Table of content

  • How to create a social media strategy
  • What is social media marketing?
  • What is a social media marketing strategy?
  • Nine steps to developing a social media marketing strategy

Step 1. Set social media marketing objectives that are consistent with your company’s aims.

Step 2. Find out as much as you can about your audience.

Step 3. Get to know your competition

Step 4. Do a social media audit

Step 5. Set up accounts and improve profiles

Step 6. Find inspiration

Step 7. Create a social media content calendar

Step 8. Create compelling content

Step 9. Follow up on outcomes and tweak your social media strategy as necessary.

  • Finalizing your social media strategy

A social media marketing strategy is a list of everything you intend to do and achieve on social media. It influences how you act and tells you if you succeeded or failed.

More specifics will make your plan more effective. Keep it succinct. Don’t make it impossible to achieve or define by setting it too high or broadly. In this piece, Cyber Dolphins Pvt Ltd will walk you through a nine-step procedure to assist you in creating your own effective social media plan.

How to create a social media strategy:

Step 1. Set social media marketing objectives that are consistent with your company’s aims.

Step 2. Find out as much as you can about your audience.

Step 3. Get to know your competition

Step 4. Do a social media audit

Step 5. Set up accounts and improve profiles

Step 6. Find inspiration

Step 7. Create a social media content calendar

Step 8. Create compelling content

Step 9. Follow up on outcomes and tweak your social media strategy as necessary.

What is social media marketing?

The technique of using social media platforms to sell or promote a company, item, or service is known as social media marketing.

Social media marketing benefits companies by:

  • Amplify brand awareness
  • Create active communities
  • Promote your goods and services
  • Consider brand emotion and provide social customer service
  • Promote goods and services to target markets.
  • Keep an eye on the results and tweak bigger marketing strategies as appropriate.
  • Read More: How To Grow Your Email List Using Facebook

What is a social media marketing strategy?

A social media plan is a written document that lists your social media goals, the tactics you’ll use to reach them, and the metrics you’ll track to determine how well you’re doing.

In your social media marketing strategy, include a list of all of your planned and active social media accounts, along with goals specific to each platform you utilize. These goals must be consistent with the overall digital marketing strategy for your business. Last but not least, a strong social media plan should outline the tasks and responsibilities of your team as well as your reporting timetable.

Social media marketing

Nine steps to developing a social media marketing strategy

Step 1. Set social media marketing objectives that are consistent with your company's aims.

Set S.M.A.R.T. goals

The first stage in creating a successful social media strategy is setting up clear goals and targets. Without goals, it is impossible to assess your success or return on investment (ROI). Every single one of your goals must be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, and time-bound.

Track meaningful metrics

Although vanity metrics like follower and like counts are easy to keep track of, it can be difficult to prove their actual value. Instead, consider engagement, click-through, and conversion rates. You may wish to keep an eye on a number of goals for multiple social media networks, or perhaps a number of uses for each network.

For instance, you would track click-throughs if you used LinkedIn to increase traffic to your website. You might monitor the number of Instagram Story views if you’re using Instagram to raise brand recognition. Cost-per-click (CPC) is a frequent success statistic for Facebook advertising. Your overall marketing objectives should be in line with your social media aims. This makes it simpler to demonstrate the worth of your job and win your boss’s support.

Step 2. Find out as much as you can about your audience.

By getting to know your fans, followers, and customers as actual individuals with their needs and wants, you can target and engage them on social media. When it comes to issues like these, you should be aware of your target market.

  • Age
  • Location
  • Average income
  • Typical job title or industry
  • Interests
  • etc.

Social media analytics can reveal information about your followers’ ages, localities, and interactions with your brand on social media. These results may help you refine your strategy and audience targeting. You can contact  Cyber Dolphins Pvt Ltd for more relevant information or assistance.

Step 3. Get to know your competition

It’s likely that your rivals are already utilizing social media, so you can pick some tips from how they operate.

