What is a social media strategy? By definition, it's a comprehensive strategy that involves designing and implementing a set of planned and organized actions on social media platforms to achieve predefined marketing objectives (brand awareness, sales, etc.). That's the theory. In practice, creating and deploying an effective social media strategy for a brand or company requires a great deal of rigor and methodology. To ensure the success of your social media campaigns, our social media agency suggests following 7 key steps.

The 7 steps to building an effective social media strategy

1. Conduct a social media audit

What is the state of your digital presence on social media (and more broadly in the digital ecosystem)? In other words, what is your social footprint? Analyzing how your brand or company exists on social networks is the first step you must take to build your social media strategy.

To assess your current situation on social media, why not apply the SWOT marketing matrix? A classic marketing tool, but very effective, this method identifies the strengths and weaknesses of your social media presence, as well as the opportunities and threats associated with it.

To conduct your social media audit, start by asking yourself a series of simple questions such as:

• On which social media platforms is my company or brand present (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.)?
• What actions are already being implemented on these communication channels?
• What is the size of my existing community?
• What is the profile of my subscribers?
• What information are they interested in?
• What conversions are generated by social networks?
• What is my level of visibility on these networks?
• What is the level of inbound traffic to the website?

Of course, this analysis can be supported by anin-depth study of your competitors (on which digital channels are they present, how do they communicate, how often, etc.).

2. Establish measurable objectives

To succeed with your social media strategy, you need to align your social objectives with your company's marketing and sales goals. For example, enriching your database of qualified leads, acquiring new customers, increasing brand awareness, targeting a new consumer segment, etc. These are the famous SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).

Each result obtained from the actions carried out will be measured through the lens of KPIs (key success indicators) established from the objectives set.

3. Identify your target audience on social media

First and foremost, start by defining your target audience on social media platforms. If you already have a community, you can study the demographic data available in the social media platforms' statistics.

You will easily find key information about your followers (identity, tastes, needs)…. These are clues that facilitate the creation of targeted and engaging content.

Finally, if you haven't already started, use the "persona" method , which involves creating fictional profiles to better understand your target audience and offer tailored content. Very often, focus groups with a small sample of people allow you to precisely define the profile of your target audience.

The information collected through all these methods will allow you to outline the main points of your strategy, in particular the choice of social networks to prioritize for deploying your communication.

4. Create profiles

After identifying the social media platforms best suited to your objectives and target audience, one of your first actions will be to set up your brand accounts. Your goal is to make your profile appealing by creating a genuine and emotional connection between you and your followers.

Each social media platform has its own specific characteristics, so you will of course need to adapt your profiles to each one. For example, Facebook and TikTok do not have the same posting methods or features.

At So Bang, the social media manager's role is to advise you and select the platforms best suited to your needs. Following this, they create your profile on each platform and then manage and engage with each of your accounts in a specific way.

5. Create an editorial calendar

At So Bang, we advise our clients to avoid duplicating their posts across all media platforms. That's why our social media agency develops a unique editorial line for each platform.

To optimize community management, it's also essential to develop an editorial calendar that provides an overview of all publications and campaigns. Implementing a well-structured editorial calendar also helps maintain a consistent publishing schedule across all platforms!

Note that the posting frequency varies from one platform to another. It's possible to publish several tweets in the same day, whereas you might only create 3 or 4 Facebook posts per week. It all depends on your objectives. Finally, other factors such as seasonality also play an important role to consider.

6. Edit and publish content

Creating and distributing content on social media is the role of the community manager or social media manager. Their mission, in principle, is to engage the community and generate leads, transforming calls to action into conversions, meaning that the visitor completes a desired action (visiting the site, subscribing to the newsletter, or purchasing a product, etc.).

To achieve this goal, you need to increase opportunities to publish creative and engaging content to your communities. To do this, it's important to find a tone that is sincere and authentic enough to create a unique connection with each user. Your customer relationship is what sets you apart from your competitors, so nurture it tirelessly.

To save time on content creation and managing your accounts, there are also many tools that facilitate community management. Hootsuite, for example, is a leading social media management platform. As a planning tool, it allows you to schedule campaigns, track discussions and mentions, access data related to each post, and more.

7. Analyze the results

To effectively manage a social media strategy, it's also crucial to regularly assess the impact of your actions on each network where you're present. In other words, you need to measure your performance based on the KPIs you've defined from your business objectives.

Within a social media agency, the social media manager will handle this task. This expert will analyze the performance of each post, study incoming traffic, and measure conversions.

This collected data helps the agency to implement new actions:

• Testing new publications or campaigns
• Readjust the message of existing content
• Identify social actions that underperform compared to those that perform well
• Redefining the outlines of a new strategy

Social media strategy is a key element of a company's marketing strategy, which is why it's so crucial. It's a comprehensive strategy aimed at building brand image and attracting potential customers. However, far too many brands and companies still launch themselves onto social media (and the web in general) without a real digital strategy. While this approach might have worked ten years ago, it's no longer the case today.

Failing to develop a social media strategy is likely to backfire. To succeed on social media, you absolutely must create an action plan that clearly details everything you will implement on each network.

A social media agency like So Bang exists precisely to help you avoid pitfalls and save you valuable time. By guiding you step by step on social media, and by planning thoughtful and structured actions, our team of social media management specialists will work with you to build the best social media strategy to increase your visibility and brand awareness, as well as boost your sales of products and services (engagement).

For more information about the services offered by our social media agency in Paris or to request a quote, please contact us !