Creating a successful social media strategy is not easy. It’s a process of listening, drafting, posting, listening again and re-drafting. What we have found at Skout is that a successful social media strategy has to be focused on a combination of different things – the audience that you are trying to engage with, the platform that you are using and the type of posts that you want to write.
When you are the person responsible for looking after your social media platforms, time is your biggest friend. Spending time living in your social media feeds allows you to determine what is already working, what is gaining traction with the audience and what clearly needs to be re-focused. Our own findings on developing a successful social media strategy have been gathered over years of working with our clients on their social media plans and are not the result of a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
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Treating each platform differently
After spending time living and breathing the social media channels, you need to set about creating a separate strategy for each platform. This strategy needs to consider the make-up and size of the audience, whether the audience has been grown organically or purchased, the platform that you want to use, the right tone of voice, content to increase engagement, imagery, links, accounts you should be following, and, some would argue most importantly, frequency. A successful social media strategy is more than just pulling together 280 characters and hoping that they resonate.
The next question to consider is whether you need to be across every platform – TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you want your voice to be heard, then surely a loudhailer is the right way to go? It can sometimes be challenging to take a step back and think about what the right direction is, being able to see that the same post won’t work across all platforms, that rich media will gain good engagement but stories about people are even more powerful and that, unfortunately, you are going to have to deal with negative feedback if you choose to put yourself out there.
Social strategy is not simple
A successful social media strategy is an ever-evolving picture, a true consultative process between you and your audience, listening to what they want to hear more of and adapting your strategy accordingly. Anyone who tells you that a social media strategy is simple and that it can be delivered quickly and with certainty from day one is, quite simply, not giving your brand the attention it deserves. The key to a successful social media strategy is listening and that is not something you can do as a one off.
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