How to Develop a Social Media Strategy: Step-by-Step Tutorial

these days it is standard practice to use social media marketing if you're running a business pretty much every online business and most offline businesses as well try to use social media to get customers online however the sad truth is that especially most small businesses don't really have any sort of strategy they are just posting content randomly or trying to copy their competitors and the end result is that they don't create any real results meaning it doesn't affect their bottom line positively and that it's a massive waste of time because we all know how time-consuming social

media can be my name is gillian perkins i'm an online business strategist and i specialize in digital marketing strategy i'm also the founder of startup society which is an online training program for digital entrepreneurs in this video i'm going to teach you the process that i use to develop our social media strategy every year and this is how i've created the strategy that has grown our followers on social media to at this point over a million followers which is a pretty good size audience it's also the strategy that we use inside of startup society and

we guide the members through to help them develop social media strategies for their businesses now you can use this strategy for yourself to either create your own social media strategy for your own business or if you happen to be a virtual assistant or a social media manager or you want to become one of those things you could use this as a framework for creating strategy for your clients and you could work through this framework with your clients to create that strategy okay so the very first step is to just make sure that you're starting with

the right mindset aside from not having a strategy when people do create a strategy there are two big mistakes that they make really often the first is that too often they focus on results or metrics that simply don't matter they don't think they're vanity metrics because they think they're measuring things like clicks or comments not just vanity metrics like impressions but the fact of the matter is that even clicks or comments they aren't what you really want most likely most likely you really want to drive more profit in your company and that's what your clients

will want too if you're doing social media management for clients so first of all just make sure that you aren't making the mistake of focusing on just bigger and just trying to grow your audience bigger and just trying to get more views those things are important and they help your other metrics to be more successful because if you do have a good strategy and you are converting your followers into paying customers then having more followers of course will help but just make sure that you know where that end outcome is we'll talk more about that

in just a minute but the other mistake that you need to make sure that you avoid is too often when people decide to formally create a social media strategy and no longer are we going to do this by the seat of our pants now we are going to instead think about things ahead of time and be strategic they think that that means that it needs to be a full feature social media strategy they need to have a strategy for every single platform they need to be on every single platform and maybe they even need to

be using all the features on every single platform so for example if they want to use instagram as one of their platforms then they think that means they have to use instagram feed posts and instagram stories and instagram reels and maybe they need to take advantage of those instagram guides and run instagram ads as well and that's simply not the case the most solid strategic smart social media plan isn't the one that goes super broad it's the one that's very strategic wherever you are and that doesn't mean you need to be everywhere you truly can

be on just one or two or three platforms and do that really well and that is going to get you much bigger results than trying to be everywhere so don't try to do a good job by trying to be everywhere instead be strategic and be thoughtful about this and choose the platforms that will really be the best fit for you and your business and your goals and where you like to show up and create content the next step for creating your social media strategy is to set goals i was just talking about how it's important

that you focus on results and that your strategy is results oriented well there are so many different kinds of results you could get but you will only get the right results and the results you really want if you know what you want and that starts with knowing what your goals are so before you even start thinking about social media think about your business what are your current business goals now of course you'll want to make more money you want to do it in less time you want to do it more easily but i'm thinking more

specifically than that like specifically what product do you want to sell more of and how many units of that product do you want to sell and then as you're thinking about that product you want to sell well what are your goals that relate to how you'll sell that product like do you need to attract more potential new customers or do you need to communicate with the leads you already have more effectively and what are the real like things that you need to communicate to those people in order to get them interested in buying so get

really granular with this think about really specific goals and then let those business goals inform your social media goals so for example if you want to attract one-on-one clients for your virtual assistant services well you don't need a whole lot of customers in that case if you're serving these people one-on-one as a freelancer so instead you need to focus on attracting just the right people and you need to make sure that you're building real relationships with them then you have to think about how you're going to measure that so with this goal for example you

