Are you asking the right questions?

Francis Grabowski, Strategist at Bladonmore, discusses the most important questions to ask when developing your social media strategy.

If you don’t have a strategy supporting your efforts on social media, it is time to define one.

A simple search will tell you that social media-storytelling is an expected part of any company’s communications strategy. To support this, 76% of seniors believe that social media activity enhances a company’s reputation, 80% of employees would rather work for a CEO who is active on social, and almost three-quarters of Fortune 500 CEOs are now active on at least one social media platform. This article will help you ask the right questions and take you through the key steps in creating a social media strategy, as well as some of the common pitfalls to avoid.

What do I want to achieve?

The first step in any social media strategy is to understand your goals. Without knowing where you want to go or what you want to achieve, you’ll be guessing – with no way to know if your content is helping the business. Once you define what you want to achieve, you give yourself a concrete target. It gives you a goal and a way to track progress, so you will know what’s working and what needs development.

But what should you aim for? It’s important you don’t just make noise for the sake of it. Your goals should be designed to reinforce your company’s wider strategy and deliver your communications strategy and key messages. For example, if your company’s public image has been hurt by a misinformation campaign, you might look to use social media as one of many tools to improve your brand’s reputation.

Who am I speaking to?

Once you know what you want to achieve, you need to think about who you want to speak to. You know the messages you want to share, but you need to figure out who you’re targeting with these messages. You need to understand your audience’s pre-existing knowledge level and how they perceive your business, as well as how they are using social media. This will give you a good idea of what they are going to enjoy interacting with and what they will find engaging.

Then, you need to match what you want to say to what your audience wants to engage with. On social media, it’s not enough to just blast out your messages, they need to be tailored in order to drive engagement.

How will I reach these people?

Now you know what your audience wants, what you want to say, and the connection between these two points. The next question is where and then how. By where, we are referring to the social media platform you will use. You need to meet the expectation of that channel, as people visit different channels for different reasons. For example, they’re much more likely to visit LinkedIn for business content than TikTok.

Who should feature in our content?

The people who provide this content matter, too. People like to engage with people. They care less about engaging with a logo. It’s why the biggest brands in the world sign up famous ambassadors. The brains behind our social media platforms know this, and they’ve designed their algorithms to share content from people more widely than content from organizations.

Choosing the right people is important. You’ll need people with a point of view, who can perform on camera and are not afraid to be in the public eye. This won’t be right for everyone. Your contributors need to have the time to help. This doesn’t mean you can’t get your CEO involved. It just means you need to plan a process that minimizes their time commitment.

How do I know if it is working?

Another key part of strategy is the review – and in today’s world, that means looking at the data.  One of the biggest pitfalls when it comes to data is using insignificant sample sizes. 50% of your posts underperforming sounds bad. After 100 posts that matters, but after two posts it might not. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time to change your tactics as you need a meaningful sample size to make that decision.

The second major pitfall with data is trying to compare the incomparable. Comparing posts with different objectives is like comparing Tiger Woods and Lionel Messi. They are both sporting greats, but if you only ask them how many career goals they’ve scored, Tiger Woods doesn’t look so impressive. If you have two posts designed to achieve different objectives, then only judge them against those for which they were designed.

Are you happy with your answers?

These are the first steps to building a social media strategy. You still need to consider the content itself, the format of that content to best deliver your messages, and how and when to boost posts, but we will save that for another time.

All successful social media strategies are built on the foundation of delivering messages to your audience alongside something they want, on the channel where they expect to find it. Once you’re happy with the answers to the questions outlined in this article, you’re ready to start creating content and getting your messages out there.

If you are looking for direction in telling your story online, get in touch.