What is a social media strategy?
A social media strategy is a game plan designed to optimize your presence on social platforms. The strategy covers social posts and advertising and is developed as a guide to help you reach your ultimate goal. The strategic analysis is based on an analysis of your current performance and takes into account,
Among other things:
- Context and highlights
- Business and marketing objectives
- Target audiences
- The brand, product and/or service to be promoted
- Available resources
Why do you need one?
To engage and sell. A solid and well-executed social media strategy allows you to engage in inspiring conversations so you can better serve your target audiences and ultimately generate more sales.
To follow a defined path. A social media strategy helps you follow one clear path so you don’t go off in all directions. Even if your team changes or you’re working with a new agency, the social strategy is your anchor. Without it, you can only create tactics.
To adjust and improve with accountability. Without performance metrics, everything you do becomes obsolete since you don’t know what works and what doesn’t.
To create a reference tool for your teams.Without clear benchmarks and objectives, everyone loses track. The social strategy allows you to coordinate efforts across your communication channels by providing a clear overview. Think of it as a road map to ensure nothing is forgotten or missed along the way.
Who takes the lead?
Once you have a social media strategy in place, you can choose to roll it out internally or outsource to external specialists.
The key to a successful social strategy
Clear objectives, relevant ideas, well-crafted content, targeted audiences and carefully selected platforms that trigger emotions and interactions. All of these elements are the result of a solid performance measurement plan.
Simply put, a social media strategy is a reassuring tool for you, your team and your senior management. The strategy is your action plan. It shows you’ve done your homework and that you know where you’re headed.
How does it work?
Developing a strategy involves the following steps:
A. Perform an audit of the competition and audience
- Evaluate your needs to understand the objectives, positioning and potential issues.
- Perform an audit or analysis of your existing social performance.
- Gather informationbased on relevant documentation, followed by an analysis of the consumer’s buying cycle (customer’s journey) and a summary analysis of the competition.
- Perform an analysis of the brand—its value proposition, selling points, image, etc. The goal is to better understand the consumer’s needs, objectives and buying cycle (what they’re doing right now and what they want to do in the future).
B. Develop a relevant, creative and sustainable content strategy
- Develop the strategy. We define the best platforms to achieve your objectives, the content to be created, the tactics to adopt, the team to mobilize, the ad campaigns to execute, the budget to respect, and the timeline to execute the strategy.
- Present the strategy. At this key stage, we collaborate to confirm which direction to take and to make any changes needed to ensure the strategy is as solid as possible.
C. Roll out a structured and compelling social media strategy
The strategy provides you with clear paths, an editorial style and examples of content and tactics to be deployed, so that the strategy can then be executed internally and/or in collaboration with an agency.