How to build your social media marketing strategy

Whether you’ve been drifting, dreaming or standing still when it comes to social media marketing, you’ve probably realised you need to do more than just show up in 2022. The world of social media is busier and more competitive than ever before — you can’t just be there; you need to be seen.

“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media; the question is, how well do we do it.” Erik Qualman

It’s time to get strategic. Having a clear purpose and an actionable plan for achieving results from social media marketing gives you a powerful sense of direction and a manageable path to follow.

If it’s too much to handle in-house, you may choose to hire a social media manager to keep you on track. But if your budget just isn’t that big (yet), building your own social media marketing strategy is the solution.

Follow my six steps to create a solid strategy that’s right for your business:

1.     Set your objectives

If you’re diving into using social media marketing just because everyone else is doing it, stop there. For social media marketing to be successful, sustainable, and valuable, you need to be crystal clear about what you want it to achieve for your business.

Your marketing objectives must be firmly rooted in your business goals. If your goal is to maximise profits, how will you use marketing, and more specifically, social media marketing to help you do that? Your social media marketing objective might be:

• grow your audience

• increase brand awareness

• build an engaged community

• drive traffic to your website

• generate new leads

Focus on one or two objectives that support your business goals and make them the foundations and driving force for your strategy.

2.     Define your audience

A good social media marketing campaign is all about people. Humans have an intrinsic need to connect, which is why social media has been such an enduring phenomenon, and why it therefore makes a great channel for businesses to conduct marketing. So, to succeed in engaging with the online community, you need to approach social media in a human way. And you need to target the right people — your ideal clients.

Create a pen portrait of your ideal client. Consider their age, gender, income, interests, personality, values, and goals in life. The deeper you dig, the better. Next, identify your ideal client’s pain points in relation to your product or service. What do they want, what do they need, and what are the barriers to them accessing what you offer?

Defining your ideal client will help you retain an outward, client-focused perspective with your marketing, as opposed to an inward perspective based on what you want — your ideal client must be at the heart of your business.

3.     Harness your brand magic

A business without a sense of unique identity is like a person without a personality. Person or brand, if you can pin down and wear your personality with pride, you will connect and build valuable relationships with the right people.  

I call this sense of unique identity ‘brand magic’. I’m not just talking about your logo, colours, artwork, and images. Brand magic is what you stand for, how your business makes a difference in people’s lives and the benefits your product or service brings. It’s your purpose, values, and vision, and how you make people feel when they interact with your business. It’s all those things — the visual and the non-visual — brought together, that determine what people say about your business when you’re not there.

Your brand magic should underpin all your activity on social media — what you say, how you say it, how you conduct yourself, who you interact and collaborate with, what you share, and what topics you comment on. This will ensure that your ideal client sees your personality, the unique identity and the magic, EVERY time they come across your business.

And they will feel it, too. When they feel it (and bear in mind it might be on a sub-conscious level) they will form an emotional connection with you. That’s what will prompt them to follow you, respond to what you have to say, talk about you to their friends, and, crucially, remember you when they’re ready to buy.

4.     Establish your key messages

What do you want your audience to know about your business? Consider messages relating to the problems you solve, solutions you offer, how your approach benefits the client and what makes you and your business different to the competition. There might be some common misconceptions about your industry that you need to address. Or you might have specific experiences, skills or a point of view that make you particularly well-equipped to do what you do.

Getting all these things written down now, in words that represent your brand voice, means you can use them again and again in social media posts and across other channels like your website, blogs, PR, and ads. In doing so, you can ensure your ideal client receives a consistent message. Control the narrative and leave no room for miscommunication — imagine the alternatives that could circulate if you just relied on Word of Mouth!

“Social media is about the people. Not about your business. Provide for the people and the people will provide for you.”

Matt Goulart.

5.     Create a content plan

As with any plan, your content plan should detail what, where and when.

•  What to post

Good quality, successful social media marketing content will be interesting, relevant and enrich the lives of your ideal clients. It’ll also be authentic to you and your brand magic.

Whether you plan for written posts, blog posts, articles, photos, infographics or videos, your content must add value by fulfilling a purpose: to inform, entertain, educate, or inspire.

Human beings are inherently self-interested. If they’re going to follow you there HAS to be something in it for them. So make sure your social media content is created for them and centres around their problems, needs and whatever it is that makes them tick. Your ideal client pen portrait should tell you everything you need to know in order to do this.

• Where to post

Your platform of choice will depend first and foremost on where your ideal client spends their time. There’s no point in posting on Instagram when your ideal client is a Twitter user!

Different platforms require different content, so you’ll need to tailor your content accordingly. With a post on LinkedIn, you can get away with text and no image just fine. However, on Instagram, aesthetic is key, so you might want to consider whether your typical content has what it takes to stand out on this busy platform.

•  When to post

Consistency is key and will provide a better experience for your ideal client. Consider the times your ideal clients are online most and schedule posts to catch them. Optimum times for engagement vary on different platforms so it’s also worth doing some quick research on the best times to post. 

Be realistic when planning how frequently you’ll release content — if you’re short of time, it’s best to do one or two posts per week really well rather than five or seven posts a week poorly. I can’t stress it enough; the quality of your content is way more important than the frequency.

6.     Master the mindset

Social media marketing can be an overwhelming beast — without clear objectives and boundaries it can take up disproportionate time and head space in relation to the results it yields. While social media is about being sociable, social media marketing is about business, so treat it as such, and stick to your strategy.

Remember that social media marketing is a long game. When you see the accounts with tens of thousands of followers, look at how many posts they’ve created. Chances are, it’s into the hundreds or thousands. They’ve been at it for a while — success hasn’t come overnight — and they’ve built up their accounts from nothing. They’re just at a different stage of their journey to you.

So, if it feels like you’re not getting the results you want, consistently keep chipping away and try not to fret when a post performs poorly. Look at that post as just one tiny part of a bigger strategy and try and learn from it.

Finally, have confidence in your plan. It is built on the solid foundations of your business goals, so don’t get distracted by what other people are doing or the new shiny feature that Instagram brings out. Your strategy is designed to be authentic, consistent, and sustainable, to add value to the people that matter most to your business and, in time, to get results. Trust it.

Need more guidance? From defining your brand to holding you accountable, the Social Strategy Builder can support you through every step in building a unique social media marketing strategy for your business. Book a free Discovery Call.