29 Oct 6 Things Your Social Media Strategy Needs

When it comes to creating a social media strategy, don’t be fooled into thinking that it is as simple as consistent posting. Consistency is key, but there is so much more that goes into creating a strategy that is effective and yields results. Keep reading to learn about the 6 most important things your social media strategy needs to cover – including a quick how & why!

1. Goals

The first step to creating a strategy is identifying and defining your goals. That is, what are you hoping to accomplish through your social media efforts? Who do you want to reach? What platforms will you use? How will this drive revenue for your business? (that last one is the most important!) The answers to these questions will determine how best to approach the time you spend on social media and what role it plays in your overall marketing strategy.

2. Content Categories

This is our best tip to get over the ‘what should I post about?’ quandary. Having set content categories that you rotate through as you post ensures you’re creating a variety of content that shows your full range of offerings and speaks to all your audiences. Often your audience is not clear on all that you do or is familiar with only the service they have interacted with. Content categories helps your audience to see your other services and makes it much easy to batch content creation.

3. Visual Strategy

Let’s talk aesthetics! Defining an aesthetic isn’t just about looking pretty. It is about looking cohesive and on-brand. This can be accomplished with graphic templates or consistent images and is especially important for platforms that are image-focused – like Instagram. Just a reminder: creating a visual strategy works best as an extension of your larger brand so think about how your social media posts tell the visual story of your company.

4. Optimized Posting Schedule

Once you have content created, you need to schedule it. A schedule is used to determine the best times to post, in order to get the max amount of engagement possible. At the beginning, you will want to post at a variety of different times. This will give you more information to compare when determining which times receive the most views/engagement to create an optimized schedule. Some schedulers can even do this automatically for you. Speaking of schedulers: save your sanity and use a social media scheduling platform (like Hootsuite, Later or SmarterQueue), versus manually posting every day.

5. Hashtag Banks

Creating hashtag banks are a great way to make scheduling content easier on yourself. Well researched & regularly updated, these banks help you reach your targeted audience to increase views, engagement, and awareness. When batch scheduling content, you can then copy & paste them into the scheduling platform to maximize your reach. Create these are part of your social media strategy, matching banks with your content categories.

6. Regularly Scheduled Review & Updates

If you’ve been in the game long enough then you know that any and all strategies surrounding your business are ever-changing. This includes social media. Best practices are always changing and you need to stay on top and regular reviews and strategy updates are needed. Plan to do this at least twice a year, updating your hashtags, optimizing posting time, goals and content based on what is working well and how your business has evolved.

Bonus Tip! Metric Review Report

Part of reviewing and updating your strategy is knowing what is resonating with users and confirming all your work is moving you towards your defined goals. Create a way to monitor your progress and measure key indicators. An excel sheet that you update monthly with stats or downloading platform reports for review during a strategy update is an easy way to set this up. Then you will easily be able to see which of your efforts are successful & which need to be fine-tuned.

Do you need help with social media creation & implementation? Our team at Path & Compass is ready to help you create content that is on-topic & on-brand. Whether this entails brainstorming ideas for quality content or scheduling social media, we do it all and in a way that is true to you. Contact us today at inquiry@pathandcompass.com to set up a free Discovery Call and get started!