Social Media Strategy Guide
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Managing social media is challenging but doing so without a strategy is dangerous. This guide lays out a clear format for organizing digital communications.
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Social Media Strategy Guide
- 2. Defining Social Media Strategy A social media strategy focuses your communications activities. You may still see social media growth and interaction however, without a defined strategy, the meaning of the growth and interactions will be unclear. The strategy should be shared with, created with and supported by decision makers in your business, as it should complement business goals.
- 3. Writing a Social Media Strategy An effective social media strategy has four parts: Goals, Audience Analysis, Activities, and Capacity, or GAAC. Goals: Select 2-‐5 objectives Audience analysis: Provide a well-‐researched overview of audience Activities: Describe, by platform, activities that will take to support strategy goals Capacity: Identify time and resources needed to implement that strategy
- 4. Rating Your Social Media Strategy A weak social media strategy explains incongruous goals and what platforms will assist in reaching them. A good social media strategy explains your related goals and actions that will help you reach them. A great social media strategy explains related goals, target audience, related actions by platform, and required resources.
- 5. Goals Identify 2-‐5 business related goals. For simple goals, think in terms of a 12-‐month period. For multi-‐stage goals, plan along a 12-‐ to 36-‐ month timeline. Account for implementation challenges and make sure your team can collect information to determine what is working. Choosing Goals Guiding Questions: • What are your business goals? • During the last quarter, how much growth have you seen on your existing social media channels?
- 6. Use existing performance data, such as follower growth and sales, to research sensible goals. Good goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-‐bound, or SMART. There are generally two types of goals: qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative • Increase social media mentions among Philadelphia pizza delivery customers • Serve as a secondary channel to address customer service issues, addressing issues within 24 hours Quantitative • Increase year-‐over-‐year social media sales by10% • Decrease negative social media mentions by 40%
- 7. Audience Analysis This is challenging because it requires specificity. Consider the following to identify your audience: Profession: Each year, Americans spend around 2,000 hours at work. That impacts when we wake, sleep and how we spend our income. Income: What you make impacts how you live. This also impacts what the audience expect from, talks about, and interacts with a product/business. Age: Think about these groups in 10-‐20-‐year groups, e.g. 15-‐25 or 35-‐55, to find your core audience(s).
- 8. Location: Is your audience local or international few countries? This informs content creation. Gender: Is your audience predominantly male or female? This will affect your tone, colors, fonts, and messaging. Personas are a helpful way to think about your target audience. Here is a useful Buyer Persona Template from HubSpot to guide the exercise.
- 9. Activities Describe relevant social media platforms and activities. Be clear about how many times you will create content each week, 3-‐5 times on Facebook, or each day, 2-‐3 posts on Twitter. Social media platforms are large enough now that a “be-‐ everywhere” strategy is not optimal. According to VaynerMedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk, the fastest growing demographic on Instagram is women over 40. If your target audience is in middle or high school, plan to incorporate Snapchat or Tumblr.
- 10. Finally, set growth goals with soft deadlines and review periods, such as a semi-‐annual review. You will need to look at your business’s past performance and competitors to determine reliable growth goals.
- 11. Capacity Small and medium businesses are investing more in social media but are typically understaffed in the area of communication. Explaining what you need to be successful aligns expectations with goals and goals with necessary resources.
- 12. Be transparent about the number of weekly hours to implement, advertising budget, necessary analytics or management tools, training and additional staff support. If you are requesting financial support to implement the strategy, state this.
- 13. Getting Buy-‐In Developing and implementing a social media strategy can be a fun or laborious process but involves teamwork. Here are few tips to improve the experience: • Celebrate milestones • Involve decision makers because they will advocate for the plan • Keep management updated about progress • Ask for feedback about your strategy from allies • Schedule regular check-‐ins to discuss updates
- 14. Bonus: Five Indispensible Social Media Resources Social Media Usage: 2005-‐2015 (Pew) Social Media Campaign Strategy (Hootsuite) Understanding Social Media Analytics (Deloitte Digital) A Guide to Creating Personas (HubSpot) Internet Trends (Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Beyers)