MY Social Media Strategy
My ultimate goal is for you to be able to leave this blog post and actually know how to build a social media strategy out.
So you know a little bit about me, but why listen to me?
So I have worked with over 40 different clients for social media management and in 10 different industries. And it's really, really hard to create longevity and retention in this business if you don't know how to build a solid social media strategy. And let me tell you, I know this from firsthand. I absolutely did not know how to build out a strategy when I first became a social media manager. I have no shame in saying that because it has allowed me to get here today. When I first started social media management, I was just kind of like throwing content out there and seeing what worked and what was pretty.
Now, I've built a six-figure business through this client retention. And one of my most exciting accomplishments in my business is that I still work with three of my first clients.
And that is because I actually was able to build out strategies, execute them, and modify them when they weren't working. With these three clients, it wasn't like it's been smooth sailing this whole time, but I was adaptable and I knew how to fix strategies and when to fix them when they weren't working. That's what I'm going to help you be able to do in this post.
Retention is the goal. Longevity is the goal.
Social media management is such a diverse business. Every single one of our businesses looks so different. This is going to be the framework you can always come back to when things with your clients aren't working or when you have new clients and you don't have much direction.
So let's get into social media strategy.
But take note of this, before I build out the content, this is not a content plan. This is the actual strategy that I go over with clients to make sure we’re on the same page. Then, I build out the content plan. For this example, I am going to break down a content strategy for an acupuncturist.
Inside the Strategy
Cover page: Client's name + social media strategy.
Table of contents
Just as much as it is important to know how to build these out, it's also really important to know how to communicate them. So we'll talk more about that below.
Brand assets: Client logo, brand colors and the brand fonts
Setting goals:
What I mean by setting goals is: what is the point truly?
Whether you're a new social media manager, you've scaled your business or you're in the messy middle, you're likely stressed about how to communicate ROI, right?
Social media managers are not directly responsible for sales.
So how do we talk about ROIs effectively and confidently? How do we prove to our clients who don't understand the value behind social media? You're not convincing them why social media management is important, but what are they going to get out of your services?
Setting tangible, specific goals is so incredibly important in building out a solid strategy.
For example: For community building, the specific goal is going to be to increase engagement by 15% by the end of the quarter through organic content strategy. Then you can identify things that might keep your client from that goal, which would be the weaknesses.
Weakness: Limited awareness. Not everybody knows what acupuncture is. Acupuncture isn't as common as other forms of self-care, other forms of treatments, etc. Competition could be a weakness. Is there a surplus of acupuncturists where they are located that they are competing?
In the first three months of working with a client, you're gonna have to play around with your content strategy, see what works and what doesn't work.
Opportunities: For them to hit this engagement goal it could look like partnering with local wellness businesses, leaning into stories as an opportunity to increase engagement. If your client has any kind of ad budget, that would certainly help engagement.
Threats: Would be any kind of negative experiences someone would have with your client that's posted online or any kind of misinformation.
Then when you meet or reassess next quarter, we're going to see if we hit this tangible goal of increasing engagement by 15 percent. I like to have two to three goals side by side that make sense with each other. Then, you can move on to asking questions like, increasing engagement by 15 percent, what is that like what is that supposed to do for their business long term?
SWOT vs. SMART analysis
They're just methods to create specific goals. Get the complicated nature of it out of your mind and just think of it as this: it's just a way to break things down. You could use the SWOT analysis for both of them, or you could use the SMART analysis for both of them. I'm just giving you two different examples. But for a strategy like this, using these two goals together is really beneficial for not only for me, but also for my client to really see the return on investment.
For example, let’s say the second objective and goal is going to be increased website traffic. So community building, website traffic, putting them together, that's gonna create more leads essentially, right? Still not directly the same as sales, but essentially with those two together, while I'm building community over here, we're also gonna focus on increasing website traffic together.
So both specific goals, but they're attainable as well. If you have clients already, or if you don't have clients, attainable goals are anything under 30%.
If you are a part of the loop, there is a Google Analytics training, so be sure to check that out because a great way to measure your specific goals is through Google Analytics.
More traffic is going to lead to more sales or more leads, which will then potentially lead to more sales. That second part however, is not on you. But website traffic to leads is definitely a great way to have these two goals working together to create a result for your client that is beneficial for them. I personally set my goals with my clients every three months. Not only does that keep me on track with things, but also creates some urgency for you as their social media manager.
It's really up to you and how you want to structure those goals. So these two in combination with each other is a great way. And I honestly think it's a great example of setting goals and setting goals together to make it all make sense. But again, I think the word SWOT analysis and SMART analysis gets thrown around a lot. I just need to reiterate, it's just a method in order to be specific and set goals. So when you're meeting with your clients every three months or so, you can see whether you hit those goals or if you are falling short or if you're wildly exceeding them. And that's something you can communicate to your clients.
Communicating with your clients:
Setting goals is great, but being able to communicate them to your clients so they understand what you're talking about is even more important or just as important. Being able to break this down into simple terms is really, really important. So I challenge you, as you're building out your next client strategy, whether you're building it out for yourself or for your next client, talk to a mirror, talk to yourself and talk about these goals specifically as simple as possible. It will not only help your client relationships, but it'll also just help that meeting go along smoother.
Market Research
Now let's talk about market research. Market research is one of those things that I think a lot of new social media managers will skip over. When I say new social media managers, I'm mostly referring to myself. But in social media managers I've worked with, I've noticed that market research is a really confusing and daunting task, especially when you don't really understand how to do it.
Market research is something that I really don't want you to ignore. Everyone does it a little bit differently, but really leaning into your client for this, I think is something that we feel scared to do.
