Navigating the world of social media can be overwhelming, which is why you need to have a social media strategy that will help you identify your social goals, and how you can optimise your strategy for results.
You may have done this when you started out in your business and it is okay to revisit this because your business evolves and grows every year.
Not forgetting social media platforms these days evolve at a rapid pace, so we need to constantly tweak and improve on our social media strategy. Even if you have one in place.
#1: Establish Your Goals
Let’s start off with the first thing that you need to do for your social media strategy which is to establish your goals. I’m going to give you a hint, the number of followers is not what you should be looking at or even focusing on. You need to identify what you want to get out of the social media platforms.
Each of your social media strategy goals should follow the SMART method. SMART is an acronym for the words being specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.
Some of the examples of your goals can be generating leads and sales, increasing traffic to your website, or a specific section of your website, growing your brand awareness or a community and even generating engagement and conversations. I want you to think about what it is that you want to achieve from being on social media platforms.
#2: Define Your Ideal Client
This is really important if you want to turn your social media followers into clients for your business. To define your ideal client, you will need to create a client avatar. This will enable you to know exactly who your audience is, so you can create the content specifically for them.
Here are some of the few key things that you can write down for your ideal client. You can give your ideal client any name that you feel called to. It can be Jane, Sally or Rose. Every time that you’re writing something, or you’re writing a piece of content, you are talking to them. They will be your ideal client that understands and resonates with.
Next one is age, marital status, location, job title, or even industry that he or she is in. You can also add their interests, goals and values or sources of information like where do they hang out, their challenges or pain points in life. There are so much more like a huge list. Dig deeper and get to know your ideal client inside and out.
#3: Choose Your Social Media Platforms
I know there are a ton of social media platforms out there. You must be wondering, which one should I be on? Which one can I get the most of it?
I understand if you want to be on all social media platforms because you feel that it is going to get you more eyeballs. This is one of the mistakes that I made when I had the beauty salon, I was on all of the social media platforms, but didn’t have time to be consistent on every single one of them.
That was about 13 years ago when social media had just started and yet there were still so many social media platforms. There wasn’t even Canva that time so I was spending so much time creating graphics individually for all of the platforms, just to be seen everywhere. But I didn’t have a goal, I didn’t have an intention. I just wanted to be everywhere and that means more sales for me. BUT I WAS WRONG.
Once you have defined your ideal client avatar, you have a better insight into which platforms you will most likely want to reach them on. This will also enable you to start mapping out your strategy for each network. You can take a look at the following platforms. It can be Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Snapchat, and it’s up to you.
Choose one main platform where you will create the content, build relationships, and engage in that community. If you are looking to be on other platforms, you can take that main piece of content from your main platform and repurpose it natively for each platform as the language on each platform can be different and so your audience can understand your content.
For example on Instagram, you’ll be using the words like “Link in bio”, whereas, on LinkedIn and Facebook, you wouldn’t be using words like these, as these are not applicable on those platforms. You need to create the content natively and not just copy and paste.
Cross-posting just doesn’t work with your audience because what they want to see is you genuinely putting out the content for them to read. For me, Instagram is my main platform because of the variety of features that’s available to reach more of my ideal clients organically.
Remember that social media is a marathon and not a race. Don’t feel demotivated because you have a small following. The number doesn’t equal the sales or clients that you get. You can have a strong and mighty small following.
Always remember that the number doesn’t equal the sales that you’ll be getting. Once you understand the social media platforms that you’ll be on, then it’s time to map out your content strategy. So what type of content will you be sharing with your ideal client?
#4: Create Your Content Pillars
A content pillar is also known as themes which you create as the foundation for your overall content strategy. You can think about what it is that you want to share, that brings the value to your ideal clients.
For example, if you are a coach, it could be around entrepreneurship, mindset, tips, and hacks. All you need to do right now is to sit down and just write out what are your content pillars for your business.
When it comes to content, I understand that the first thing that comes to your mind is that you need clients, because you need the revenue in order to sustain your business and to grow and scale. But how do we really write content that converts and helps us achieve our goals?
