Do you have a social media strategy or are you just posting occasionally or even regularly without goals and concrete direction?

If you don’t, you need to create one ASAP before you commit to posting more on any social media platform, especially LinkedIn.

I made a meme to accompany this blog post using Canva and one of my puppies to underscore how important it is to have a social media strategy today (you should try making a meme too!).

A social media marketing strategy can help you be more efficient and strategic, and align your social media goals with your business and branding goals.

A social media strategy that includes a competitor analysis will give you great market insights so you can find gaps and opportunities.

Your social media strategy should include a content calendar that outlines the next few weeks and months of social media content distribution.

This is so important for housing all of your posts and ideas in one central place where you and your team can access them, as well as maximizing resources and ensuring your social media posts focus on your content pillars, which support your brand and business.

So how do you develop your social media strategy? I have an easy five-step process to guide you in creating one.

• Step 1: Create clear social media marketing objectives and goals for each channel

  • (Note – It’s better to maximize your presence on fewer channels than to be scarce on all channels or to be on channels where your clients/prospects aren’t)

• Step 2: Conduct a social media audit for each current channel as well as competitor analysis

• Step 3: Identify your target audience and buyer personas

• Step 4: Create and organize your content

• Step 5: Track, measure, and refine your content

During step 4, you’ll want to create your content marketing plan. You can repurpose existing content (obtain the full data download of your past posts from LinkedIn for this purpose – message me if you need help with this). Think about:

• What are your content pillars?

• What types of content will you publish on each platform? (Videos, blogs, podcasts, infographics, quotes, memes, company updates, Q&As, case studies, press coverage, evergreen, owned media, earned media, storytelling, etc.)

• Who is your target audience?

• How frequently will you post?

• What images will you use?

• What hashtags make sense for the post?

• What is my call to action for the post?

With the right tools and goals in place, you can begin to maximize your ROI from social media.