A social media strategy guides how you'll use social media in your overall marketing strategy. It covers how you'll approach using each social media platform and how you'll engage with customers and prospects. It also informs how you'll measure the success of each goal you set and how it fits into your overarching business strategy.
There are a few key reasons why a social media strategy is an important part of your marketing plan.
Why You Need a Social Media Strategy
1. Provides you with a starting point.
Knowing where you're starting from helps you create realistic goals for your social media marketing efforts. It also helps you determine what metrics you should monitor to gauge your progress towards those goals.
2. Ensure your content aligns with your goals.
Creating content because you think it looks cool or aligns with a trend isn't the most effective guiding light to follow when making your social content. Your content should align with your goals, whether it's to boost engagement, generate more sales of a certain product or service, get reviews or new leads, or something else entirely.
3. Know what metrics define success.
Like knowing how your content will achieve your goals, you'll need a way to measure your progress towards those goals. These will be outlined in your strategy so you can continue to track your progress throughout the duration of your strategy.
4. Everyone's on the same page.
This is imperative if you have a multi-person team with social media responsibilities. A set strategy to follow when creating and sharing content and managing the community will keep everyone working towards those big-picture goals.
5. Offer a consistent brand experience.
Customers value knowing what to expect from your brand and what to be able to easily identify you on their feed, so offering a consistent brand experience through your social content will help keep users ready to buy.
Conclusion
If you don't already have a social media strategy, you need one ASAP. It'll keep your social media content working towards your overarching goals and ensure you know what metrics will determine your success. All team members responsible for social media will be on the same page, which also provides your followers with a consistent experience from your brand.
All of these are key reasons why your business needs a social media strategy.
