is, and more! 

Budget

Next is budget…does your business have a social media budget? Is your business willing to invest in ads if they’re relevant for your brand’s final social media marketing strategy? Creating social media accounts is free and easy to do, once you know your brand, audience, and budget, we can start strategizing. Muhahahaha! 

How to set up your social media marketing strategy goals

From measuring analytics and key performance indicators to studying competitor’s strategies, and planning your content – this section will cover all the basics of developing the best social media strategy.  Let’s get buzzin. 

Come up with metrics and key performance indicators

When coming up with a social media marketing strategy there are some key analytics to keep an eye on that will greatly boost your success. Most apps will track your analytics for you, allowing you to see your reach and engagement with each post. 

And some key performance indicators to keep track of are: reach, clicks, engagement, hashtag performance, organic and paid likes, and audience demographics.

Another helpful idea is to run a campaign that’s set over a period of time with certain metric goals in mind. A business can learn a lot from a campaign on what does and doesn’t work for your brand. 

Overall, goals should be SMART. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. 

You can also read more on how to calculate social media ROI to track how your social media strategy is affecting your bottom line.

Look at competitor strategies & review example strategies like these

A great way to get ideas and inspiration is by conducting competitor research. Pay attention to their social media. How often do they post? What types of posts perform the best? What strategies are they using?

Now let’s look at some examples of social media strategies that were hugely successful!

Brainstorm content and social media strategy

Based on your understanding of branding, budget, target audience, KPI goals, and your competitor research on other brands’ strategies, decide what strategy of your own is best for your business! 

Set up your social media marketing strategy tactics

This section will be alllll about strategic social media marketing and planning. Let’s get to it!

Create a content calendar

One of the best ways to help assure a successful content marketing plan and organize and implement your social media marketing strategy is by creating a content calendar. The most important factors in tracking your analytics and finding out what is working are consistency, frequency, and the passing of time.  You’ll have a harder time knowing what works if you don’t have reliable consistent data to track.

Create engaging content

How to accomplish social media marketing strategy on an ongoing basis

Other than actually posting consistently, one of the most important parts of a social media strategy is reviewing what’s working, improving, and re-strategizing. Not everything is going to work, but you learn from the highs and lows, and then you get better each time.

Perform regular social media audits

Whether it’s on a monthly or quarterly basis make sure to review your social media analytics. That way you’re continually staying on top of the data. Doing so helps you see if your social media marketing campaign is on track, along with if your strategy is working. Plus, it sets up discussion points in review sessions

Need help tracking your analytics? Tailwind App offers smarter analytics to track your profile’s performance, inspect your posts to find the top-performing ones, and gives you daily, weekly, and monthly analytics reports!

Have review sessions to reassess and go back to the drawing board to adjust accordingly 

Review sessions are about seeing what is and isn’t working and how to move forward. Bringing other team members in for a session to discuss, review reports, and brainstorm future strategies is the ideal way to accomplish social media strategy on an ongoing basis. Teamwork makes the dream work, am I right?

Here are some ideas on how to start your first, or next brainstorming session:

• “What did you learn from this campaign?”
• “How did your strategy work or not work?”
• “What would you do differently next time?”
• “Did any other competitors do something better while your campaign ran that we should learn from?”

Follow these simple steps and you’ll be sure to take your social media growth and engagement up quite a few notches! Until next time, friends!

FAQs

What does a social media strategy need to contain?

Every business’s details are going to look a little bit different, but the basics of every social media strategy contain the following:

1. Goal setting and business objectives: Why are using social media? What business growth are you trying to achieve with it? How often will you post on these channels?
2. Branding and audience personas: How will your business present itself on social media? How will you figure out your target audience on these channels? How will you use branding and personas to market to them?
3. Competitor research: One of the best places to find ideas is from your competitors. Hashtags they’re using, what their audience looks like, the language they are using, and more.
4. Allocated budget and resources: It’s vital to the longevity of your social media strategy to have your budget and other resources, such as writers and graphics figured out.
5. Content Strategy: Once you have all of your research compiled you will need to plan out all of your content. Will you focus on promoting deals? Are you writing content that spreads your brand awareness? How often are you going to post? How long do you need your posts to be? 
6. KPIs: How are you going to measure what is working and what isn’t? Will you spend the first quarter on growing your following or how many users click through on an ad? Are you more interested in engagement?

What is the best way to generate content for social media?

You can find inspiration for your content from all over the place! Some common areas are:

• Competitor research.
• Following trends on different platforms
• Review your own content to see what was the most successful for you
• Online forums, such as Quora or Reddit can provide vast and interesting ideas for content
• Share polls 
• Leverage influencer marketing
• User-generated content
• Hire an outside writer with expertise in the field

Which social media platform is best for my business goals?

Deciding which social media platform is going to be best for you is going to wholly depend on your already understanding your brand, your voice, and your business goals. Once you have a grasp on that you can then pick the best platforms for you!

• Facebook: More popular with older users. This platform would be best for community engagement. It’s great for promoting blogs, live videos, and speaking in longer form contexts with your followers.
• TikTok: More popular with younger users. This is a visual medium that is all about fast and eye-catching content.
• Instagram: a younger user base like TikTok. This platform is ideal for businesses selling consumer packaged goods, like cosmetics. However, it is still highly favored by businesses of all kinds for promoting what’s new with them, such as new launches or events.
• Youtube: Everyone uses Youtube, it’s great to show off your expertise for your industry, such as a fashion brand uploading a video on Fall trends.
• Pinterest: A visual platform that many niche businesses have found a lot of success on Pinterest. It’s a great place for providing product visuals and details for users’ DIY projects and vision boards.
• Twitter: Ideal for short updates and engagement with followers.

Snapchat: For an audience younger than 35. This platform allows for faster, less polished content that a business can update followers with. Want to tease a new nail polish coming out? Perhaps you have an event you want to promote and show off to followers that couldn’t make it. It’s great for all of these and more!