7 simple steps to help you create an effective social media strategy

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is a term used to describe the use of social media platforms to engage new and existing customers online. Social media marketing helps you to:

• promote your products and services
• grow your audience
• build brand awareness
• increase your sales
• drive traffic to your website.

The activities involved in social media marketing include posting fresh content routinely, engaging with your followers, running social media advertising campaigns, and measuring the results of your efforts.

How can social media benefit my business?

Social media empowers your business to share content, build communities, and engage with potential and existing customers online. This is why so many small businesses use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn to promote their products and services online and to strengthen customer relationships.

According to Investopedia, more than 4.7 billion people use social media, equal to roughly 60% of the world’s population. So, if you're looking for ways to connect with customers online, social media platforms may be your bridge to new audiences.

Key benefits of social media for business include:

• helping you to grow your customer base
• the ability to create online networks of new and existing customers
• the power to sell and promote your products and services.

What is a social media strategy?

A business plan sets out your future objectives and strategies for achieving them; a social media strategy does much the same. The difference is that a social media strategy focuses on how you plan to use online platforms specifically to help achieve our goals.

As part of your business’s broader digital marketing strategy, your social media strategy should include:

• your social media goals
• the tactics or channels you'll use to achieve them, and
• how you'll measure your progress and success.

If you’ve never created a social media strategy before, it’s a good idea to start with the following questions:

• What do I want to achieve? The answer could be making more sales, reaching more customers, or just increasing awareness of your brand.
• Which platforms should I be using? From Facebook to Instagram, TikTok to LinkedIn, there’s a lot to choose from.
• Who will manage my social media advertising? You may choose to outsource your online marketing to digital experts, or have someone handle things in-house.

Do I really need a social media strategy?

The more strategic you are with your social media use, the more it can help your business succeed. So, while a formal social media strategy isn’t essential, it can help you make the most of the time you’re spending online. In fact, according to business.gov.au, doing the groundwork before you start is critical to a successful social media presence.

Benefits of a social media strategy

A social media strategy has many benefits for your business. It can help you:

• Provide a clear direction for your social media activity
• Improve targeting across different platforms and audiences
• Boost website traffic
• Drive engagement through social commerce and shoppable posts
• Enhance customer service
• Collect data for continuous improvement.

What steps should I take to create a social media strategy?

Now that we’ve established the benefits of a social media strategy, it’s time to outline how to create one for your business. The way you end up using social media will depend on your goals, but the following steps will help you integrate social media into your larger digital marketing strategy.

Step 1. Choose goals that serve your business

Seems obvious, but the social media goals you set should align with your broader business objectives. For example, if you want to increase your sales, the social media advertising campaigns you run should be designed with making sales in mind.

According to social media management platform Hootsuite, each of your social media marketing goals should also be SMART. So, what does that mean? Basically, SMART is an acronym used to guide goal setting. It stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant, and
• Time-bound.

Using this framework will help your business to set clear expectations and, most importantly, to measure the success of your social media strategy. Without clear goals, it may be difficult to accurately measure success and determine your return on investment (ROI).

Select valuable metrics to track

Easily tracked metrics such as likes and followers don't always reflect true value. Instead, put greater focus on metrics such as conversion rates and engagement.

Consider assigning and tracking separate goals for each social media platform, tailored to their specific uses. For example, on Instagram you could track Story views for brand awareness or measure click-through rates on LinkedIn if your goal is to drive website traffic.

Step 2. Find your audience and use the platforms they prefer

To build a successful social media strategy, it pays to understand your audience. Before you start posting, pause to think about who you're posting for.

If you’re new to creating customer personas, you can start with the following questions:

• Who are they? Knowing their age and location will help you target your social media campaigns.
• What are their interests and needs? This will help you tailor your content.
• What motivates them to engage with social media? Some customers may just want to shop online, but others are looking to learn and connect with others.
• Where do they spend their time online? Not all audiences log on to the same social media sites, so find out which social media platform your customers use, and then align.   

Analytics can offer valuable insights into your followers' demographics, locations, and interactions with your business. This information can help you to more effectively identify and target your audience.

The better you know your customers, the more you can meet their expectations online. This, in turn, will help to increase engagement on your social media platforms.

Watch your competition

Your customers are likely already engaging with other businesses in your industry online. In the world of social media, that isn’t such a bad thing, as you can learn a lot from what others are already doing.

So, take the time to look closely at your competition, and ask yourself the following questions:

• Which platforms are they using?
• What content are they posting?
• Are customers engaging with their posts?

This is called a competitive analysis. Keeping watch of what other businesses are getting right, and wrong, will help you figure out what kind of content your customers are likely to engage with or not.   

Competitive analysis can also help point out opportunities and weaknesses in your social media strategy. For instance, if a competitor is strong on Instagram but less active on TikTok or Twitter, you could focus on these underserved platforms. That way, you can engage your audience where there's less competition, instead of trying to fight for attention from the audience of established competitors.

