Create a successful social networking strategy

Want to get your business results from social media? Start with a strategy. Without one, you’ll never achieve the brand awareness, website traffic, lead generation, and customer engagement you need to grow your business. Follow this 7-step process to create a winning social media strategy:

• Set your social media goals.
• Identify your target audience.
• Select the social media platforms to use.
• Understand how the algorithms work for each platform.
• Create and distribute great content.
• Use paid advertising strategically.
• Measure, learn, and improve.

Social media marketing has incredible potential to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate leads, and create engaged customers. But it will fail you if you don’t have a clear strategy behind what you’re doing. In this post, I’ll walk you through the 7 steps to create a social media strategy that works.

Step #1: Define Your Goals

Any strategy begins with setting objectives. Social media is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Before you publish a single post, it’s essential you know what you want to achieve. Here are some of the most common goals businesses have when it comes to social media:

• Increase brand awareness among new groups of people.
• Drive traffic to your website or online store.
• Generate leads or sales.
• Build relationships with existing customers.
• Establish thought leadership in an industry.

What you want to achieve will influence which platforms you use, the type of content you publish, and how you measure your success. Make sure your goals are specific and measurable. Instead of “get more followers,” aim for “increase our followers by 25% in the next six months” or “generate 50 qualified leads per month from social media channels.”

Step #2: Understand Your Audience

If you don’t know who you’re talking to, it’s impossible to create content that resonates with them. Create a clear picture of your ideal customer including:

• Age range and demographics.
• Job and interests.
• Challenges.
• Preferred social media platforms and types of content.
• Best times of day to engage with them online.

This picture will influence every part of your social media strategy, from the words you use in your captions to the timing of your posts. The better you understand your target audience, the better you’ll be able to engage them.

Step #3: Choose the Right Platforms

There’s no need to be on every social media platform. In fact, it’s better to do a great job on two or three than a terrible job on six. Here’s a rough guide to help you choose:

• Facebook is a must for most businesses because of its sheer size and broad user demographics. It’s an excellent platform for both B2B and B2C businesses, especially for community-building and advertising.
• Instagram is a visually-driven platform with a younger user demographic, making it perfect for lifestyle brands, retail, food, and creative businesses.
• LinkedIn is the go-to platform for B2B marketing, professional services, and thought leadership.
• YouTube is a must if video content is central to your content strategy.
• TikTok is perfect for short-form video content targeting younger demographics and has growing commercial appeal.
• Pinterest is ideal for visual discovery and planning, particularly in the home decor, fashion, food, and DIY niches.

Choose the platforms where your audience hangs out and where your content fits naturally. For example, if you have an older target audience and are in B2B, LinkedIn may be the best choice. But if you have a younger target audience and are in B2C, Instagram or TikTok may be a better choice.

Step #4: Understand How the Algorithms Work

All social media platforms use algorithms to determine what content to display in a user’s feed. Understanding these algorithms will help you create content that actually gets seen. While each platform’s algorithm is unique, here are some factors most algorithms consider when prioritizing content:

• Engagement: Content that receives more likes, comments, shares, and saves are shown to more users.
• Relevance: Content relevant to the user’s interests, based on their engagement behaviors, is prioritized.
• Recency: Newer content is generally favored over older content.
• Content type: The algorithm tends to reward video content and other interactive content.

Writing a social media strategy is a straightforward process that will help you clarify your goals, understand your audience, select the right platforms, and optimize for algorithms. What steps do you include in your social media strategy? Let me know in the comments below.

Step #5: Produce and Share Valuable Content

Here's where the rubber meets the road. Not only does your content need to be valuable, but it also needs to be engaging and platform-specific. Produce valuable content for your audience. The most effective social media accounts aren't the ones that hard-sell their products. They're the accounts that educate, entertain, inspire, or solve their audience's problems. Aim for a content mix where no more than 20-30% of your posts are promotional. Content rules that apply across all platforms:

• Share your story. Your audience will relate more to your story than your features and benefits.
• Use quality graphics. Poor graphics and blurry photos will kill your credibility and make your content less shareable.
• Encourage discussion. Ask questions, solicit opinions, and respond to every comment.
• Customize your content for each platform. What works on LinkedIn won't work on TikTok. Understand each platform's unique culture and tailor your content accordingly.
• Try different formats. Try video, carousels, polls, live streaming, stories, and other content formats to learn which ones resonate best with your audience.
• Use a basic editorial calendar to plan your content. Decide on a posting frequency that is sustainable for you, whether that's daily, three times a week, weekly, etc. Consistency is more important than frequency.

Step #6: Leverage Paid Social Media Advertising

Over the past few years, the organic reach of most platforms has significantly decreased. Fortunately, paid social media advertising enables you to target your desired audience and amplify your top-performing content. Start small. With a limited budget, test different ad formats, targeting options, and messaging. Once you analyze the results, scale up your winners and eliminate the losers. Typically, paid social media ads are most effective when they support a robust organic strategy, not replace it.

Step #7: Monitor and Refine Your Strategy

If you're not measuring your social media strategy, then you're guessing. Monitor the key performance indicators (KPIs) that correspond with your social media goals:

• Awareness: reach, impression, followers.
• Engagement: likes, comments, shares, saves, CTR.
• Conversions: leads, sales, CPA.

At a minimum, evaluate your social media performance on a monthly basis. Identify which content and activities are driving the best results and adjust your social media strategy accordingly. Social media is a fast-paced medium, and the brands that succeed are the ones that continually evolve.

The Secret to Social Media Success

Going viral or hopping on the latest trend isn't the key to social media success. Instead, the most effective social media strategies focus on showing up every day with remarkable content that your audience appreciates, nurturing meaningful relationships over time, and using data to inform future content decisions. So, begin with a clear strategy, understand your audience inside and out, select the right social media platforms for your business, and dedicate the time necessary to develop valuable content. If you do, you'll achieve the social media success you're looking for.