4 Steps to a Flawless Social Media Strategy
This post includes affiliate links, so we may receive a commission if you sign up for a paid service. We promise to only link to trusted tools and resources.
If your only goal for social media is to go viral, it might be time to reassess your strategy. Viral content doesn’t always translate into sales or conversions, so it’s important to have a strong understanding of what you want to achieve with your social media accounts.
Here’s the basics of how we craft a social media content strategy that is effective at helping you reach your goals.
Step 1: Identify your Goals & Start to Measure Success
Not every business or organization will have the same goals. While most businesses will ultimately be focused on sales and conversions, some organizations like non-profits might be more mission oriented and so things like Community Growth and Engagement might take top priority.
Consider these different goals like a funnel:
1. Customers Become Aware of Your Brand →
2. Join Your Community as a Passive Follower →
3. Become an Engaged Follower →
4. Converted Customer
Goal: Brand Awareness
Helping people to quickly identify your brand and values, understand your products and services, and build trust and reliability with your audience. While viral content can help you build brand awareness, it might not immediately translate into sales and revenue. That’s why it’s important to consider the entire funnel.
Signs of Success
There are different ways to measure if you’re successful at your goal, but the best way is to use KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. These are any metric that you can measure with numbers, not just vibes. The data for these can usually be found in the social media platforms, such as Instagram, but their data can be limited.
For better data, you can use a tool like Sprout Social to get more information across all of your platforms at once. For website data, we highly recommend setting up Google Analytics so you can access information about how people use your website.
Here are some KPIs to let you know if you’re successfully growing awareness for your brand. It’s also important to remember you don’t need to track ALL of these KPIs, just the ones that apply best to your brand and where you’re sharing your content.
Impressions - How many times your content was seen on social media
Website Page or Blog Post Views - How many times a page on your website was viewed
Social Profile Visits - The number of times someone visited your social media profile
Story Views - How many times your social media Story content has been viewed
Video Streams - How many times your video was viewed on YouTube or your streamer count on platforms like Twitch
Email Opens and Open-Rate - Total times that your marketing emails have been opened and what percentage of your audience is opening your emails.
Features and Press - The number of times you have been featured by a press outlet, preferably with a link to your social profile or website
Conversions - Any time someone makes progress on your sales funnel. A conversion goal might be to increase sales or it might be focused on more email newsletter sign-ups. Identify your conversion goals and measure your progress.
New Customers - These are the number of people who actually hire you or purchase a product or service from you for the first time. Repeat customers are wonderful, but getting new customers shows more people are becoming aware of your brand.
Goal: Community Growth
Growing your followers and the people who engage with your content and services is critical. It’s one thing for people to be aware your business exists, and it’s another to have a potential customer take the effort to start intentionally following your content. For larger business who have wide name recognition but no mega-fans, this is likely to be a focus for your content marketing.
Signs of Success
Here are some KPIs to let you know if you’re successfully growing your brand community:
Followers and Newsletter Subscribers - Anyone who makes an intentional effort to join your community and stay informed about your brand
Existence of Fan Pages - Social media fan pages, especially for creatives like artists and musicians, can show a level of commitment and growth, even if you aren’t managing that content yourself.
Returning Users on your Website - Even if they aren’t subscribed or following your social profiles, if users are visiting your site regularly, that shows they are engaged with your content.
New Customers - Again, these are the people who move forward to hire you or purchase your products or services for the first time.
Goal: Engagement
Engagement is about facilitating a conversation and interaction with your audience to take them from a passive follower to an active part of your community.
The goal is to have this feel like an authentic exchange, but it’s still important to be strategic in how you facilitate this engagement as most social media platforms have algorithms that are built to boost content with heavy engagement on feeds. (Unsure about how the TikTok algorithm and the “For You Page” or “FYP” works, learn the unspoken rules of TikTok here.)
Signs of Success
Here are some KPIs to let you know if you’re users are engaging and helping to promote your brand:
Likes - Likes and other reactions to your social media content
Comments - Leaving comments, especially longer ones, shows a sign of engagement with your content
Saves - Content that is being saved regularly is a hit with your audience! This shows the user plans to return to your content again and again.
Shares - If a user decides to share your content with a friend, it not only tells the social media algorithms that your content is of interest, but your user is then doing word of mouth marketing on your behalf. Encouraging users to share your content is always a great idea.
Reposts - Similar to shares, which are a one-to-one interaction around your content, if a user decides to repost your content to their followers it is likely to reach a much wider audience and it shows the world that the person who reposted your content supports your brand.
Retweets - Similar to reposting on Instagram or TikTok, Retweets on Twitter/X have a similar impact.