might measure it by how many people are filling out your inquiry form each week and that's going to be more focused on the business side of things and your business metrics over on social media it could be how many people click to visit your intake form and then you can also measure the conversion rate there now on the other hand maybe you have an e-commerce brand and you want to sell thousands of units of a certain product every month let's say you make handmade jewelry for example and you want to sell this is your specific

business goal you want to sell more of your raw crystal necklaces okay so what do you need to do in order to accomplish that goal well over on social media your goal might be to just get more impressions and this is just part of your goal you know but just to get more impressions of people actually looking at and seeing your jewelry because you might know that while impressions certainly can be just a vanity metric in your case you might find that the more people who see your jewelry the more people buy so you might

be tracking impressions and you also might be then tracking the clicks over to your website and of course also the actual purchases of that specific product also just keep in mind that your strategy on social media and your budget on social media are going to be strongly influenced by both what your goal is but also by the size of your goal and on the timeline for your goal so for this i like to use the acronym ost for outcome size and timeline you need to know what the ost for your goal is so with the

jewelry business for example the outcome is they want to sell more of their raw crystal necklaces the size is currently they're selling 100 units a month they want to sell 300 units a month and as far as the timeline the question is like do we want to accomplish this over the next week or two in that case we will need to have a very intense strategy and probably a significant budget as well or are you planning to accomplish this over the next six months in that case you can probably accomplish it organically and as long

as your strategy is solid it doesn't need to be too frantic now the next step that i'd recommend that you do is just to assess your current results so the reason why this is important is because you are about to change a bunch of things and you will want to measure whether or not those things are working and how well they're working so that you can adjust from there and so that you can feel good about your progress or you can figure out that you need to change things a different way so you need to

look at your current stats and you need to see how many followers you have on each platform and the average number of impressions and likes and clicks and all those different things for your posts and you'll want to record those metrics so that you'll be able to look back on this in the future and compare and contrast the fourth step is to determine who your target market is so part of this whole social media strategy is that you are going to be trying to find certain people to eventually sell them your product or get them

on your email list or something like that and it is so much easier to find these people if you know who you are looking for so this starts with thinking about things like who are your current customers and do you want to attract more people who are just like your current customers or do you want to attract a different group of people because maybe for some reason these people aren't really the best fit like even though they buy your product they're also a hassle or they buy your product but they don't buy it in the

volume that a different group of people might buy it or something like that so think about just who you want to attract then you'll want to think about more specific things like demographics and this is stuff like age and gender and where in the world they live and their income level things like that and then you'll also want to think about interests like what are your current customers into or the people who you want to attract what are they into is there specific books or movies or apps or even just like interest like hobbies and

things like that that they are interested in now you might have a lot of this information about these people and you might not have a lot of it either way is fine but the more closely you can pinpoint this person the easier it will be for you to find them on social media another great thing to look at and consider is who your current followers are they might be the people you want to attract or maybe not but they can potentially give you some insights into who is interested in your content the next part of

creating a social media strategy is to research your competitors now you might think of these people as competitors or not mostly i'm talking about kind of the big players in your industry the successful brands in your industry you also might have specific competitors but basically we want to use this for research purposes we want to see what's working for your competitors so that you can cut your learning curve a little bit and you can create a more solid social media strategy earlier on so first this starts with just identifying competitors you might know these off

the top of your head or you might have to do a little bit of digging and then after you know who the competitors are you'll want to look and see what platforms are those competitors on and then the main thing i want you to focus on after you've figured that out is analyzing their current content how frequently are they posting what are they posting and how is their audience responding to those posts this can give you tons of good ideas and important data on what you'll want to post on your accounts once you've researched your

competitors then you'll kind of want to research yourself so by this i mean if you already have a social media presence if you have been posting you'll want to assess what you have been doing and what has been working and what hasn't so you'll want to look through your recent posts from the last few months and see which ones are getting more engagement and which ones are getting clicks versus just likes or just impressions and you'll just want to see how different things are performing so that you can decide what you want to keep in

