When used correctly, a social media content strategy can be one of the most powerful tools in your digital arsenal.
At its best, social media is an effective way to tap into valuable communities and promote your brand to audiences who will truly take notice. At its worst, posting on social media can feel like trying to shout over a stream of constant noise with ever-updating dashboards and feeds.
Building a social media content strategy that truly drives results is no mean feat. It isn’t enough to simply post every so often on a couple of social media channels and hope that the right people happen to see it.
5 steps to developing a successful social media content strategy
1. Know your audience
Identify the users you want to target. Are there communities on social media that are in the market for the products you want to promote on social? If so, it’s important to map out the profile of your demographic. Map out their ages, genders, locations and psychographic traits such as behavioural patterns. You should also pinpoint some key influencers within the relevant sector to follow and engage with. If you’re doing sponsored social content in particular, it is crucial to work with the right people.
2. Stay on top of key trends
Review the social output and trending topics within your target communities. If users are posting about the same topics as you, which of those posts are gaining the most traction in terms of shares and likes? What can you learn from that? Are there any relevant and trending hashtags you can use in your posts to help them reach these audiences? It’s a good idea to compile an overview of consistent and relevant hashtags to use throughout your posts to help them reach the right users.
3. Design your posting schedule
Posting on social media is definitely a long-term digital marketing strategy and it works best when you post consistently and often. Best practise is therefore to work out a reliable posting schedule. This is particularly useful if you intend to post about a range of different products, services and topics. A strategic weekly posting rota, for example, will ensure that you give the right level of coverage to the things you most want to promote.
4. Use the right imagery
Because so many of our social feeds are fast paced and heavily saturated, visually striking imagery can really help your posts stand out. It’s useful to have a supply of high-resolution, quality imagery that will catch the eye of your intended audience. The most effective imagery will vary across social channels. For example, lifestyle imagery does very well on Instagram and Pinterest, whereas Twitter requires very bold imagery to stand out on incredibly crowded feeds. If you cannot create these images yourself, or purchase the right to stock imagery, there are plenty of public domain image databases you can use.
5. Link to the right posts
If you’re using social media to boost brand recognition and get the word out about your products, you want to include relevant links in every post. On social channels, such as Instagram, where this isn’t possible, you can tag products instead. Often, posts that get the most engagement link through to blog topics that pique a users’ interest, rather than product pages so it’s worth having a well-updated blog.
For more advice, get in touch with our team of experts who can help you deliver a social media strategy that gets results.