Poll engagement - Polls are one of our favorite tools for facilitating engagement, as they are a direct ask of your followers and this tool can be used to help your business in a number of ways. Considering adding a new product? Poll your audience! You’ll boost your engagement rates while also gathering useful feedback from your audience.
Goal: Conversions & Sales
This is often the main goal that businesses are focused on and that’s no surprise. You’ve got to make money! Ultimately all of your efforts with your other goals should be contributing to an increase in revenue for your business.
Signs of Success
Here are some KPIs to help you track your customer conversion goals:
Revenue - The total amount of money you bring in with your business before expenses
Email Subscriptions - New contacts you can market directly to via email
Abandoned Cart Rates - How often potential customers add items to the cart but don’t purchase the items. A lower abandoned cart rate is a sign of progress.
How Often to Review the Data and Progress toward Your Goals
While large corporations are likely reviewing their data on a daily basis, if you are a smaller business or even a team of one, tracking data too often is likely to eat up your time without providing a lot of clear insights.
We recommend tracking the data for these different pieces either once a month or quarterly. This will also help you start to determine if there are seasonal trends in your engagement or sales.
Additionally, don’t feel pressured to track every piece of data. Start by choosing 4-5 KPIs to help you measure your success. If you feel like taking on more, great!
Step 2: Utilize Different Types of Content
If you are posting the same thing every day you might not be as successful as if you try to use different types of content to reach your different goals.
A few years ago, our team developed a fake brand as a tool to showcase examples of these different content types. The brand is a service-based ice clearing and snow plowing company — totally random, we know! But we wanted to showcase how this model can work for almost every type of business. We hope you will be able to easily use the examples to come up with your own content ideas.
So let us introduce our faux brand, Pisces Snow and Ice:
Here are 8 different types of content that we encourage you to use when posting on social media, with examples from our faux brand.
Personality and Brand Content
This content helps your audience to understand the real people and personalities behind the brand, and allows you to hone your brand tone and voice.
This is also a great way to have fun, share about yourself, your team, and even your pets if you feel that will help your audience better understand who you are – Just be sure to always find ways to connect it back to what you offer!
Here’s an example of Personality and Brand content on Instagram from our faux brand, Pisces Snow and Ice:
CAPTION:
"When does our team get a snow day?!
The paths and roads are cleared so our team is enjoying the last bits of snow before the temperatures rise.
Watching our kids find the magic in all this snow is such a great reminder of why we do what we do here!"
GOAL:
Brand Awareness. Helps to showcase that this is a brand that is focused on family and put the needs of people first.
Mission and Vision Content
This type of content gives you an opportunity to talk about WHY your business exists and how you serve your audience.
Here’s an example of Mission and Vision content for our faux brand, Pisces Snow and Ice:
CAPTION:
"Have you joined our community shoveling program? We help connect elderly and disabled folks to their neighbors who volunteer to clear your driveways and walkways.
Sign up to volunteer or receive community assistance through the link in our bio.
We believe if we all work together we can keep our community safe this season."
GOALS:
Brand Awareness and Community Growth. Emphasize the importance of community service within your brand with the hope of appealing to new customers.
Press Mentions and Shoutouts
This includes reposting anytime you are highlighted by other businesses or press outlets. This shows that you are reputable and trustworthy.
CAPTION:
"We're celebrating with a little whiskey in the snow because we just won Best of Salem, again!
Thanks to everyone in our community who voted for us as Best Snow Removal in the city."
GOALS:
Build Brand Awareness as a reputable business and Engagement as these types of posts often see higher number of likes and comments.
Client Feedback and Testimonials
These types of posts show that you always follow through on your services and help people to better understand what the experience of working with you or shopping with you will be like.
CAPTION:
"It is such a pleasure to work with local resident Bridget Bishop each year to ensure her inn's staff and guests stay safe from accidents due to snow and ice.
'Pisces Snow and Ice always has the parking lot for my inn and restaurant cleared by 6am the next morning. It's like magic!'"
GOALS:
Improve Brand Awareness as a reputable business, Grow Community especially if your client shares or reposts the content to their followers, and Conversions, as discovering that someone a user knows and trusts had a good experience is often a deciding factor in whether or not they decide to hire you or buy your product.
Work Samples or Product Highlights
Showcasing your past work or your top products often directly leads to sales, as it reminds your audience of the high quality products and services you deliver. This can look like finished product photos, customer submitted images, or even behind the scenes looks at how you work.
CAPTION:
"Caught in the wild! The members of our snow removal team are out in force today as the snow continues to fall across Salem.
Stay safe out there, folks, and enjoy the snow!"