But at the end of the day, your client knows their ideal client best, right? Questions to ask your client (whether it's in an onboarding packet or welcome packet/questionnaire):
Who is your target audience?
Who are the people that buy from you?
What do they do?
Where do they shop
What do they eat? Where are the restaurants they go to?
This will also help you figure out who your actual competitors are. The way I utilize market research the most when it comes to competitor research is hashtags. I don't use any hashtag tracker generators, nor am I doing things manually all the time either. I think there's certain times that it makes sense to reinvent the wheel and do things out of the box. And I don't think hashtags are one of those times. So I always like to take my time to go through certain competitors and see what hashtags they are using. Especially local competitors.
Ex: #acupuncture is probably too general. But if I see multiple companies using #orangecountyacupuncturegirlies and see a lot of uses, that’s the one we want to use.
Myth: Spending time on hashtags is quite literally not worth it.
Fact: Using them is effective. This is a great way to find your hashtags without paying for hashtag generators.
Buyer types: Your client might not know their buyer types and that might require you to do some digging. I think it's really important to know what kind of people you're talking to. This is something I like to ask my clients about if they think they know, but I also like to do my own deep dive and see.
Competitors: This is one of my favorite topics to talk about because I think we get lost. And when I say we, I'm talking about myself and other social media managers I've worked with. We get lost in who our actual competitors are.
For example: I'm working for a local soda brand. Commonly, I'm thinking, okay, my competitors are obviously Coca-Cola and Poppy and Olipop. Well, yes. Do I think you should ignore them? Of course not. Pay attention to what they're doing. But looking for any kind of competitor research with a multi-billion dollar company like Coca-Cola to see what they're doing when you're working with a mom and pop shop type business with an organic content strategy, it's just different levels of marketing.
So with competitor analysis, what are they doing that is working? For example: A lot of acupuncturists are doing educational posts, they're doing treatment demonstrations, a lot of acupuncturists incorporate testimonials and it doesn't really perform all that great. So I really, really lean heavily into competitor analysis and letting my client know, this is what other people are doing and doing it well and this is what they're not doing well. And this is how we're either not even gonna touch that or how we're gonna do it better. So again, being able to communicate this to your client is really, really important.
Content Pillars: Some people hate them, some people love them, some people live by them. And honestly, the way I see pillars is different than typically what I see online or with other social media strategists.
I use personalized pillars. This id what actually makes your client brand - three to five repeatable point of views. These three to five repeatable concepts that really make your client's brand theirs.
Content Types: Types of content are different from pillars. And I think that's where these two get mixed up when they're being spoken about. So there's attract, nurture and sell. I'm sure a lot of you have heard that. But why I say these are personalized pillars is because attraction, nurturing and selling content are all going to look different based on your client and their industry. So, for example, you're not going to post a “ways to work with us” carousel on a restaurant page as a selling piece of content. You know the ways to work with them. You can go in and eat.
Having this set up in these three pillars will help you know what the purpose of every single piece of content that you put out is. And it's such a comforting feeling, especially when you're talking to your clients. When a certain reel doesn't pop off and perform as well as another because it was a selling reel and not an attraction piece of content, you know exactly how to communicate that to your client.
Attraction Content
Bait and Hook
Inspirational reels
POVs
Trending reels
Nurturing Content
Storytelling
Voiceovers
Day in the life
Selling Content
Services posts
Testimonials
BTS
At the end of the day, saying the same thing over and over again in different ways is the best way to build authority.
For example: I have a client who promotes her gut health programs quite literally on the back of her breakfast POV. And when I say breakfast POV, it's basically her saying, “You should eat a warm and savory breakfast every day.” And now she has built this community of people who just tag her in her breakfast all the time and she sells breakfast digital products. These POVs don't have to reinvent the wheel. They just have to be what encompasses your client's brand. I also recommend having at least one spicy repeatable POV.
Example: POV: Acupuncture is the most underrated self-care tool and should be incorporated into your daily routine. This would be like her spicy POV.
Ads: I don't think it is a great time to reinvent the wheel when doing ads. I'm not saying that you should copy anything by any means. Find out what's already working in your client space and with certain ads.
Influencer Marketing: I like to give examples of people. Showing your client why certain people would work for their brand and outlining a clear budget while on your strategy calls is important. Having everything in writing is really great when you're presenting to your client.
Stories: It depends if you're responsible for stories or not. For me in particular, any kind of personal brand, I create story layouts for them and they do their own stories. If I am creating stories for the brand,I always end my strategy templates with a layout of a weekly story planner, especially if they're doing them themselves.
Social media strategies are a lot of work. This is why you should not be giving them out on a discovery call. And when you know how to do it well, you don't feel bad about charging more for it. You know the most competitive social media managers are the confident ones. And it's really up to you what it takes to have that confidence. And honestly, starting with knowing how to build out solid social media strategies for your clients will change the way you show up on discovery calls in your client meetings. When you know what you're doing and why you're doing it and why it's all on purpose, things work and you'll know how to modify them.
Revisiting Strategies: With strategies, every 90 days is typically when I go back and revisit strategies.Things that are working well, I'm not touching. If things are not working as particularly well as I thought, I'm not changing the pillars, I’m changing the types.
For example: Are we going to tweak the POVs a little bit to make them more relatable, maybe a little bit spicier? Maybe the behind the scenes aren't really working that well?
What kind of content should I experiment with to see if that sticks and if that works better? How can I modify that?
Reminder: Creating an effective social media strategy takes a lot of work. That being said, you don’t need to give away the whole strategy on a discovery call in order to land the client. If you called a painter to paint your house, you wouldn’t ask them, “Can you just come over and paint one wall first so I can see if I like it?” Absolutely not.
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