Conduct a study of the competition

You can understand the characteristics and advantages of the competition by conducting a competitive analysis (and not so well). Knowing what is normal in your industry can give you a good foundation for defining your own social media objectives.

You’ll be better able to recognize opportunities.

Maybe one of your competitors rules Facebook but spends little time on Twitter or Instagram. You may opt to focus on the networks that underserve your niche rather than trying to steal viewers from a dominant player.

Use social media listening

Social listening is another method you may use to keep an eye on your competitors. Run social media searches for the competitors’ company names, account handles, and other relevant terms. Discover the facts they are sharing and the opinions of others.

You may track changes in the social media behavior of your competitors and other prominent figures in your industry. We’re sure that you might come across fascinating new trends. You may also observe a certain post or campaign that either entirely succeeds or completely fails. Utilize details like this to direct your own social media marketing strategy.

Step 4. Do a social media audit

If you already use social media, evaluate your efforts to date. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What is and is not working?
  • Who are you conversing with?
  • Which networks are used by your target market?
  • How does your social media presence compare to that of the rivals?

Once you’ve gathered this information, you’ll be ready to think about improvement methods.

Your audit ought to make it crystal clear to you what function each of your social media accounts fulfills. Consider if an account is worthwhile preserving if its purpose is unclear. Consider the following elements to aid in your decision: 

  • Is there a crowd here?
  • If yes, how do they employ this system?
  • Can I utilize this account to further my objectives?
  • By posing these difficult queries, you can maintain the emphasis of your social media approach.

Look for impostor accounts

During the audit, you may discover phony accounts using the names of your products or business. These fake followers could hurt your brand even though they are taking your real followers.

Declare them.

To make sure your admirers know they are dealing with the real you, you might want to have your accounts verified as well. How to obtain verification on:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • TikTok

Step 5. Set up accounts and improve profiles

Decide which networks to use

Construct a mission statement for each network. a brief statement that helps keep you concentrated on a single goal. As an example, “We will use Twitter for customer service to reduce email and phone volume.”

One more: “We will use LinkedIn to promote and share our corporate culture to assist with recruitment and employee advocacy.”

If you are unable to create a clear objective statement for a particular social media platform, you may want to think about whether it is useful to use it.

Set up your profiles

Make your profiles after deciding which networks to concentrate on. Alternatively, make the ones you already have more strategic by improving them.

  • Fill out every field on your profile completely.
  • Include keywords that customers might use to find your company online.
  • To make your profiles stand out, make sure your branding (logos, visuals, etc.) is consistent across networks.

Pro tip: Use high-quality photos that adhere to the suggested sizes for each network. For easy reference, refer to our constantly updated cheat sheet on social media image sizes.

Additionally, to guide you through the process,  Cyber Dolphins Pvt Ltd offer step-by-step instructions for each network:

  • Create a Facebook business page
  • Open an Instagram business account
  • Open a Twitter business account
  • Create a Snapchat account
  • Open a LinkedIn Company Page
  • Create a Pinterest business account
  • Start a YouTube channel

Do not let this list overwhelm you. Always remember that it’s better to use fewer channels more efficiently than to attempt and maintain an active presence on every network.

Step 6. Find inspiration

Even though it’s important for your business to stand apart from the competition, you can still learn from other brands that are successful on social media.

Social media success stories

These are often found on the social network’s website under the business tab. You can use case studies to learn useful facts to enhance your own social media approach.

Your favorite brands on social media

Who do you enjoy following on social media? What steps do they take to promote audience involvement and content sharing?

One of the top Instagram accounts, for instance, is National Geographic, which combines eye-catching images with intriguing commentary.

You’ll notice that these stories all have the same tone, voice, and demeanor. For users to know what to expect from your feed, this is crucial. In other words, why should others follow you? What advantages do they have?

Even if your social media team consists of several people, consistency aids in maintaining your content’s brand identity.

