A social media content strategy is more than populating a calendar with content ideas and hoping for the best.
Your content strategy is an essential process and framework that you research and implement to help you better understand what’s working and not. It helps set a roadmap for yourself so you know why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Creating a content strategy also gives you clarity around your unique business goals, your content plan, KPIs and action steps you need to take to achieve your goals. In this article, we’ll discuss the steps you need to take to develop your content strategy for social media.
Identify Your Goal
The essential part of this process is to identify a goal that you can track and measure.
In this step, you should identify your business goal. For example, increase brand awareness, boost your email list, generate leads or increase web sales, and so on).
You need to get very clear on what your business goal is so that you can effectively measure it on social media. This is an essential step in creating a social media content strategy.
The next step is to identify what your social media goal will be. For example, if your business goal is to boost web sales, then your social media activities will implement a Facebook pixel, ensure that your Google Analytics is set up and ensure that you have the systems in place to track and measure the performance of social media content.
Make sure you identify your business goal and then identify the ways your social media activities will help support that goal.
Social Media Content Audit
Start by assessing what’s working and what’s not working. Spend some time going through your social media channels and see which social media channels are generating the highest engagement.
For example, which channels give you the highest feedback loop with your audience where you receive their feedback or have them click and engage with your content?
- Which channel(s) are you most consistent on right now?
- What’s working?
- Which channels are currently offering the least engagement or poor performance?
- Could weak performance be attributed to poor execution?
Related: How to Be a More Consistent Content Creator
Take a look at any unique factors contributing to poor performance on a platform (i.e. inconsistency, lack of optimization, type of content, your engagement strategy, etc).
Check out your insights to see who’s engaging with your content. You’ll use some of this information later in another section to determine your target audience.
As you work your way through each channel, analyze the performance of your content. Look at the content that has performed well and determine what was unique about the content.
What type of content was it? (i.e. quote, graphic, video, etc). What was the tone of the message? When and what time was it posted and on which platform? What did the message convey?
Become familiar with your highest-performing content so that you can continue to iterate it once you begin to create content for your social media content strategy.
As you evaluate each platform, think about whether you have the time and resources to invest time on this channel. Remember that you don’t have to be everywhere. It’s OK to start and expand onto other channels over time.
Target Audience
Who is part of your target audience?
Who are the people that need your product or service the most and where can you find them online?
Write down as many attributes as possible such as their age, gender, location, life stage, income, education level, lifestyle, interests, dreams, fears, challenges or questions.
You’ll also want to take note of the people who are currently engaging with your content. When you performed your social media audit, what type of insights were you able to collect from that? Is there a particular demographic or audience that most engages with your content?
Take note of these details so that you can better understand who you are speaking to. Knowing your audience is also a crucial step in developing your social media content strategy.
How to Create a Content Strategy for Social Media Share on XCompetitor Analysis
In this section, you want to identify the competitors, influencers or any complementary accounts that are talking about similar topics, products or services as you. They may also be targeting your ideal target audience and you may be able to gain some insights and takeaways.
- Which platforms are your competitors successful on?
- What’s their posting frequency?
- Which type of content receives the most engagement?
- Which platforms are they receiving the least engagement?
Try not to spend too much time in this section because you don’t want to end up down a rabbit hole and you also don’t want to start copying or get influenced too much by their content strategy.
As you take notes, identify content that aligns and that you can replicate and remix into your style. What can you improve on and make better? In what ways can you distinguish yourself from others in the market?
Do keyword searches on each platform and see what is popping up in the search results. Who are the influencers in your field? Which brands complement your content?
Identify accounts you could potentially curate content from to complement the interests of your target audience.
Determine Your Channel Strategy
Which social media channels will be the most effective in helping you reach your audience? You want to think about the long-form content that you’re creating and what you will choose to focus on.
Your long-form content could be blog posts, or a podcast or video. Determine what your zone of genius is and begin to map out what your audience journey will look like.
What will your short-form content look like? We’ll expand on these details in the next section. Mapping out your channel strategy and customer journey is important when considering your content strategy.
Identify the following as you determine which channels you will invest your time on:
- How does your audience find you? Think about how you will attract your audience to your channel and how you will warm them up.
- How does your audience get to know you? Determine how you will build trust and authority with your audience and your plan for cultivating a “know, like, trust” factor.
- How do you convert your audience? Think about how you will help your audience buy or purchase from you. How do get them to this step?
Identify Your Content Mix
Now that you have an idea about what your long-form content will be (i.e. blog post, podcast, video), you can start to determine what your content mix will consist of.
Think about your long-form content and how you will plan to distribute that content on social media.
For example, your content mix could include various assets such as quotes, carousel posts, 15-60 second videos, stories, text, user-generated content, e-books, worksheets, checklists, audiograms, etc.
Think about how you will plan to maximize your long-form content. If you have any notable content series you want to create or if you want to go live every week, these are little details that should be captured.
Content Calendar Template
If you’re looking for a content calendar for your personal brand or business. Consider this calendar template I created using Airtable.
Brand Voice & Tone – Style Guide
Whether you’re working solo or with a team, you’ll want to ensure that you have developed a brand style guide to refer to. This document helps to communicate the look and feel of your brand through voice, tone, fonts, colors, imagery and topics.
A brand style guide offers some creative constraints that are very helpful in the content creation process. They help you stay focused on colors, imagery and tone.
Think about the voice and tone and style of how you will deliver your message. For example, is your perspective as an expert, experimenter, or observer? Will it perspective vary depending on the topic? What’s your brand voice like? What language, phrases or expressions will you use to convey your message?
Identify some words that will help establish your brand voice or personality. Which messages or information will be the most valuable for your audience and how will you effectively convey this information in an engaging way?
Remember that your voice is something that is continuously being refined and it’s something that you hone over time and refine as needed. This is also a good time to establish or refine your content pillars. What will be your unique value proposition?
Tools and Resources
You’ve identified your goals, your content channels, your content mix and now you need to identify the tools and resources you’ll need to accomplish your goals.
Identify which tools you’ll need to create and schedule your content.
Here are some examples:
- Graphic design program
- Video editing software
- Email marketing program
- Content scheduling tool
- Client onboarding tool
You’ll also need to identify any resources you’ll need. For example, are you doing this solo or working with a team to write the content, launch ads or design the assets?
Do you need a video editor or podcast editor? This is the time to identify how and who will get everything done.
Content Calendar
Now we get into the fun stuff where you put everything into a content calendar.
Your content calendar is sacred because it serves as a blueprint on how often you publish and helps you see what needs to be created or published. You want to be realistic with your publishing schedule and deadlines.
Develop a content calendar and map out your content on a monthly or quarterly basis. Then aim to stay 1-2 weeks ahead of your schedule.
You can create or manage a content calendar using Trello, Google Sheets, Asana or Airtable.
Check out how to build a content calendar using Airtable.
Here are some details of what you should include in your content calendar:
- Long-form content being created
- Promotional content
- Relevant holidays and observances
- Short-form content being created from long-form content.
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