GOALS:
Brand Awareness, as highlighting your services helps to clarify exactly what you offer to your audience. Conversions are also a major goal, since customers can’t hire you or buy your products if they don’t know what you’re offering.
Thought Leadership
This content allows you to demonstrate your skills by sharing advice, education, and commentary related to your work and your industry. This content helps you stand out from your competitors and showcases your unique approach to doing business.
CAPTION:
"Keep our furry friends safe this fall and winter. Do NOT use chemical based salts. Not only is this product harmful to the environment, but it is poisonous when ingested.
Don't take the risk, instead head to our profile for a link to safer alternatives."
GOALS:
Grows your Brand Awareness as a reputable source and fuels Community Growth and Conversions.
Trending Content
This content usually is very successful when it comes to helping you increase your audience’s engagement with your content. This is any time you use something in pop culture or in society and connect it back to your business. This can look like a meme, a trending dance, or something similar. Just be sure to relate it back to your business in some way!
The following example is from a few years back, but still a great example of what we mean by trending content.
CAPTION:
"Who do you really want to spend your holidays with this year?"
GOALS:
Community Growth as you attract new potential customers and Engagement
Polls & Q&A
This type of content is ideal for increasing community engagement, as you are directly asking your audience to respond. This is also a great way to get direct input from your audience about what they want to see from you in terms of content or products and services.
CAPTION:
"Tell us now, because we've got to know: Are you a cat or a dog person?"
GOAL:
Engagement is usually the main goal of this type of content.
Step 3: Understanding the Algorithms
While every social media platform has unique logic that feeds into their algorithms and helps determine which content gets promoted, there are a few ways to help you increase your likelihood of showing up in a customer’s feed.
Utilize a Variety of Platform Features
These platforms are constantly evolving and introducing new features and functionality. For example, as video content has grown in popularity on Instagram with Reels, it has become critical to post this type of content and use Reels content features. We encourage you to find ways to use new features with your content without detracting from your goals/
Be Social
Respond to comments and feedback, follow other accounts that relate to your business, and comment on their posts when appropriate. These apps don’t want you to just post and walk away. Remember to actually be a user, too. The relationships you form this way will also ultimately be more authentic.
Be Aware of Community Guidelines and Possible Suppression or Censorship
Some platforms, like TikTok, are known for demoting content that the platform thinks might be inappropriate or offensive. Unfortunately, this is something that disproportionately affects marginalized communities and especially impacts Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks. Spend time understanding how censorship might impact your content’s visibility and what not to say on platforms like TikTok.
Step 4: Utilize Tools to Create and Publish Content
As folks who spend all their time making social content, we know the importance of finding ways to save time and effort. Here are a few Content Creation tools that can help you produce content more quickly and effectively.
Social Media Coaching
Ever feel like you just need an accountability partner, or someone to bounce your ideas off of? We offer social media coaching services to help you brainstorm, plan your content, and stay on task. Contact us if you think Social Media Coaching would help you.
Content Planning in Notion
Our team absolutely loves using Notion. It’s a flexible tool that allows for detailed task management while incorporating more creative aspects. It’s made planning and creating our social media content incredibly easy.
Branded Social media templates
Our design team can create custom branded design templates to create graphics for social media using Canva. This allows you to ensure your content is always on brand while making it easier to share text-based content. If you don’t have a lot of photos for your brand, this can allow to quickly create graphics. Having these templates in place especially helps in streamlining content creation for Pinterest.
Stock Photography
High quality stock photography sites are pricey, but free services like Unsplash, as well as the images you have access to with Canva Pro, can make a huge difference in your content.
Social Media Schedulers
There are a variety of different social media schedulers out there for different platforms and at different price points. These tools help you to bulk create and schedule your content ahead of time, prevent you from getting caught in an endless doom scroll when you go to post in the app, and provide you with helpful analytics and data that can inform your content creation going forward.
Want Help Crafting Your Own Custom Social Media Strategy?
These elements make up the basis for your social media strategy, but this is still an advanced skill set and we know not every business owner has the time or energy to focus on developing a strategy.
Hire us to develop your own custom social media strategy, and you’ll receive a clear guide as well as other marketing recommendations from our experienced team.
Need Marketing Help for Your Small Business?
Join our mailing list and get access to our Small Business Tooklit in Notion full of everything you need to start making marketing magic.
What to Read Next:
Meet the Author
Jen Siomacco - Founder and UX Designer
Jen has worked in technology, marketing, and publishing for ten years. After years as a CX/UX designer in the corporate world, Jen co-owned an independent wedding magazine prior to starting VVITCH Digital Agency. Now, after years in both the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds, they are committed to helping small businesses grow into revolutionary brands.
