How to choreograph your social strategy for success (and stop standing on the sidelines)

July 6, 2023

We’re surprising absolutely no one when we say social media is here to stay. That’s right – if you want to seriously engage your audience, build brand awareness and drive customer action, you’ve got to turn up to the party knowing the social media moves. 💃

You might think (and hope) that your business is excused from learning the social Macarena, the Nutbush or the Cha Cha Slide (cringe). Because wouldn’t it be easier to turn up and watch everyone else do the dance, while you stand coolly at the sidelines with your dignity intact? Or to just pass on the party altogether?

You could do that. Or you could moonwalk your way to a growing business and a bigger audience (and you might even form meaningful relationships along the way). Trust us, it can be fun.

What is a social media strategy?

A social media strategy is a plan for how a brand will use social media to achieve specific marketing goals. It defines the types of content you’ll share, the channels you’ll use for distribution, and the target audience your content is intended to reach. Every piece of your social media strategy should support your goals as a brand. It might seem obvious, but for some numbers to back it up, this study found that 71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend the brand to their friends and family.

Do you really need a social media strategy?

To get in front of the people you want to impress (your future customers), you need a plan of attack. Yes, almost everyone’s on social media in 2023, and it does have the potential to unlock a landslide of leads…but your competitors are hanging out there too, so you need to do it right.

When you have a solid social media strategy in place, you can stand out from the crowd – showing the world why you’re the best at what you do. When your social media is ad hoc, you run the risk of freewheeling your way towards inconsistent branding, unclear messaging, and an unimpressed audience.

“Social media plays a more crucial role than ever before,” says Tegan Purdon, a Senior Brand and Marketing Strategist at Taylor & Grace. “It helps to humanise your brand, connect, engage, and more importantly, set a level of expectations of what it’s like to be a customer. This is the core of brand trust, and social media is a free platform that helps you build brand trust quicker, cheaper, and easier than ever before.”

How to create an effective social media strategy

To avoid metaphorically dancing like a complete and utter Dad (or like that bloke calling himself Disco Dave at the afterparty you went to in 2013), you’ve got to learn the steps before you turn up to the party. The good news? We’ve got the moves:

Define your goals

Before you start developing your social strategy, it’s important to define your goals. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your website? Promote a lead magnet? Convey a meaningful message to your customers? Ideally, your goals should be measurable and have realistic timings attached to them so you can analyse how you’re doing along the way.

Identify your audience

We could go on about the importance of creating buyer personas forever. When you really know your customers and put them at the heart of your social strategy, it’ll shine through. You can address their pain points. Your content will resonate. You’ll win their hearts.

Determine your content and platform

Are you going to use mostly videos, reels and live streams? Or will static images, text-heavy posts and infographics resonate more with your audience? Do you know what platform your audience prefers?

Develop a calendar

A social media calendar is a schedule of when and what you will post on social media. It helps ensure you consistently publish content across multiple channels, without accidentally ghosting your potential customers.

Monitor, measure and improve

If you don’t evaluate the success of your new-found strategy, it’s harder to keep improving. There are a few metrics that you can use to measure the success of your social media strategy, including engagement rate, reach, and conversion rate.

Dance like everyone’s watching (because they are)

Creating a social media strategy that enhances your brand reputation and growth requires research, a strong understanding of your audience, and the ability to continuously refine and perfect your content and approach.

“It’s not as simple as setting it up and running with it,” explains Tegan. “A social media strategy needs a consistent core foundation while maintaining the flexibility and agility to keep up with ever-changing trends and platforms. It’s important to remember that social media platforms are FREE. You don’t own them, control the engagement, or even whether it exists tomorrow. You must always have a plan of how to transfer your leads to your own platforms to nurture and convert.”

At Taylor & Grace, we specialise in helping businesses develop effective social media strategies that align with their brand and help them step closer to their goals. If you need a hand turning your social strategy around, contact us today.

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