How to develop a Social Media Management strategy (advanced level)

The role of a social media strategist or social media manager is based on designing a successful social media strategy for your brand or company. We are increasingly aware of the great strategic importance of social media and know more about how to integrate it to achieve our marketing objectives.

Therefore, the time has come to take the lead and begin to carry out advanced social media strategies that allow us to maximize results. In this complete guide on social media management, I will teach you all the tips to achieve it, starting with the most important step: planning. Let's go for it!

Social media strategy: planning

The most essential work to generate a successful community in Social Media starts long before opening a channel. We are going to review what are the key steps that we have to carry out in order to publish our first post for sure.

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Step 1: Set goals

For years it has been said that "you have to be in social networks", but the question is why?

Social media is not a universal solution, but a very versatile and flexible tool that we can adapt to the specific needs of our brand. For example, we may want to have a presence in social networks to contact potential clients and encourage conversions, to manage customer service or to convey the brand's philosophy. Whatever your goal, it is essential that you have it very clear before you start.

To define goals that really make sense and have a good chance of being fulfilled, remember the English acronym SMART :

• S of "specific". Generic goals such as "generate conversions" or "customer loyalty" are better than nothing, but they don't get us too close to the goal. We have to define them more concretely, for example, "increase by 20% the leads from Facebook".
• M of "measurable" (measurable). If we cannot measure an objective, we can never know if we have achieved it. Therefore, we must ensure that we have the right tools to know if it is being met.
• An of "achievable" (attainable) . Unrealistic goals only manage to demotivate the team. If you want to heal in health, you can establish different scenarios: the easy, the attainable and the ideal.
• R of "relevant" . The objective must be related to the key performance indicators and global goals of our company. For example, having more followers on Twitter does not contribute anything in itself, so it would not serve us as an objective.
• Time-bound T (temporarily defined). To stimulate the achievement of the objectives and to be able to measure progress properly, the objectives must have a deadline. At that time, we will review them to see if we have reached them and suggest appropriate actions accordingly.

 

Step 2: market study

To carry out an advanced social media strategy, we have to be aware of what the competition is doing. Luckily, with social networks, it is very easy to see what the competition is doing, what channels it uses and how it communicates.

These are some key aspects that we should look at:

• Tone. What kind of expressions do they use and how do they reflect the personality of the brand? Does the tone vary between different social networks?
• Content-Type Text publications, links (where?), Images, videos ...
• Frequent topics of those they deal with.
• Frequency and publication schedules. What hours and days seem more effective to generate engagement with your target audience?
• Interaction with the audience. How do you respond to comments?

Remember that you do not have to limit yourself exclusively to your sector: if you analyze other external success channels, you will be able to see what is working and think if you can apply it to your own social networks, or if it makes sense to do so. Sometimes inspiration is found in the most unexpected places!

 

Step 3: choose the right social network

When it comes to your social media strategy, quality is worth much more than quantity. It is much better to be in one or two networks with a well-developed presence than to try to reach everything and not cover anything.

To choose your social media channels well, there are two important aspects to consider:

• Your sector and the characteristics of your products. If you are a B2B company with a very expensive and very specialized product, perhaps the best option is to use LinkedIn to find professionals with purchasing power. If you are a B2C brand dedicated to tourism, Facebook and Instagram are indispensable because of their size and because they will allow you to create more visual contents of the destinations. If your product requires pedagogy for the consumer to understand, Twitter will not be the best channel for its character limitation. And so on.
• The human resources are available to your company. How much can you cover? Do you have a design team, or will the community manager have to do everything? It is better to have a few channels, but well-fed and served. The passive presence in social networks negatively affects the image of brands.

 

Step 4: Establish a strategy

Here the time has come to define the basic characteristics of our presence in social media so that they serve as a guide to the team when publishing. For example:

• Frequency of publication. Keep in mind that it depends a lot on the social network: on Facebook it is convenient to publish at least 3 times a week, one post per day on Instagram and all the Stories that are wanted (in their right measure), on LinkedIn at least 2 weekly and on Twitter several times a day (at least one).
• Tonality. The right tone depends on the sector. We must decide whether we want to address the audience in the singular or in the plural, from you or from you. Personally, I recommend talking about us/you to generate closeness. It is also possible to add emojis or GIFs, depending on the audience.
• Content-Type. We have to define the topics we are going to talk about. My advice is not to talk about ourselves in more than half of the posts. For example, if we publish on Facebook 3 times a week, one-third of the posts could talk about our products, another third of the brand's philosophy and another third about the content of interest in our sector, gradually positioning ourselves as referents of the same.

 

Step 5: comments and crisis protocol

A solid social media strategy requires that we be prepared to face all kinds of situations.

To do this, the first thing is to make a list of all the questions that users could ask you and the consequences that could happen due to the use of your products or services.

When you have them, classify them as if it were a traffic light: severe red, severe amber and slight green. It establishes a management protocol for each typology and prepares predetermined answers to the questions. For special attention in severe and severe cases and agree on the protocol with the people responsible for each brand or product. Keep in mind that in the health-related sectors, for example, there are Pharmacovigilance departments for the most serious cases.

Within this step, we have to stop to think of what to do in case of crisis. Once again, the concrete answer will depend on the sector. What is important is that in these situations all workers should be aware of how they will proceed and, after analyzing each case, how they will act. In no case should the option of silence be chosen? Many times, rectifying is wise and a public apology in time can prevent greater evils.

 

Step 6: choose management tools

The management tools make the life of the community manager (the person then responsible for putting into action the strategy designed by the social media strategist) is much easier. There are many, such as Hootsuite, Spredfast or Agora, and all of them have their pros and cons.

It is important to choose a tool that allows you to perform these basic functions:

• Schedule content
• Assign comments to other team members.
• Tag comments.
• Reply to comments.
• Interact with reactions (likes, hearts ...)
• It is also important that the chosen tool can be used from the mobile since you never know when a crisis can begin.

I personally recommend starting with Hootsuite, since it has a very complete free version.

 

Social media strategy: channel management

After completing all the steps that we have detailed in the previous section, we are ready to start publishing on the networks!