Some social media consultants will charge you for a discovery call.
They’ll hide their processes.
They won’t give you the detail.
They won’t take you on the journey with them.
You’ll only find out what they’ve produced after you’ve paid them £££.
You’ll probably be disappointed as they’ll have overlooked key elements of your business.
I do things a little differently!
There’s no gatekeeping here.
This is the exact process I follow for all my clients when creating a strategy from scratch.
There’s nothing unique here.
I haven’t ‘invented’ anything as such.
In fact, many of the agencies I’ve worked for have used a similar approach.
It’s jargon-free.
It’s effective.
And most importantly, it ensures that your social media objectives are clearly defined and that social delivers for your business.
So let’s start with the obvious question…
Why do I need a social media strategy?
I love this quote from a geezer called Morris Chang, who is the CEO of a company based in Taiwan.
Of course, he’s not talking specifically about social media here.
But the quote is still very relevant.
Let’s break it down into two sections…
“Without strategy, execution is aimless”
This is ridiculously true when it comes to social media.
If you don’t have a strategy in place that includes which platforms and placements to prioritise – and what type of content to post that will make you stand out against competitors – I guarantee one of two things will happen…
- Your results will dip at some point and you’ll be wondering why social isn’t contributing to your company’s bottom line.
- You’ll suffer from ‘content fatigue’ and become alienated by the whole process of posting.
The strategy is the first piece of the puzzle that you should nail before you start posting regularly on your channels.
But it all falls apart if you don’t follow the second part of Morris’ quote…
“Without execution, strategy is useless”
It’s all well and good having a fancy social strategy presentation.
But if you aren’t posting regularly, you won’t see results.
You won’t be able to take the learnings and apply them to future content.
And social won’t deliver for you.
It will be pointless doing social media for your business.
You might as well spend the time elsewhere.
You’re probably thinking “Flipping heck, Sam’s being a bit blunt here!“.
But it’s important to be honest!
To have an effective social media presence you need to have…
- A watertight strategy that details your objectives, channel strategy and tactics
- A regular churn of organic (and ideally paid) content being published on your channels
You can’t have one without the other.
You need both strategy and execution.
The two go hand-in-hand.
What goes into a social media strategy?
The introduction stage
The first stage would be a free discovery call (and you can book one here at the bottom of the page if you’re interested).
This is a casual, 30 minute chat where we’d discuss what you’re looking to get out of social media.
This is where I start to understand a little more about your business and your goals.
On this call, it’s important that we iron out your objectives (i.e. what you’re looking for social media to achieve, whether that be greater awareness, more followers or an increased number of sales).
Following this, I send a Word Document detailing a list of questions.
This is more in-depth and includes questions such as…
- What are your business goals over the next 6 / 12 / 24 months?
- What existing marketing activity do you already do?
- What’s your current split of online vs offline sales?
- Who are your direct competitors?
- Who is your ideal customer?
These hone in on specific areas and give me a bit more detail about your company.
Alongside this, I do my own desk research and take as much time as is needed to fully understand how your business works and what products you offer.
Once these questions have been answered, that’s when the real fun begins…
The audit stage
And it’s fun because I’m a massive geek at heart!
I love numbers and data.
The starting point for pulling together a strategy is to complete an audit of your existing social media channels.
This allows me to incorporate the learnings from previous content within your strategy.
It’s ideally done with account access (so you would provide me with admin access and passwords), although it can be done without if needed.
The first step is to complete an audit of the last 15 posts on each channel and work out your engagement rate.
Engagement rate is your total number of reactions, comments, shares/saves and link clicks divided by the number of impressions the post received.
Averaging this out over 15 posts gives you a good indication in terms of how well the channel is performing.
If account access isn’t provided (and impressions data isn’t visible), this can still be done through calculating interaction rate.
This is the same calculation but uses follower count rather than impressions.
I do this across all of your brands channels and benchmark it against industry averages, like in the example image above.
The graph gives you a good idea of which of your channels is performing the best – and which ones are not delivering for you.
From this analysis, I also look at your best and worst performing posts.
I pick these out (like below) and determine why they’ve performed the way they have.
This isn’t an exact science, but in this example, it would be sensible to suggest that Instagram’s algorithms have pushed the Reel content harder to a wider audience as Reels are a priority for the platform at the moment – which has resulted in a greater engagement rate.
Within the audit, audience analysis takes place to see what demographics are currently following your accounts.
It’s always interesting to see if your current customers are reflected in the demographic insights.
