A social media marketing strategy is a summary of everything you plan to do and hope to achieve on social media. It guides your actions and lets you know whether you’re succeeding or failing.
The more specific your plan is, the more effective it will be. Keep it concise. Don’t make it so lofty and broad that it’s unattainable or impossible to measure.
In this post, we’ll walk you through a nine-step plan to create a winning social media strategy of your own.
How to create a social media marketing strategy in 9 steps
Read on for detailed steps to creating a social media strategy. Or, watch this video where Hootsuite’s Senior Manager of Social Media Marketing, Amanda, guides you through our free social media marketing strategy template, step by step:
ep 1. Choose social media marketing goals that align with business objectives
Set S.M.A.R.T. goals
The first step to creating a winning social media strategy is to establish your objectives and goals. Without goals, you have no way to measure success and return on investment (ROI).
Each of your goals should be:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound
This is the S.M.A.R.T. goal framework. It will guide your actions and ensure they lead to real business results.
Here’s an example of a S.M.A.R.T. goal:
“We will use Twitter for customer support and lower our average response rate to under two hours by the end of the quarter.”
Track meaningful metrics
Vanity metrics like some followers and likes are easy to track, but it’s hard to prove their real value. Instead, focus on things like engagement, click-through, and conversion rates.
For inspiration, take a look at these 19 essential social media metrics.
You may want to track different goals for different social media networks, or even different uses for each network.
For example, if you use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your website, you would measure click-throughs. If Instagram is for brand awareness, you might track the number of Instagram Story views. And if you advertise on Facebook, cost-per-click (CPC) is a common success metric.
Social media goals should align with your overall marketing objectives. This makes it easier to show the value of your work and secure buy-in from your boss.
Start developing a successful social media marketing plan by writing down at least three goals for social media.
Step 2. Learn everything you can about your audience
Create audience personas
Knowing who your audience is and what they want to see on social media is key. That way you can create content that they will like, comment on, and share. It’s also critical if you want to turn social media followers into customers for your business.
When it comes to your target customer, you should know things like:
Age
Location
average income
Typical job title or industry
Interests
etc.
Here’s a simple guide and template for creating audience/buyer personas.
Get to know your fans, followers, and customers as real people with real wants and needs, and you will know how to target and engage them on social media.
Gather data
Don’t make assumptions. Think Facebook is a better network for reaching Baby Boomers than Millennials? Well, the numbers show that Facebook’s largest age demographic is 30-49.
Social media analytics can also provide a ton of valuable information about who your followers are, where they live, and how they interact with your brand on social media. These insights allow you to refine your strategy and better target your audience.
Jugnoo, an Uber-like service for auto-rickshaws in India, used Facebook Analytics to learn that 90% of their users who referred other customers were between 18- and 34-years-old, and 65% of that group was using Android. They used that information to target their ads, resulting in a 40% lower cost per referral.
Check out our guide to using social media analytics and the tools you need to track them.
Step 3. Get to know your competition
Odds are your competitors are already using social media, and that means you can learn from what they’re doing.
Conduct a competitive analysis
A competitive analysis allows you to understand who the competition is and what they’re doing well (and not so well). You’ll get a good sense of what’s expected in your industry, which will help you set social media targets of your own.
It will also help you spot opportunities.
Maybe one of your competitors is dominant on Facebook, for example, but has put little effort into Twitter or Instagram. You might want to focus on the networks where your audience is underserved, rather than trying to win fans away from a dominant player.
Use social media listening
Social listening is another way to keep an eye on your competitors.
Do searches of the competition’s company name, account handles, and other relevant keywords on social media. Find out what they’re sharing and what other people are saying about them.
Pro tip: Use Hootsuite Streams to monitor relevant keywords and accounts in real-time.
As you track, you may notice shifts in how your competitors and industry leaders are using social media. You may come across new, exciting trends. Or, you might spot a specific post or campaign that really hits the mark—or totally bombs.
Use this kind of intel to inform your social media marketing strategy.
Step 4. Do a social media audit
If you’re already using social media, take stock of your efforts so far. Ask yourself the following questions:
What’s working, and what’s not?
Who is engaging with you?
Which networks does your target audience use?
How does your social media presence compare to the competition?
Once you collect that information, you’ll be ready to start thinking about ways to improve.
We’ve created an easy-to-follow social media audit guide and template to walk you through each step of this process.
Your audit should give you a clear picture of what purpose each of your social accounts serves. If the purpose of an account isn’t clear, think about whether it’s worth keeping.
To help you decide, ask yourself the following questions:
Is my audience here?
If so, how are they using this platform?
Can I use this account to help achieve my goals?
