The Only Social Media Content Strategy You Need

You’ve been posting regularly to your brand’s social feeds without a social media content strategy, and it’s feeling a little…well, messy.

Sure, you’re putting in a lot of work taking great photos, writing witty captions, and using the trending hashtags. But you’re still not confident it’s adding up to any real marketing value.

This is exactly why a social media content strategy is essential. With a solid plan in place, you’re setting realistic goals, measuring against benchmarks, and tweaking your posts to optimize what’s working best.

Here are the 4 steps that will get you there.

Before you start on any marketing tactic, ask yourself this one simple question: what results will I need to see to know that the work is worth it?

The results could be:

• A specific engagement rate that shows your community is connecting with your brand.
• A specific increase in followers month over month.
• A specific number of clicks to your brand’s website through your profile link.

What do these results have in common? They are all specific.

Once you know your goal, you know exactly how you’ll measure success.

A very common mistake is for brands to jump onto every social media platform. Just because a social media platform is popular doesn’t automatically mean it’s a good fit for your business.

Before you commit to any of them, research the platform demographics and confirm your audience is there. Remember, you want a real return on investment for the time it will take you to create and distribute consistent content, so it’s OK to be picky.

In general, B2B businesses do best on LinkedIn and Twitter, while B2C businesses reach more of their audience on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok (again with the choice of these largely dependent on the targeted audience demographics).

There’s a double win here. Mixing up your content makes it more interesting for both your audience and your content creators.

Vary your content, and you’ll keep your followers on their toes. Think of different formats like new product announcements, event invitations, industry news, educational webinars, video interviews, employee Q&As, and customer success stories.

It’s perfectly fine to share the same information on different social media platforms, however, you want to tweak the content to match the platform. This may mean a different tone of voice (think of how you speak on Instagram versus LinkedIn), and a different choice of graphics.

Finally, don’t forget to track engagement on your posts. If you can identify the content that’s most popular on each platform, then you can create more of it!

Don’t be surprised if different content excels on different platforms. Just run with the trends.

Once you’ve decided to commit to a social media platform, consistency in posting is key.

Complete a monthly content schedule before the start of a new month and unify themes across social media, blog posts, and email blasts.

All content should focus primarily on providing value to your target audience, whether through relevant industry news, educational material, or inspiration.

As a rule of thumb, no more than a third of content should be brand self-promotion. The rest should provide value to your followers. And whenever possible, include video, photos, and graphics to improve engagement.

Some social media posting best practices to follow.

For all platforms:

• Start by posting 1x a week per platform.
• Use relevant hashtags that are popular in your specific industry.

For LinkedIn:

• The best time and days to post are midday on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

For Twitter:

• The best time and days to post are midday from Monday to Thursday.

Go ahead and get started on that social media content strategy. With a firm plan in place, you’ll feel more confident about your weekly social media posts.

Instead, feel overwhelmed about creating a strategy, building a monthly schedule, and writing content? We can help you with that!