Separately, influencer analysis is also conducted if appropriate.
The last piece of the audit focuses on your competitors.
These are looked at in detail to see if there’s any learnings we can take from them.
The below, from Full Spectrum Roasters‘ strategy, is a great example.
Interaction rates are calculated from each one and benchmarked so you can see where you stand against your competitors – and how you each fare against industry and platform averages.
The insights stage
Next up are the insights.
There are two different types of insights…
- Platform insights: These are focused on the platforms themselves and could include things like algorithm changes or new features.
- External insights: This involves a fair amount of desk research and usually follows a PESTLE model, looking for specific insights that we could leverage in our strategy.
A PESTLE model is broken up as follows…
- Political – Looking at any policy changes that could impact your business going forward
- Economic – Any economy/financial impacts
- Social – Cultural and lifestyle trends
- Technological – Any new tech that could impact your business
- Legal – Any impact from new laws or regulations
- Environmental – Any sustainability angles that could be looked at
By going through this process, there are usually one or two nuggets that spring out.
They could be facts, survey results, stats or articles.
There’s usually an ‘ah ha!’ moment with these!
A good example was during the audit process for GIFT+HOME.
GIFT+HOME were already selling a fair amount of Jellycats in their gift shop.
However, during the ‘social’ part of the PESTLE analysis, I found there was a huge increase in consumers searching for Jellycats on Google (just look at that graph!).
From this, it was sensible to pivot our focus and make Jellycats the hero products on social whilst also creating blog content around them, too.
The strategy stage
By this stage, we’ve already worked out what content performs well (and what doesn’t perform well).
We also have our insights, which will help to guide our strategy.
But before we go any further, it’s important to clearly define our social media objectives.
These ladder up to your wider marketing and business objectives.
For example, if your main business objective is to aim for a 20% sales uplift, it would be sensible for your main social media objective to be focused on generating sales.
Using this objective, you can then map out your strategic beats.
This is a fancy way of saying your ‘plan on a page’.
Laying it out in the below format, with the objective followed by the problem – and then your main insight and solution – is the best way to ensure everything fits together.
From this, more detail is mapped out in terms of the specific platforms and channels.
It’s important to align this to your customer’s journey by using the marketing funnel.
This makes sure every platform plays its part of reaching new customers and taking them to the point of purchasing a product or becoming a lead.
This was done for Laughtercise, with their strategy focusing on two key platforms; Instagram and TikTok.
The final piece of the puzzle is the content.
Content pillars (based on the user journey stage) and content ideas are included in this section, which all serve the main objective mapped out earlier.
The ROI stage
Once the strategy section is complete, it’s then time to start forecasting the results that it could achieve.
This is usually dependent on the objective and whether you’re looking at organic and/or paid social ads.
If your strategy focused on organic-only content, it can be difficult to forecast a specific number of people your content will reach as there’s so many different variables at play.
In this case, it’s sensible to provide an estimate on the engagement rate the content will achieve.
This is usually benchmarked by industry/platform averages.
If paid ads are included in your strategy, it’s much easier to provide specific ROI figures for how many people your ads will reach and how many purchases you’ll record.
This will be dependent on the amount of spend you put behind the ads.
What happens after the strategy is agreed?
Once the strategy is in place and been approved by all parties, it’s time to start producing content!
For my clients, I normally do this in a monthly format, where I’d produce content a month or so ahead – so February content is produced in January, etc.
That being said, there is still plenty of room for reactive posts (jumping onto trends, for example).
This ongoing content could be done by myself, taking it fully off your plate and leaving you to focus on running your business.
Alternatively, this could be done by yourself, with me being present in a consultancy position – tracking performance and ensuring the strategy is delivering.
Can you support with ongoing content?
Absolutely!
I’m proficient at video editing and content creation, so if you’re looking for someone to own the full social media presence for your brand, I’d be very happy to do so.
I can also come to your physical business location and shoot content on-site if required.
How much does it all cost?
There’s no easy answer here – it depends!
It depends on your business goals.
It depends on how many platforms you’re active on.
It depends on if you’d like me to help with ongoing content creation or just on the strategy.
If you’re keen to learn more, simply complete the form at the bottom of the page here and we can get a discovery call in the diary.
Alternatively, if you’re keen to see how this all works in practice, you can check out my case studies page.
PS. If you’re a brand looking to jump on the latest trends, check out my Social Media Trends Tracker!
You can also sign up to my free monthly newsletter for social strategy tips and tricks 👇
Sam Oliver Social 