Audit your social media

If your business has existing social media accounts, assess your current efforts by determining:

• What content has been working and what hasn’t?
• How do you compared to your competitors?
• Which platforms is your audience active on?
• What type of audience engages with your content?
• What partnerships have been the most valuable?

Collecting this information will help you identify areas for improvement and clarify the purpose of each social account. If an account's purpose isn’t clear, consider whether it's worth maintaining.

Step 3. Choose your social media platforms

In today's digital age, there are lots of social media platforms to choose from. But before you rush to create your accounts, it's important to think about which are the most relevant to your business, based on your audience and broader digital marketing goals.

Here’s a list of social media platforms and an overview of what they offer your business:

• A Facebook business page empowers you to run Facebook advertising campaigns.
• An Instagram business account gives you the option of running Instagram ads.
• A TikTok account may give you the option of exploring influencer marketing.
• A Twitter business account can help you increase brand awareness. 
• A LinkedIn company page can help you tell the story of your business and its purpose.
• A YouTube channel allows you to experiment with video marketing for business.

This list is not exhaustive, but these platforms are where a lot of brands invest their online marketing efforts. Many small businesses also set up Instagram shops and Facebook shops as interim (or permanent) solutions in lieu of web stores.

Remember, whether you create an Instagram business account or a LinkedIn company page, the most important thing is to be where your customers are. 

Optimising your profiles

After choosing the social media networks your business will focus on, create new profiles or enhance existing ones to support your strategy.

Consider how to:

• Provide as much information as possible.
• Include keywords that potential customers might use when searching for you.
• Utilise consistent branding (visuals, logos) across all networks to make your profiles easy to recognise and trustworthy.

Step 4. Think (strategically) about what you want to say

On social media platforms, every post counts towards you achieving your goals. So, once you’ve set up your accounts, it pays to think strategically about your messaging.

A holistic social media content plan should feature a mix of different content types, and may include:

• Content to promote your products and services, including any special offers you may be running.
• Content to educate your customers, such as infographics, links to blog posts, or custom videos.
• Content designed to engage your customers, such as polls, quizzes, and questions that encourage followers to communicate with you, and one another, online.

Create a social media content calendar

When it comes to sharing content on social media platforms, consistency is key. You can strengthen your online marketing efforts by creating a content calendar to help you plan and post content routinely.

A detailed social media content calendar will help you strengthen your online presence, and may include:

• The dates and times you publish on each social media platform.
• The type of content you'll be posting on each platform.
• The words and images you plan on sharing with each post.
• The links you intend on sharing with each post.
• The blog posts and custom videos you’ll promote throughout the month.
• Plans for longer-term social media advertising campaigns.

Updating your website and social media on a regular basis may help you to improve your online search ranking. A social media content calendar can keep you on track.

Step 5. Create captivating content

Now it's time to begin the content creation process and start developing the content you'll post to achieve your goal on each of your chosen networks.

If you're unsure what content to post or how to get started, consider using AI tools to help you get inspirations and quickly produce ideas for content.

Learn more about how you can leverage AI tools in your marketing.

Ensure your content fits both the platforms and its designated purpose. For instance, try to avoid posting highly edited or scripted video ads on TikTok where users prefer short, stripped back content.

Expect to update this section regularly as you test and discover which types of content work best on each network.

Step 6. Measure your social media strategy performance

We now know that each of your social media marketing goals should be measurable, and there’s an important reason for this. To get a clear view on your return on investment (ROI), you need to monitor the performance of your social media efforts.

In addition to listing your goals, your social media strategy also needs to define how you’ll measure success. You can do so by tracking and reporting on social media metrics, to help you understand what kind of content is working, and what’s not.

To help you measure success, you may choose to track the following kinds of metrics:

• Engagement metrics: such as likes, follows, shares and comments.
• Awareness metrics: such as the number of impressions your posts make and their reach.
• Referrals and conversions metrics: such as clicks and click through rates. This can provide insight about how many customers visited your website after looking at a post.

If you're new to reporting of this nature, remember that most social media platforms have built-in analytics tools that can help you track metrics.

Step 7. Adjust your strategy

Your social media strategy is a vital element of your overall marketing strategy, but you might not completely nail it straight away.

As you put your plan in action and monitor results, you may discover some strategies aren’t as effective as anticipated, while others exceed expectations. Use this data to regularly reassess and refine your strategy.

Ready to create a social media strategy? We can help

When used strategically, social media is a powerful tool that can help you reach more customers and increase your sales in the digital landscape.   

If you want help getting the attention of audiences online, we can help with the behind-the-scenes strategic thinking, so you can focus on the day-to-day to evolve your business. 

Originally published May 2023, updated January 2025.