Eight Steps to Create a Social Media Strategy

If I had a dollar for all the times a cause organisation has told me they didn’t have a clear social media strategy, I’d have…. well, quite a lot of dollars.

Posting on social media without any kind of strategy is a bit like fishing without bait. You might get lucky, but chances are you’ll waste a lot of time, money and energy with little return. And who wants that?

This week I wanted to talk you through the different elements of creating a social media strategy, to give you a kick start in the right direction.

1. Know your audience

It might sound obvious, but it is vitally important that you create profiles for your ‘ideal’ audience. By ideal audience, I mean the ideal customer, donor, volunteer, employee, etc. Think about your very best customer, or your absolutely awesome volunteer.

If you could clone this person 100 or 1000 times, your cause would rapidly grow. That’s the people you want to attract on social media.

2. Understand the platforms

If you chose the social media platforms you use based on which ones you like personally, or because your CEO said you needed to be on there – don’t worry, you’re not alone. But if you want to get the best return on your time, it’s important you understand a little bit about all the major platforms and choose based on the pros and cons, and most importantly – where your ideal audience hangs out.

3. Set SMART goals

Struggling to get ROI (return on investment) from your social media efforts? A lot of these challenges start with unclear goals, or not having them at all. How will you measure your success if you don’t know where the milestones are?

Think about your goals in terms of reach, engagement, volunteer numbers, website visits, newsletter sign ups and event attendance.

4. Plan your content

Most causes I meet create and post their content every day or every few days. While this gets a lot of content on the page, it doesn’t give you much opportunity to think strategically.

If you spend a little bit more time thinking about the mix of content, how to make content valuable for your audience, how it reacts with the social media organic algorithms, and how your voice sounds – the results will blow you away.

5. Tools & resources

If you struggle to find the time to put together high quality social media content, you need to investigate some of the amazing social media tools currently on the market. Use them to schedule your content in advance, create graphic design quality images, find highly shareable content and more.

You also need to think about your own resources. Who will manage your social media channels? Who takes over when they are away? What resources do you already have that you could use for social content?

6. Attracting your audience

Now you have the best social media channels going, how do you make sure your ideal audience gets there? It is important your strategy includes a clear plan on what techniques you will use to grow your follower numbers.

7. Monitor & respond

Social media isn’t a one-way street. If you are just broadcasting messages at your audience, you’re not being ‘social’ and you’re doing your fans a disservice.

You need to have a clear plan on how you’re going to monitor conversations, opportunities and respond to any communication you get on your page.

8. Manage risk

Some people are just plain frightened on taking the leap into social media, because they think it will open them up to new risks.

Sadly, the truth is if people are saying bad things about your brand online, it is happening whether you are there or not. Like all risks, social media can be managed with a clear plan.

I hope these tips set you on the right path to developing a clear social media strategy!

If these tips excited you, but you want to get all these eight steps done and documented in a single day, pop us an email at [email protected] to find out more about our Social Media Strategy training days.  

Our Social Media Strategy training days happen at your offices (or in our training room) and our experienced cause trainers mix education with workshopping to help you work through each of these steps. You will also get a copy of more than 50 pages of tested templates and workshop activities to create a written strategy.

Here is what a few other people have said about our training:

“I was able to immediately apply what was learned and saw immediate effects, including increased Facebook page likes and augmented engagement with our social media content.”

Travis Fitch, 12 Buckets

“Alecia is a font of knowledge and a really engaging presenter.”
Trevor Buckenara, Department of Transport 

Have a fabulous Thursday,