How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy for 2019 and Beyond

The key ingredient for doing social media marketing well is having a strategy.
Without a strategy, you might be posting on social media platforms for the sake of posting. Without understanding what your goals are, who your target audience is, and what they want, it’ll be hard to achieve results on social media.
Whether you want to grow your brand through social media or to level up as a social media marketer, developing a social media marketing strategy is essential.
Here’s one way to do it.

How to create a social media marketing strategy

It’s interesting to note that a social media marketing strategy and a social media marketing plan have a lot of crossovers.
You can think of it this way: A strategy is where you’re headed. A plan is how you’ll get there.
One of the simplest ways to create your social media marketing strategy is to ask yourself the 5Ws:
1. Why do you want to be on social media?
2. Who is your target audience?
3. What are you going to share?
4. Where are you going share?

1. Why does your business want to be on social media?

The very first question to answer is the Why.
This relates to your social media goals. Are you on social media to promote your products? To drive traffic to your website? Or to serve your customers?
In general, there are the nine social media goals you can have:
1. Increase brand awareness
2. Drive traffic to your website
3. Generate new leads
4. Grow revenue (by increasing signups or sales)
5. Boost brand engagement
6. Build a community around your business
7. Provide social customer service
8. Increase mentions in the press
9. Listen to conversations about your brand

2. Who is your target audience?

Once you have figured out your Why, the next thing to consider is your target audience.
Understanding your target audience will help you more easily answer the following questions on what, where, and when you are going to share.
For instance, if a travel and lifestyle brand (like Away) knows that its target audience loves to read about new places and travel tips, it could share such content on its social media profiles.

3. What are you going to share?

When you see this question, you might be thinking about the types of content to share. For example, do you want to share videos or images?
But hold on for a second!
We’re talking about your social media marketing strategy here so let’s take a step back and think on a higher level. Instead of the types of content to share, “theme” might be a better word.

4. Where are you going share?

The next step is to determine where you are going to share your content. In other words, which social media platforms does your brand want to be on?
(Related: Here are the top 21 social media sites to consider for your brand.)
Before we go any further, remember that your brand doesn’t have to be on every social media platforms. We have made that mistake before. Being on fewer platforms gives you a better focus and more time to create better content.

Again, your understanding of your target audience will come in handy here. Which platforms are your target audience most active on? What makes them visit that platform? For example, teenagers and young adults might like scrolling through Instagram when they are bored to see what their friends are doing or whether their favorite brands have new products.
Another, albeit smaller, thing to consider is, what is your brand’s “X factor”? Are you great at photography, videos, or writing? Certain platforms lend itself well to certain content types. For example, photos are great on Instagram, long-form videos on YouTube, articles on Medium. But this is a minor point because social media platforms are evolving to provide almost every type of content nowadays.
Finally, consider smaller, niche platforms, too. For example, Zwift, a multiplayer online cycling training software company, has started a club on Strava, a social network for athletes. Their club has more than 57,000 cyclists, and thousands engage with their posts on Strava.