your new social media strategy versus what needs to change now i would highly recommend here that you actually go in and look at these numbers and you don't just do it by your gut instinct because a lot of the time we feel like certain things are working or not working but when we actually go into the numbers and look at them we find out that our instinct was wrong personally i noticed this with my youtube videos for example sometimes i post videos and they seem to do great and then other times i post videos and

they seem to not do so well and so i just remember that kind of initial impression and so later on i'll feel like oh my audience wasn't so interested in that topic but then if i go in and actually look at the numbers i'll find out that over time certain videos performed really well in search even if they didn't initially hit it out of the park with my current subscribers and so i'll discover that a topic that i thought was a flop ended up getting hundreds of thousands of views and i actually should make more

videos on that topic so just make sure you actually look at the numbers when you do this step and assess your current results so now that you've done a lot of research and you've made some decisions about who you're following and all of that now it's time to actually start making some decisions the first decision you'll want to make is just what platforms do you want to be on now of course there's a lot of different things you can consider here a couple of the biggest ones i think are first of all which platforms are

already working for you if you have a platform that you're already getting some traction on then you'll want to strongly consider making that one of your main platforms another thing to consider is which platform you most enjoy being on because the truth is that especially if you are a solopreneur or you have a small team and you're going to be doing a lot of this yourself you'll have to spend a lot of time on that platform in order to really turn it into a success and you will be much less inclined to do that if

you choose a platform that you're not that crazy about even if technically that would be the right platform for you and then another thing you'll want to consider is strategically which one makes the most sense for you and your goals so for example if you really need to attract a ton of new customers new leads and you don't have an audience right now well you'll need to think about which platforms it will be easiest to get that exposure on and so you might think about search driven platforms like youtube and pinterest and maybe even tick-tock

you also might think about running paid ads on the other hand if you need to develop relationships with your current audience and you already have a bit of a following well then you might look at a platform like instagram or twitter but you also could use a platform like youtube you also might want to make blogging and an email newsletter part of your strategy because you need to have those conversations and build those relationships with people who already know you exist so you don't need so much the new exposure you need more to have the

conversations the number one thing i think you should ignore here although this is really common advice is where are your customers honestly this doesn't matter because your customers unless you have a super super niche target market they're gonna be on every platform to some extent and well yes maybe they hang out more on twitch than on youtube or more on instagram than on pinterest there will be some of them on every platform and not only that but if you go to the place where the most of them are hanging out that's also where you're going

to find the most competition and so that's good because there's lots of them there but bad because competition and then on the other hand you can choose a platform where there's fewer of them but also less competition and so again that's good because there's less competition and it's okay that there's fewer of them and so honestly these things end up balancing each other out and it doesn't matter that much and what matters so much more is which platform you actually enjoy and choosing a platform that does fit your strategy so your target market your people

they're everywhere but they will be doing different things on different platforms and so while yes they're on tick tock and they're also on youtube the thing is that on tick tock maybe they're just scrolling and they're just looking for entertainment and they're just trying to pass the time and they don't really develop strong trust with the people they find on tick tock but over on youtube maybe they're more serious and like more focused on education and learning and they see the people who they discover on youtube as experts now that's just an example i'm not

saying that's necessarily exactly the way it is but people interact with different platforms and different content differently so you'll need to think about how that plays into your strategy when you are choosing which platforms to be on okay so we've made it all the way to step number eight and we're almost there to the end but this is where the real creative work starts happening so now for step number eight you need to generate content ideas now for some people this is the easiest funnest step like finally they're getting their hands dirty and for other

people this is like the pull and teeth part so hard either way though my biggest tip is to try to come up with a lot of ideas now i know that that might sound like not so much a tip if you're like but coming up with ideas is the problem but honestly when you stretch yourself and you start just brainstorming and kind of pull back your filters and just dump your ideas onto the page then the ideas start coming faster and faster and more and more easily and there is no harder time to come up

