There’s no doubt social media is a powerful marketing tool. But, like with every other type of marketing, you need a plan. A social media strategy aligns your marketing efforts with your business goals. It is what you need to track and measure your success online.
Here, we’ll use the 5W-1H framework to help you create a
winning social media strategy. Simply put, the 5W-1H framework is the
why-who-where-when-what-how approach to creating an effective plan.
1. The Why? – List Your Objectives
Before taking action, it is essential to identify why you
need to be on social media. That way, you do not waste effort and resources on
fruitless marketing. List your goals to clarify what you want to achieve.
Common objectives include increasing brand awareness, building a community, and
driving sales. Social media metrics such as engagement, likes, shares, and
conversion help you track your performance.
2. The Who? – Identify Your Audience and Competitors
The next step is to create an audience persona. This is who
you are targeting. List down the persona’s age, location, behavior, income,
and other relevant information. Also, carry out a competitor analysis. See what
your counterparts are doing and what marketing techniques they are using. You
will avoid many pitfalls by benchmarking.
3. The Where? – Decide Which Social Media Platforms to
Use
Many social media sites exist, including Facebook,
Instagram, LinkedIn, Tiktok, and Twitter. From your audience and competitor
analysis, you may realize that some platforms are irrelevant to your business.
The key is to focus on sites where you’ll get the most out of your efforts. Set
up accounts for the platforms you choose.
4. The When? – Create a Social Media Content Calendar
A calendar helps you state when your content will be up. It
makes scheduling easy. Identify which time is most optimal for your content.
Find out the time of the day your audience is active on social media from the
platform’s insight tool or by doing an online research. Also, take note of
specific observances that can help you fine-tune content to be relevant, e.g.
Valentine’s day, Christmas holidays, e.t.c.
5. The What? – Develop Creatives for Your Content
After all the planning, get to the actual work. Create a mix
of promotional, engaging, and educational content to get the most from your
marketing. Content should be relevant to your objectives and your audience. You
can use available tools online to create videos and graphics for your posts.
6. The How? – Get the Right Social Media Management Tools
Lastly, how do you get content up and running on all
relevant platforms? You can schedule posts independently on each site. However,
you can save time using social media management tools that help you publish
content to all platforms at once.
Evidently, coming up with a social media plan doesn’t have
to be a hustle. Using the 5W-1H framework, you should be able to see what works
for your business and make the necessary adjustments for success.