Asking these tough questions will keep your social media strategy focused.
Look for impostor accounts
During the audit, you may discover fake accounts using your business name or the names of your products.
These imposters can be harmful to your brand—never mind that they’re capturing followers that should be yours.
Report them.
You may want to get your accounts verified too to ensure your fans know they are dealing with the real you.
Here’s how to get verified on:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Step 5. Set up accounts and improve profiles
Decide which networks to use
As you decide which social networks to use, you will also need to define your strategy for each.
Benefit Cosmetics’ social media manager, Angela Purcaro, told eMarketer: “For our makeup tutorials … we’re all about Snapchat and Instagram Stories. Twitter, on the other hand, is designated for customer service.”
Hootsuite’s social team even designates different purposes for formats within networks. On Instagram, for example, they use the feed to post high-quality educational infographics and product announcements and Stories to cover live events or quick social media updates.
Pro tip: Write out a mission statement for each network. A one-sentence declaration to keep you focused on a specific goal.
Example: “We will use Twitter for customer support to keep email and call volumes down.”
One more: “We will use LinkedIn for promoting and sharing our company culture to help with recruitment and employee advocacy.”
If you can’t create a solid mission statement for a particular social media channel, you may want to ask yourself if it’s worth it.
Set up your profiles
Once you’ve decided which networks to focus on, it’s time to create your profiles. Or improve existing ones so they align with your strategy.
Make sure you fill out all profile fields
Include keywords people would use to search for your business
Use consistent branding (logos, images, etc.) across networks so your profiles are easily recognizable
Pro tip: Use high-quality images that follow the recommended dimensions for each network. Check out our always-up-to-date social media image size cheat sheet for quick reference.
We’ve also got step-by-step guides for each network to walk you through the process:
Create a Facebook business page
Create an Instagram business account
Create a TikTok account
Create a Twitter business account
Create a Snapchat account
Create a LinkedIn Company Page
Create a Pinterest business account
Create a YouTube channel
Don’t let this list overwhelm you. Remember, it’s better to use fewer channels well than to stretch yourself thin trying to maintain a presence on every network.
Step 6. Find inspiration
While your brand must be unique, you can still draw inspiration from other businesses that are great on social.
Social media success stories
You can usually find these on the business section of the social network’s website. (Here’s Facebook’s, for example.)
Case studies can offer valuable insights that you can apply to your own social media plan.
Award-winning accounts and campaigns
You could also check out the winners of The Facebook Awards or The Shorty Awards for examples of brands that are at the top of their social media game.
For learning and a laugh, check out Fridge-Worthy, Hootsuite’s bi-weekly awards show highlighting brands doing smart and clever things on social media.
Your favorite brands on social media
Who do you enjoy following on social media? What do they do that compels people to engage and share their content?
National Geographic, for example, is one of the best on Instagram, combining stunning visuals with compelling captions.
Then there’s Shopify. The eCommerce brand uses Facebook to sell themselves by showcasing customer stories and case studies
Notice that each of these accounts has a consistent voice, tone, and style. That’s key to letting people know what to expect from your feed. That is, why should they follow you? What’s in it for them?
Consistency also helps keep your content on brand even if you have multiple people on your social media team.
For more on this, read our guide on establishing a compelling brand voice on social media.
Ask your followers
Consumers can also offer social media inspiration.
What are your target customers talking about online? What can you learn about their wants and needs?
If you have existing social channels, you could also ask your followers what they want from you. Just make sure that you follow through and deliver what they ask for.
Step 7. Create a social media content calendar
Sharing great content is essential, of course, but it’s equally important to have a plan in place for when you’ll share content to get the maximum impact.
Your social media content calendar also needs to account for the time you spend interacting with the audience (although you need to allow for some spontaneous engagement as well).
Set your posting schedule
Your social media content calendar lists the dates and times at which you will publish types of content on each channel. It’s the perfect place to plan all of your social media activities—from images, link sharing, and re-shares of user-generated content to blog posts and videos. It includes both your day-to-day posting and content for social media campaigns.
Your calendar also ensures your posts are spaced out appropriately and published at the best times to post.
Pro tip: You can plan your whole content calendar and get recommended best times to post on every network based on your past engagement rate, impressions, or link click data in Hootsuite.
Hootsuite Analytics best time to publish
Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish feature
Determine the right content mix
Make sure your content strategy and calendar reflect the mission statement you’ve assigned to each social profile so that everything you post is working to support your business goals.
You might decide that:
50% of content will drive traffic back to your website
25% of content will be curated from other sources
20% of content will support lead-generation goals (newsletter signups, ebook downloads, etc.)
