How to make a Social Media Marketing Strategy

If you want to create a social media account for your business or personal brand, you need to have a Social Media Marketing Strategy. It will serve as your guide-book, a north star if you want, in navigating the simple yet complicated world of social media.

Here’s an easy step-by-step guide. Don’t miss the surprise at the end.

1. Objectives

Enumerate the objectives of your social media account.

Why are you on Social Media? It could be as simple as “to establish an online presence.” It could also be more specific, like “to sell a product” or “to be a beauty influencer.”

Social Media is a relatively free platform to achieve what you want, for yourself or for your business.

2. Goals

Your goals should be SMART.

Specific — “to be an influencer”
Measurable — “to gain 1 Million followers on Instagram”
Attainable — “Others can do it. I can too.”
Relevant — “I wanna be an influencer because (insert goals and values)”
Time-based — “to gain 1 Million followers in 2 years”

List your goals and put a date on it.

Don’t take the “attainable” part too seriously though. Be delusional. Dream your dream.

3. Specialization

Your specialization or specialty is your expertise.

In order to appear authoritative and trustworthy, talk about what you know.

If they like you, they will follow you but if they trust you, they will become advocates of your brand and the key to your growth.

Examples of specializations are “social media management,” “Instagram growth,” “content creation,” “Pinterest marketing,” “LinkedIn growth,” “Facebook ads,” “data analytics”, “copywriting,” “lead generation” or “branding”.

Outside the digital marketing industry, examples are “paleo diet,” “interior design,” and “special education”.

Write down what you’re good at. Do you like to talk about that all day everyday?

If you are selling a product, write down what your products do.

You may choose up to 3 inter-related specializations. That will be your Content Pillars.

4. Niche

Your specialization is what you do. Your niche is who you serve.

Examples of niches are “real estate,” “dental clinics,” and “salon and spa.”

The niche could also be location-specific like “New York Real Estate,” or “London Salon and Spa,” or “Los Angeles Dental Clinics.”

If you combine your specialization and niche, that would be “Social Media Management for Business Coaches,” “Content Creation for New York Real Estate” or “Lead Generation for Los Angeles Dental Clinics.”

5. Client or Audience Profile

Make a profile of your ideal audience, or, if your objective is to sell, a profile of your ideal client.

List down all of the qualities of your ideal audience. List down their names. Put a face to the names even.

Think about their lifestyles. What do they do as soon as they wake up? What time do they sleep? Do they have a family? What are their hobbies? Where do they go on vacations?

After creating a profile, list down their problems. Is it difficult for them to wake up in the morning? Can they sleep well at night? Are they too busy to have a hobby? Is price range a concern for them?

Get to know your audience as much as you can so it will be easier to create content for them.

My surprise at the end is related to this so continue reading. :)

6. Social Media Branding

Your Social Media Branding consists of your Visual Brand Guide and your Brand Voice.

The Visual Brand Guide includes the logo, color palette, display font, header font, body font, and a mood board.

These are based on your specialization, niche, and client profile. It should also reflect your goals and objectives.

For your color palette, you may check out color psychology and pick what resonates.

For example, blue with an understated summer theme is good for a seafood restaurant who wants to attract a laidback and moneyed clientele. Purple with a classic theme is perfect for a lawyer to establish credibility and trust.

Here’s the visual branding guide for my personal brand. I’m gloomy and brooding with a sense of humor, but also sweet and excitable (these are all descriptions I got from friends). I decided to choose blue for trust and orange for a bit of lighthearted fun.

After creating your visual guide, you need to establish your Brand Voice.

Your brand voice is your brand’s values and point of view. It’s the way that you communicate. It’s the way you present your ideas. It’s not limited to the tone and words used but also includes your whole personality.

7. Content Strategy

Always post with your ideal audience or client in mind.

If you want to gain their trust, show them empathy. If your ideal audience are stressed from working all day, you can ease their distress by making them laugh. If your purpose is to sell, post about a solution to your ideal clients’ problems instead of outright selling. Wait for the right time to state your offer.

