Amateurish pages, content poorly suited to the target, irregular posting and low-quality photos are common mistakes, but fortunately avoidable when handled by the social media manager.

Exactly: to manage a company’s social channels well, you need to know and reflect on topics such as posting frequency, the editorial plan, the copy and the chosen channel…

Social media strategy: social media marketing

When a company decides to invest time and resources to create (and put into practice) a social media strategy, it is doing social media marketing.

This branch of marketing deals with planning, managing and controlling any communication and promotion activity through social media.

Within this concept we find various activities, such as creating a social media strategy, planning and publishing content, listening and engaging users and consumers, Employer branding, the analysis and reporting of results and also advertising on these channels.

It is a marketing activity with enormous potential, absolutely not to be underestimated!

The social media strategy for companies

First of all, if necessary, you should start by creating one (or more) social pages for the company.

The most used social media are still Facebook and Instagram today, but the choice must always be considered and target-oriented.

For example, many companies targeting B2B find it more useful to focus their energy on LinkedIn. You can also read more in our article on LinkedIn for companies.

Others, instead, start from their existing accounts and from analysing what has already been done and the results obtained.

Social media management often happens in an unplanned way, without a real strategy and without clear, measurable objectives. That is why, most of the time, the results are disappointing, inconsistent and erratic.

Building a good social media strategy for the company is a stimulating process that lets you get to know your audience in depth and refine your business objectives.

1. The target and the starting point

Any content you want to produce, even outside a social media strategy, must be target-oriented.

That is why it is important to establish who the target is. Knowing who will read and view the content is essential. The choice of social channel, to begin with, depends on this.

In a company social media strategy, it does not matter to have a profile on every main channel, but only on the ones best suited to the target. Moreover, these must always be optimised and used to their full potential. Optimisation, for example, is achieved by filling in all the profile fields, using specific keywords and using suitable images, and more.

But also the company editorial calendar, the type of post/story to publish and its content.

A target analysis is also essential to create the buyer personas, that is, fictional identities that represent the recipients, in this case, of our social media strategy.

Moreover, the more it is based on data, the more truthful it will be. A good starting point is analysing the people who visit the site and the competitors’ audience.

As for the type of content to publish, you can also look at what was done in the past, if it exists.

Besides the target, it is also important to identify the Unique Value Proposition and the best touchpoints for leads and sales.

In fact, if the company already has social accounts, it is good practice to gather the posts and content already shared and analyse them to understand who they were written for and the results they delivered.

There are many questions to ask: how has the page been managed so far? Is there an editorial calendar? If so, how was it built? With what type of content and how often? What results have been achieved and which do you want to reach?

2. The objectives to reach (and how!)

Understanding who you are talking to is important, but so is understanding which objectives you want to reach with a social media strategy.

For example, some common objectives are increasing brand awareness, website visits or sales!

You also need to define the KPIs. This acronym refers to Key Performance Indicators, that is, the key performance metrics. In short, it is not only about setting objectives, but also about making them specific and measurable.

For example, increasing sales by 15% in 12 months, or website visits by 5% per month… In general, objectives must be:

• Specific, because only this way is it possible to monitor progress.
• Measurable, using precise metrics.
• Achievable, that is, not unrealistic.
• Relevant, therefore in line with the business strategy.
• Time-bound, so they can be measured, evaluated and, if necessary, corrected.

3. The resources available

Creating and applying a social media strategy takes time and resources.

Identifying which resources are available, both human and technical, within the company is a necessary step to sustain the strategy over time and avoid wasting time and opportunities.

That is why it is important to ask who will be responsible for producing and uploading content, what software this person will have, which human, physical and digital resources they will need, and how the workflow will function, for example for publishing and planning content. You also need to ask whether it will be necessary to use a project management system and photo editing software…

Answering these (and many other!) questions makes it possible to manage responsibilities and keep the work fluid and organised.

A social media strategy needs a roadmap…

Once you have identified target, KPIs, objectives and resources, it is time to place the company social media strategy within a roadmap. This must include several elements, such as:

• The long-term vision.
• The identification of strategic initiatives.
• A strategic marketing plan, that includes the social media strategy.
• An editorial calendar that takes into account both the annual plan and more (if reaching the KPIs requires working over a three-month period, for example, the editorial calendar must take that into account). In short, a good editorial calendar helps to plan content, set its frequency and make the work easier.
• The list of daily and weekly actions to carry out, a sort of TO-DO list.

Of course, these points are not exhaustive and should be considered general, since they must be adapted to the specific case!

… and to focus on best practices and industry news!

Knowing your market and target makes it possible to limit efforts to those activities that can really deliver results! For example, it is important to ask what the industry trends are regarding paid ads on social, and which content is more likely, by target, topic and channel, to become popular, and so on.

Moreover, social media are constantly evolving, and the strategy must take this into account. That is why, beyond best practices, it is important to look ahead and prepare.

For example, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, announced Metaverse, promising a future where social media will be integrated with technological projects. This seems to foreshadow the arrival of more interactive social campaigns linked to tools such as augmented reality glasses.

Instagram, on the other hand, is now clearly more and more interested in giving visibility to online shops, gradually transforming from a showcase into a real store, making transactions possible and integrating more and more features to make them seamless.

The main social channels for a successful business strategy

Among the main channels used in the best social media strategies we find:

Optimising the social media strategy

After creating and posting content designed for the target in terms of graphics, copy, publishing time and channel, it is important to analyse the results obtained and optimise the strategy.

The performance of a good social media strategy must be monitored and, as always in marketing, based on data and testing.

The tests and the data obtained from them and from analysing the objectives (and their KPIs) make it possible to understand what works and what does not, which changes to make to the initial strategy and what to remove from it.

Some ideas to increase the reach of your posts? Read our guide on LinkedIn Ads campaigns.