In the social media industry, the word strategy gets tossed around a whole lot, but do you as a social media manager really know how to create a killer content strategy for your clients that gets them fast and great results? Well, after reading this, we promise you’re going to feel confident in creating a social media marketing strategy for clients.
Benefits of Social Media Strategy
Here is how your brand and business will benefit from having a defined social media strategy.
- Increases Brand Awareness and Engagement: Social media is the most utilized platform for content consumption, as over half of consumers (53%) say they’ve consumed more content via social media over the past couple of years. A good strategy allows a brand to maintain an image that is reinforced among the intended target audience. A new player like Figo Pet Insurance followed the strategy of putting four to five TikTok videos in the market every week, where it would review the messaging based on the responses from their audiences, and it went viral. It helps build trust with a brand.
- Builds Brand Trust: A strong social media following significantly impacts customer trust, particularly in the minds of young consumers. In fact, a Q2 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey revealed that 78% of consumers believe that a brand’s social media presence impacts their trust in the brand. Consistent quality posts establish trust, while inconsistent posts or mixed messages can breed skepticism and undermine credibility.
- Aligns with Measuring Performance: This strategy lays a foundation for measuring return on investment from efforts by aligning KPIs with strategic business objectives. Thus, you can present the success of your social initiatives more convincingly. Suppose the strategic objectives are to increase market share among parents. You would create targeted content and track performance over time.
- Generates Revenue: Social media is becoming a first point of discovery for products, with 81% of consumers using it to research a potential buy. As social commerce continues to grow, brands can use social to meet customers through a full funnel experience, which can generate more leads and, ultimately, more sales.
- Increases Competitive Intelligence: By the application of social listening tools, a much better insight into share of voice is received than by competitors. In short, it provides your brand with an understanding of its visibility and market share. A very important metric for ascertaining visibility and market share and for helping brands adjust and fine-tune their strategies according to what’s going on in the market.
In short, a holistic social media strategy is priceless in terms of brand awareness, building credibility and trust, performance measurement, revenue generation, and competitive insights. Thus, strategic investments can position brands better in the sea of noise that exists digitally.
How to create a killer content strategy
- Research for Competitors: Now a great portion of creating a strategy in general is going to be research. While this may seem boring, this is really going to help set you up for success because you need to know what you’re working with. There are a couple of different ways you can conduct research. One of the most common ways is through social media itself, right where you’re looking at different accounts in their industry, their own accounts, but you need to gather data on a lot of different aspects that have to do with the client. Use tools like Semrush to conduct research on social media using their social media tool.
- Setting the Objectives: The expectations should be clearly set with your client in terms of their business goals and how social media can help them achieve them. These goals are going to shape your content strategy from head to toe.
- Audit Current Activity: Before designing new content, it will also be important to audit the client’s social media activity to date. Review previous posts and discuss the engagement and performance metrics of such past posts for an understanding of what works and what doesn’t. In this regard, for example, one may be able to analyze through saves and follows as well for the types of posts that are most likely to meet the objectives of reaching certain goals.
- Create a Content Funnel: Now that you’ve used the insights from business goals, competitors, and past content performance, it is time to create a content funnel. A content funnel involves creating content based on the different stages of a buyer’s journey. This often includes:
- Top of the funnel: Content designed to attract attention, e.g., fun reels, engaging trends.
- Middle of the funnel: Educational content, which can help establish trust and demonstrate expertise.
- Bottom of the funnel: Promotional content; intent: converts the audience to customers. A well-formed content funnel duly takes a potential customer through every step, beginning with discovery and ending in the conversion stage.
- Content Pillars: To make the process of content writing easier, you can use content pillars. These are big themes that help summarize the client’s brand and vision. Each pillar can have subtopics under which you are free to write on many varied subjects while at all times ensuring relevant consistency. For instance, one of the content pillars can be “social media strategy, which would spread to include a subject ranging from how best to use Instagram to tips on the management of social media.”
- Experiment and calibrate: Always leave scope for experimentation. Every platform is different, and whatever works on Instagram does not work well on LinkedIn or YouTube. Keep an eye on your performance tracking, then experiment with new content ideas and let the data tell you where to adjust.
Conclusion: Review and Improve Your Social Media Strategy
Now you probably have a pretty good idea of why having well-defined social media strategy is so important. However, you must adapt and refine it and make adjustments as the year unfolds. Being able to track the metrics of your campaign in real time really allows for small-scale adjustments that ultimately lead to improvement in the overall performance of your social media program.
Remember, social media marketing is more a trial-and-error process. So, regular evaluation will make you proactive and reactive to performance data, maintaining the pace of competition and out in front of your audience. Shared insights with the team also promote accountability while focusing the attention of personnel on the dramatic difference your strategy can make.
Data-driven decision-making allows you now to accurately assess if your KPIs are in line with the broader objectives of your company or if it’s time to make some changes. Leverage social data to further refine your strategy and ensure steady growth.
In addition, Viral Omega can also help your brand gain exposure. We work together for a strong strategy that resonates with your audience. From posts that entice individuals and boost your visibility, we ensure that the branding is aligned and supports business objectives but is targeting the right people. Reach out today!
And that’s a wrap on your social media strategy guide!
The 50-30-20 rule suggests that 50% of your posts should focus on engaging your audience with interactive or entertaining content, 30% should provide informative or educational material, and the remaining 20% can be used to promote your products or services.
Authenticity and transparency are the only two things you can do to connect meaningfully with your audience. Focus on how you can contribute positively to the community and offer insightful information to conversations happening inside your network. Become a trusted participant and add value over yet one more promotion of your brand.
It works in this methodology by commenting on 5 posts and liking 5 posts within 5 minutes. This way, you can manage to increase your engagement on social media, which further increases the traffic and possibly could lead to more sales for your company.