Ask your followers

Customers can also offer social media inspiration. What subjects are your potential customers online chatting about? What can you learn about their wants and needs? If you already have social media accounts, you may even ask your followers what they would want to see from you. Make sure to give them what they ask for and then follow through.

Step 7. Create a social media content calendar

Sharing outstanding information is important, of course, but scheduling when to post content is just as important for maximum impact. Your strategy for creating social media content must also take into account the time you spend interacting with the audience (although you need to allow for some spontaneous engagement as well).

Set your posting schedule

The dates and times that you will publish different sorts of content on each social media channel are listed in your social media content calendar. It’s the ideal location to organize all of your social media activities, including blog articles, videos, and user-generated content re-shares as well as sharing links and images. Your daily publishing as well as social media campaign content are both covered.

Determine the right content mix

Make sure your content strategy and calendar align with the objectives you’ve established for each social media profile so that everything you post is advancing your business’s aims.

You might choose to:

  • 50% of your content will increase website visitors.
  • The use of external sources will make up 25% of the content.
  • 20% of the material will help with lead generation objectives (newsletter sign-ups, ebook downloads, etc.)
  • The company culture will make up 5% of the content.

The right mix will be maintained if you include these various post kinds in your content calendar.

Try the 80-20 rule if you’re beginning from scratch and unsure of the kinds of content to post.

  • Your audience should be informed, educated, or entertained in 80% of your posts.
  • 20% can help you market your brand.

Consider using the rule of thirds while creating social media material.

  • A third of your material should be used to market your company, convert readers, and make money.
  • Your content features tales and ideas from thought leaders in your sector or other like-minded companies in one-third of its composition.
  • One-third of your content should come from direct conversations with your audience.

Step 8. Create compelling content

Do you still remember the channel-specific mission statements you wrote in Step 5? Let’s now get a little more specific and provide some examples of the types of content you’ll post on each network to achieve your objective. If you don’t know what to post on social media, use this extensive list of ideas to get started.

Here, the goal is to:

  • Make sure your content advances the goals of each network;
  • Showcase to other stakeholders (when necessary) the kind of content each network is likely to offer.

When your coworkers inquire as to why you haven’t yet shared their case study, whitepaper, or blog article to TikTok, this last item will especially assist you to avoid any awkwardness. Linda, it’s not part of the plan!

The objective is to provide content types that are suitable for the network and fulfill the objectives you’ve set for it. Prepare to update this area on a regular basis as it can take some time to test which kind of content functions well on certain types of networks.

Step 9. Follow up on outcomes and tweak your social media strategy as necessary.

You can’t just assume that you’ll get your social media marketing strategy correct the first time because it’s an important piece of writing for your business. As you start to implement your plan and track your outcomes, you could find that certain approaches don’t perform as well as you had hoped while others perform even better than you had anticipated.

Look at performance metrics

In addition to the statistics provided by each social network (see Step 2), you can track social visitors as they move throughout your website using UTM parameters. This enables you to pinpoint precisely which social posts are attracting the most visitors.

Re-evaluate, test, and do it all again

As new information becomes available, use it to periodically reevaluate your strategy. You can also use this information to contrast other postings, social media marketing initiatives, and promotional strategies. By experimenting with different concepts to determine what works and what doesn’t, you can continuously enhance your social media marketing strategy.

In order to monitor your growth over time, you should review the performance of all your channels at least once every week and familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of social media reporting.

Finalizing your social media strategy

Warning: nothing is set in stone.

Social media changes quickly. While others see demographic changes, new networks start up.

There will be times of change for your company as well.

As a result, your social media marketing strategy should be a dynamic document that you continuously evaluate and modify as necessary. Make frequent reference to it to keep on course, but don’t be reluctant to make adjustments to better reflect new objectives, resources, or strategies. If your strategy for using social media changes, educate your staff. Then they can work together to optimize your company’s account balances. If you need any guidance or help, you can definitely reach out to Cyber Dolphins Pvt Ltd. They will provide you with the best kinds of strategies of social media marketing.