Creating a social media strategy for your brand or business can be overwhelming. In this post I’ll break down the 7 key questions you should ask before you start creating your strategy to make the process a little easier. In this post we’ll review what these questions are, and if you’d like to watch the Facebook live stream I hosted about this topic, scroll to the end of this post for the replay!
1. WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS?
The very first question to ask when creating a social media strategy is what are you goals? This question is important to answer because figuring out your goals will help you set up your social media strategy, and will determine and give you guidelines for you social media posts. Remember SMART goals? If not follow these rule:
Specific: Make your goals clear and specific so there is no confusion on what the end result should be.
Measurable: Make your goals measurable, so you know if your efforts are working.
Actionable: You’ll want to set up steps to reach your goal.
Realistic: Set goals that make sense for your brand. You’re most likely not going to gain 1 million followers overnight.
Time bound: It’s important to set time boundaries for your goals, or else you might sit on them forever.
2. WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?
Discovering who your audience is the second key component to creating a social media strategy and all the content that goes along with it. Figure out their demographics, and psychographics including which competitors they follow, what publications and websites they’re into etc. The more you know about who your audience is, the easier it will be to create content that bridges the gap between your brand or business and adding value to their lives.
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3. WHAT IS THE CURRENT STATE OF YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING?
Auditing where your current social media marketing strategy and presence stands is another important step in creating your social media strategy. With a clear picture of where you are you’ll have a better idea of what gaps you need to fill, or where you want to go. Pay attention to your engagement, what networks you’d like to be on (or drop), the quality of your content (images and videos), how consistent you are, etc.
4. CONTENT – WHAT KIND WILL YOU NEED TO PRODUCE?
4. CONTENT – WHAT KIND WILL YOU NEED TO PRODUCE?Once you’ve taken inventory of the current state of your social media marketing you can answer the next question – what kind of content will you need to reach your goals or take your social media strategy to the next level? Take note of the kind of content you’re missing, what you may want your content to look like, and what planned initiatives you’ll need to create content around.
5. DO YOU HAVE THE RESOURCES OR BUDGET?
Now we’re at one of the scary questions to answer before you create a social media strategy- do you have resources or the budget needed to create the content you want?You’ll also want to think about how much of your budget you may want to spend on social ads. Even if the answer is no, that doesn’t mean you can’t create wonderful content that your audience will love. Which leads me to the next question…
6. WHAT TOOLS WILL YOU NEED?
Now you can move on to figuring out what tools you’ll need to put in place to help you succeed. Here’s where you can revisit your resources and budget since there are a lot of free or low cost tools that can help you create the content you want to. A lot of the social media networks have built in tools (Like Facebook Live and Instagram Stories) that will make content creation easier than you think. For starters I suggest finding a post management system (my favorites are Hootsuite and AgoraPulse), and Canva.com is great for free graphics.
7. HOW WILL YOU KEEP TRACK?
Finally, and very importantly the final question to ask before creating a social media strategy is how will you keep track of your progress? Make sure to figure out which metrics will matter to you before you put your strategy in place so you can correctly assess whether or not your efforts are working. It’s also easier to keep track as you go as opposed to getting three months down the line then trying to gather the information. There are third-party tools to help you keep track – so take a look into those. I also tend to use network provided analytics, and I keep track of them on my own trackers on Excel or Google Sheets.
Once you answer these 7 questions you’ll have a much clearer idea on what you’ll need to build a social media strategy that works! If you want to watch the replay of the video scroll down.
If this feels like a lot to answer yourself, I have good news! Next week I’ll be re-launching Building Your Brand on Social Media. In this 5 day course, I’ll walk you through figuring out the answers to all the questions above and more! At the end, you’ll have the exact blueprint I’ve refined over the last 7 years to create a custom social media strategy for your brand or business to follow.
