How to Create a Solid Social Media Strategy

I started marketing using social media back in 2014 for my digital magazine, Virtue & Memoirs. These days, in addition to the magazine, I market my copywriting and brand storytelling business Chayil Media Publishing using social media – and I also create social media strategies for clients that I write social media content for. And lastly, I market my personal brand using social media as well.

So where do you start? Well, let’s dig into everything in this blog post.

Pick your platform.

You need to pick your platform, and this step is pretty simple.

Is this a place that aligns with your brand? You want to be where your followers are—and not somewhere else that may or may not be useful for the same purpose.

Follow people and brands that align with your mission

This is a fairly obvious one, but still worth mentioning: follow people who are relevant to your brand. If you have a service-based business, connect with people who are your ideal clients and people who compliment your brand.

For instance, if you’re a website designer, connect with graphic designers. Since, I’m a copywriter and story strategist, I love connecting with website designers who I can possibly collaborate with or refer people to in the future. Additionally, I love connecting to people who are ideal clients.

Understand your audience.

You should know who you are talking to and understand the needs of your audience. Simply put, the content you produce on social media should speak directly to your ideal client or customer. Now, you’re probably wondering, “Danielle, how do I figure this out?”

Well, you simply need to ask questions. A great way to do this is by jumping into Facebook groups to ask questions about what your ideal client or customer is struggling with – or even finding out what they like best when it comes to a problem you solve.

You can also jump into these groups and use the search bar to find out everything you need to know. Type in a keyword associated with what you do and another word like frustrated or struggle. You’ll see quite a few conversations pulled up from your search.

Conduct surveys with customers or prospects. Ask them for feedback about why they follow or engage with certain accounts on social media, what types of posts inspire them to interact with your brand online, etc.

These surveys can be done on sites like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms.

Create an editorial calendar.

The next step is to create an editorial calendar that includes the days and times you will post, as well as the topics you will cover, and images you will use.

Make sure your editorial calendar is in sync with your marketing goals. This will help ensure that your social media strategy aligns with the rest of your brand’s mission.

Now, while it’s important to need to post regularly and consistently, you also need to make sure that what you’re posting is worth sharing. The key is finding the right balance between quantity and quality.

It’s important to have a good mix of different types of content: video, images, carousel posts, etc. This will help you reach an audience across all platforms while remaining relevant at all times.

Track and analyze your results.

Once you’ve put your social media strategy into action, it’s time to evaluate the results. You’ll need to know if your plans are working.

There are several ways to track and analyze performance:

Use analytics tools such as Facebook Insights, Google Analytics, and Twitter Analytics. These tools help you understand how many people are seeing posts on each platform as well as what content is reaching them (and what isn’t).

I personally, use a scheduling tool called Loomly to track and analyze my results.

When you have a solid social media strategy in place, you’ll be able to build authentic relationships with potential clients or customers – and generate sales.

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