What Is a Social Media Strategy?

Social media marketing is now a must for any brand that aims to thrive in the current business environment. Gone are the days when a social media strategy was just an option that a brand could choose not to take. One can contest that social media marketing is the most relevant type of marketing today.

The average person checks their smartphone an average of 96 times per day. Surveys reveal that people mostly open their social media apps when they unlock their phones.

Social media now has the lion’s share of what people expose themselves to. TV, print, radio, and older conventional advertising venues have taken a backseat to social media’s relevance and reach.

Although social media is relatively young compared to its other media predecessors, launching a social media campaign is what your brand should choose over any other marketing medium.

What Is a Social Media Strategy?

So, what is a social media strategy? A social media strategy is your plan of action in tackling how you want your brand to have social media presence that is consistent with your goals.

Having total control over how you tackle social media can be an exciting endeavor if you know what you want. In essence, a social media strategy is the organized embodiment of your social media campaign ideas that you realize in a given timeline.

Why Do You Need a Social Media Strategy?

You need a social media strategy because social media is now the most relevant media outlet today. TV, print, and radio have lesser reach compared to the all-mighty internet and everybody connected to it has a social media account that they use multiple times daily.

Obtaining interaction, business leads, brand recognition, high conversion rates, and market opinion depends on having a reliable social media plan.

Having a strategy rewards you with setting goals. Having a social media strategy forces you to make sure of what you want your brand to achieve on social media. With a social media strategy, you draft a schema for goals that you are obliged to accomplish. 

This schema will also be the measuring stick to determine how well you are doing about achieving your social media goals.  As your brand tackles social media marketing challenges, you will be able to identify performance indicators and will be able to tweak your strategy for more effective actions.

What Makes a Social Media Strategy Good?

Having one is a very good place to start. If you dive into the social media game with just a vague plan, then you are bound to fail. Having no plan will result in failing to reap the myriad of benefits your brand should be enjoying from being on social media.

Nowadays, the internet can help you find lots of brands on social media, and you can choose the best social media strategy example if you make some research. But do not be scared to create your plan from scratch, as you can always tweak it. As you pick up a lot of useful things along the way, your social media strategy will evolve into a strategy that will be best suited for your brand’s specific needs.

If you want tangible guidelines for a good social media strategy, we have here a list of generally beneficial key qualities in a social media strategy:

Realistic

Your strategy should be realistic. Assess your brand and its capabilities, and honestly, set achievable actions and goals that you can accomplish.

Specific

Set the parameters of the environment your will be operating in.

• Name the social media platform/s you will operate in. (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, etc.)
• Ascertain the content type your brand will be posting. (Vlogs, educational videos, memes, infographics, etc.)

Has Personality

Be human and have a personality.  Post as if your brand was a real person with unique opinions, quirks, and feelings.

Consistent

Lofty goals are not realized without consistent strategy implementation. Make sure that your brand always follows through with your set social media strategy.

Dynamic

The world of social media evolves extremely fast. Get ready to adapt and adjust constantly to what it would require of you.

Trendy

It always pays to follow trends, as it lets you piggyback off the popularity of something already popular.

Bold

Try to be the trend yourself, sometimes. Try different things until something sticks and becomes viral. Discover for yourself what makes something viral.

Essential Steps for Building a Successful Social Media Strategy

With the exposure that rewards your brand with increased relevance to your target audience, the question of how to create a social media strategy depends on how you want it done. But do not overlook the fact that some essential steps must be present in every social media strategy.

Identify your target audience

This has to be the most important step in building a social media strategy. Everything will be dictated by this step. Your audience will dictate what voice your social media account will have.

For example, a target demographic like younger people will dictate that you reach them through trendier platforms like TikTok with trendy content that your target audience will appreciate. 

Do not post to go viral 

Of course, you want to go viral. But if that is your foremost fixation as a rookie social media strategist, then you will tend to post mere attempts that your niche will not appreciate.

Post content that is sincerely targeted to interest your target niche. Only this way will you organically reach viral. Do your job first, and being viral will follow.

Take care of your community 

Interact with your community to inform instead of impressing. Add value to your niche, and your niche will reward you with their loyalty in the form of exposure and interaction.

Make Social Media Approach More Intuitive

There are no hard and fast rules in social media strategy for business. The trendiness can come from anyone and from anywhere, and being viral is the reward that the internet bestows to whoever sincerely adds to its wellspring of value.

Make your marketing efforts count by listening to your instinct. Complement this with an ever-visible and consistent approach, and you just won’t lose in this most relevant face of advertising.