5% of content will be about your company culture
Placing these different post types in your content calendar will ensure you maintain the right mix.
If you’re starting from scratch and you’re not sure what types of content to post, try the 80-20 rule:
80% of your posts should inform, educate, or entertain your audience
20% can directly promote your brand.
an infographic showing the 80/20 rule for content in a social media marketing strategy
You could also try the social media content marketing rule of thirds:
One-third of your content promotes your business, converts readers, and generates profit.
One-third of your content shares ideas and stories from thought leaders in your industry or like-minded businesses.
One-third of your content is personal interactions with your audience
infographic showing the social media content marketing rule of thirds
Don’t post too much or too little
If you’re starting a social media marketing strategy from scratch, you may not have figured out how often to post to each network for a maximum engagement yet.
Post too frequently and you risk annoying your audience. But, if you post too little, you risk looking like you’re not worth following.
Start with these posting frequency recommendations:
Instagram (feed): 3-7 times per week
Facebook: 1-2 times per day
Twitter: 1-5 times per day
LinkedIn: 1-5 times per day
infographic showing posting frequency recommendations for social media
Pro tip: Once you have your social media content calendar planned out, use a scheduling tool to prepare messages in advance rather than updating constantly throughout the day.
We might be biased, but we think Hootsuite is the best social media scheduler. You can schedule posts to every network and the intuitive calendar view gives you a full picture of all your social activities each week.
Here’s a quick video overview of how scheduling works in Hootsuite’s post composing tool.
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Step 8. Create compelling content
Remember those mission statements you created for each channel in Step 5? Well, it’s time to go a bit deeper, a.k.a. provide some examples of the type of content you’ll post to fulfill your mission on each network.
If you’re not sure what to post, here’s a long list of social media content ideas to get you started.
The idea here is to:
Keep your content aligned with the purpose of each network;
Show other stakeholders (if applicable) what kind of content they can expect to see on each network.
This last point especially will help you avoid any tension when your colleagues want to know why you haven’t posted their case study/whitepaper/blog post to TikTok yet. It’s not in the strategy, Linda!
Ideally, you will generate content types that are both suited to the network and the purpose you’ve set out for that network.
For example, you wouldn’t want to waste time posting brand awareness videos on Twitter if you’ve designated that channel for primarily customer support. And you wouldn’t want to post super polished corporate video ads to TikTok, as users expect to see short, unpolished videos on that platform.
It might take some testing overtime to figure out which type of content works best on which type of network, so prepare to update this section frequently.
This brings us to Step 9.
Step 9. Track performance and adjust your social media strategy accordingly
Your social media marketing strategy is a hugely important document for your business, and you can’t assume you’ll get it exactly right on the first try. As you start to implement your plan and track your results, you may find that some strategies don’t work as well as you’d anticipated, while others are working even better than expected.
Look at performance metrics
In addition to the analytics within each social network (see Step 2), you can use UTM parameters to track social visitors as they move through your website, so you can see exactly which social posts drive the most traffic to your website.
Re-evaluate, test, and do it all again
Once this data starts coming in, use it to re-evaluate your strategy regularly. You can also use this information to test different posts, social marketing campaigns, and strategies against one another. Constant testing allows you to understand what works and what doesn’t, so you can refine your social media marketing strategy in real-time.
You’ll want to check the performance of all your channels at least once a week and get to know the basics of social media reporting so you can track your growth over time.
Pro tip: If you use Hootsuite, you can review the performance of all your posts on every network in one place. Once you get the hang of checking your analytics, you may even want to customize different reports to show specific metrics over a variety of different periods.
social media analytics report in Hootsuite
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Surveys can also be a great way to find out how well your social media strategy is working. Ask your followers, email list, and website visitors whether you’re meeting their needs and expectations, and what they’d like to see more of. Then make sure to deliver on what they tell you.
Finalizing your social media strategy
Spoiler alert: nothing is final.
Social media moves fast. New networks emerge others go through demographic shifts.
Your business will go through periods of change as well.
All of this means that your social media marketing strategy should be a living document that you review and adjust as needed. Refer to it often to stay on track, but don’t be afraid to make changes so that it better reflects new goals, tools, or plans.
When you update your social strategy, make sure to let everyone on your team know. That way they can all work together to help your business make the most of your accounts.
Social media strategy template
Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your strategy. Also use it to track results and present the plan to your boss, teammates, and clients.
What’s next? When you’re ready to put your plan into action, we’re here to help…
Save time managing your social media marketing strategy with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can easily:
Plan, create, and schedule posts to every network
Track relevant keywords, topics, and accounts
Stay on top of engagement with a universal inbox
Get easy-to-understand performance reports and improve your strategy as needed
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