In order to get your message across, you need to utilize different social media features to reach your audience. Make a hashtag bank with 14 hashtag sets.

Research relevant keywords within your niche and specialization so you can appear in searches. Find out the best time to post. Experiment which content format works best for your account. There is no single fool-proof content strategy. Test out what works for your account.

Content strategy is a lengthy topic which merits a separate blog. This is a sneak peek.

8. Content Creation

You can post content in different formats.

• Instagram — photos, videos, reels (short form video content) and stories
• Facebook — you can post photos, videos, reels, text and stories
• TikTok — short-form videos and stories too
• Twitter — short text, photos and videos
• Linkedin — like Facebook but work and business oriented
• YouTube — long-form videos and short-form videos on YouTube Shorts
• Pinterest — tall images that can link to your website or other social media accounts and short-form videos called Idea Pins

Stories are short form photo, video and text sharing feature that appears for 24 hours only. It can be found by clicking on your profile picture.

Follow the image or video sizes of these platforms for optimum quality. This ensures that your images won’t pixelate.

After choosing your social media platform, start creating content using an App or Software. Graphic Designers use Photoshop and Illustrator for graphics; and After Effects for videos. These apps have 30 day trials and subscription requirements. They are very powerful but has a learning curve.

A lot of people use Canva especially in recent years. It’s a user-friendly app for graphics and videos with built in stock images. They have a free version and a pro version. It has a lot of templates for different apps so new users can easily adapt.

The usual photos and videos always work, if it aligns with your objectives. Make sure to use content without copyright infringement.

If you are not creative, you can always hire a content creator or graphic designer.

9. Growth Strategy

9.a. KPI

You can measure your growth by crafting a Key Performance Index or KPI. The KPI is based on your goals and objectives. If your objective is to grow your followers to 1 million in 1 year, your KPI is “follower count.” If your goal is to sell, then you set a quota for your social media sales.

For one of my clients, our marketing strategy is maximizing User Generated Content (UGC) so my KPI was shares, tags and mentions.

Other examples of KPIs for social media are website visitors, email database or simply likes, comments and shares.

9.b. Content Scheduling

Figure out how frequent you’re gonna post on social media based on your capacity and your audience’s habit.

Foundr Magazine grew their account to millions in 2 years by posting 8 content per day.

Foundr has a social media team but if you don’t have one, once a day is enough. Three (3) high value posts per week should be the bare minimum. Less than that and your audience might lose interest.

As a social media manager, I create content in batches — ideally 1 month in advance. Allot a block of time to create your content for the next 2 weeks, at least, so you will not disrupt your posting schedule in case something happens.

You can schedule your Instagram and Facebook posts on Meta Business Suite or Creator Studio. For other social media platforms like Linkedin, Twitter and TikTok, I recommend Buffer or Later.

9.c. Hashtag Strategy

The hashtag (#) is a networking feature of several social media platforms.

Each hashtag is a category where posts with similar interests can be found. You can tag your post in its category so people can search for them. I will post a separate blog for this so watch out. Meanwhile, you can check out my Instagram Account (linked below). I have a few posts about hashtags.

9.d. Engagement Strategy

All of the above won’t convert if you don’t have an engagement strategy.

Since we’re talking about social media, it’s necessary to be social.

Find your audience and engage with them through follows, likes, comments, shares and direct messages (DM). Don’t be afraid to be the once who makes the first contact but always be respectful.

To summarize

1. List down why you are on social media.
2. Your goals should be SMART but be delusional.
3. Talk about what you know.
4. Define who you serve.
5. Spend time making a detailed client or audience profile.
6. Have a social media branding guide.
7. Make a content strategy.
8. Create compelling content.
9. Have a strategy for growth.

Now that you have a social media marketing strategy, it’s time to get to work.

You made it to the end!

Because you made it here, I’m giving you an access to my proven Content Marketing Worksheet. Get it here: Content Marketing Worksheet Template

Happy creating!