Another mistake that I made in the early days of my beauty salon business was writing salesy content. All I did was share promotional activities, it was all about discounts, membership and the services that we have.
I did not share anything that was valuable, inspiring, or even educational. Things didn’t work out great with that strategy so I went on to learn more about social media and creating content and turn things around. I spent my time after work hours (after 8 pm) diving deep into everything social media.
I follow the 80-20 rule. It means that 80% of your posts should be about informing, educating or even entertaining your audience. One of the best content that you can create is motivational and inspirational.
It can be in the form of a quote, or storytelling, like sharing your personal stories that your ideal client can relate and resonate with.
The balance of the 20% is that you can directly promote your brand services and offers you can talk about. You need your ideal clients to understand how it is that you can help them and by sharing what you have to offer.
Content comes in two parts, first is the caption and the second one is the medium that you’ll be using to create the entire social media posts. There are different types of media that you can use.
The first one is videos, this is one of the best media that you can use as it works great across all platforms. It’ll also get you more organic reach, especially with Instagram Reels and TikTok.
The second one is the images. It can be carousel images or shareable sort of images with quotes. Another one is blog posts. If you have a website, you can share your content through blog posts, or you can share articles on social media feeds like on LinkedIn or in Medium.
There are also some free resources that you can share. I mean who doesn’t love anything for free, right? It can be an Ebook or a checklist, anything that your audience can appreciate and get value out of it.
#5: Create A Content Calendar
Planning content for weeks in advance can be overwhelming, which is why you need a content calendar to help you keep track of what you are sharing online.
On your content calendar, you can list down the following things:
- Determine your posting times to plug in the content pillars for your posting.
- Plan any sort of you customise posts for each channel
- Plan the type of media that’s going to be used for the content that you’re sharing. It can be videos, static images or carousel images.
- See an overview of your content plan.
- Keep track of your social media posts to avoid reposting the same stuff. You can repost but you do need to look at your numbers, see if that post is worth reposting again.
If you have no idea how to create a content calendar, I have a free content calendar template that you can actually use and customise to your liking. So just DM me on Instagram (or here on LinkedIn), and we can take it from there.
#6: Determine The System that you Need
There are many sorts of tools that can actually help you. Investing in a good social media management tool is a lifesaver when it comes to managing multiple social media accounts, planning and even scheduling posts ahead of time. It also helps you save more time, so you can actually focus on your zone of genius.
There is a range of tools that are available and I recommend you to check out the following: a social media scheduler, a graphic or image creation tool, a hashtag research tool and you can even look around for a title or headline generator. If you do have a team, or even if it’s just you, you can use project management and communication tool.
It helps you organise your projects and it breaks down into tasks and activities. Even if it’s a team of just two or three, it is great to be organised and streamlined so everybody can communicate and bring everything together.
Communication is key when you have a team in order to get things rolling. If your project management tool doesn’t have a communication feature within it, then you will probably need to have a look at communication to where you can talk in real-time.
#7: Monitor & Analyse
There is no set social media strategy for which will help you succeed with your goals. From time to time, you will have to analyse and understand what works with your audiences. It is also different for every business. For example, an online coaching business A’s strategy will differ from business B.
You need to create a monthly social media report and record down the data to know the numbers and understand the figures. By doing that, you can improve on the next month’s strategy by tweaking it. You can stop doing what doesn’t work and keep implementing what works. You can throw in new things to understand and see if your audience actually likes that sort of content.
It’s quite a bit of trial and error with social media, it’s really coming down to a point of understanding your ideal client or your audiences.
A great social media strategy is a constant work in progress and it will change when there is an update with the social media platforms. With creating a social media strategy at the start of each year, you are essentially building a strong foundation and an outline of the goals to be achieved throughout the year.
Learning without putting action to it will not help you move the needle in your business. I would love for you to take a pen and paper, write down the seven steps and create your social media strategy for the year 2021.
P.S.: Need more clarity on your social media strategy for your business? Spots are open for my SUPER 60 – 60 minutes deep-dive strategy session to help you gain more clarity and achieve your goals for the new year. Schedule a call now – https://calendly.com/kellytan/60min