with an idea than when it is the day to post and you need to come up with something on the spot right then so by coming up with a ton of ideas early on before you're even thinking about actually creating the content or posting it that will be the very easiest time and it will again help to get the wheels turning and help to just open up your mind to all the different ideas so whichever platforms you chose i'd recommend that you just sit down with a google doc or a pad of paper and you

just start brainstorming ideas and there's two parts to this one is have a big brainstorming session maybe even two or three brainstorming sessions and then secondly whenever you think of an idea make sure you write it down because this will keep those wheels turning and make sure you do this separately for each platform you might realize that you can use certain ideas on multiple platforms but they're going to look differently and honestly you will probably on some platforms have much longer larger pieces of content and then on other platforms they'll be much shorter and so

you want to make sure that you're really thinking strategically about those different platforms because that is key for getting your content to perform well on each of those different platforms the next step is pretty easy although i think a lot of people make this the whole point of their social media strategy it's just to choose your posting frequency and then create a schedule so for example you might decide that you want to post on the main instagram feed once a day and you also want to post a real every other day now honestly this matters

way less than a lot of people think the important things here are first of all that you decide this ahead of time so you can be consistent and also volume does matter now it's more important to create quality content than to create tons of content because you can create a million pieces of mediocre content nobody will care but if you create one piece of standout absolute stellar content that people love well they will share it and they will be really interested in working with you so quality is way more important that being said on most

platforms in order to really work with the algorithm and get it to give you some exposure you do need to create a certain volume so over on instagram for example that means just that you need to be posting consistently several times a week although a lot of instagram experts do say that you want to post at least about once a day if you really want your account to grow easily and then over here on youtube most of the time you do need to post at least about once a week because if you post less than

that then it just takes way too long to get traction with the algorithm now if you create super exceptional content then you might be able to define these rules but when it comes to creating a social media strategy i'd recommend that you at least meet kind of those minimum volume thresholds because it'll just make your job a lot easier the tenth and final step is absolutely key honestly you could do all those other steps and then your social media strategy could just like fall flat on its face if you don't do this last step and

the reason is because you can have tons of ideas you can know when you want to post but it can be so hard to follow through and actually create the content and to get it posted on in a timely way if you don't have a system for creating that content so you need to have a system you need to have a routine and so what this looks like really is setting up some sort of project management software you might already have something like this going you might choose to just use google calendar or something but

i'm talking about something like trello or asana or click up or notion something like that so that you can manage these projects of creating the content and you can have due dates the two main systems you'll want to set up is first of all a content calendar where you decide ahead of time what needs to be created and you put it on the calendar with scheduled publishing dates and second of all some sort of production workflow where you're able to move the content through a production process as you come up with the ideas and you

outline the content and you take the pictures or record the videos and the content gets edited if needed and then eventually someone publishes it so this is just the easiest way to make sure that all those steps get done in a timely way also if you're creating longer more substantial pieces of content like blog posts or podcasts or youtube videos you might want to have a routine around this where for example every monday you're recording and then you edit on tuesday and wednesday and you post your video on thursday just for example having a routine

like this just makes it way easier to be consistent and actually get it done without having to constantly feel like you're trying to motivate yourself to find the time to get it done okay so there you have it 10 steps for creating your own strategic social media plan now there's one last important step and this isn't a part of creating the strategy but you shouldn't skip this and it is just to constantly be listening and to be actually monitoring those metrics and to be adjusting as needed you might feel like if you get this right

you won't have to do it or if you knew what you were doing you wouldn't have to do this but honestly this is what the social media pros do they don't get it right the first time they come up with a pretty good plan and then they listen and they adjust accordingly and if you want to create a great social media strategy then that's what you need to do you need to learn from your mistakes learn from what's working and adjust and this is a never-ending process your social media strategy will never be perfected because

people's interests and what they're responding to is always changing and the platforms are always changing so don't feel like you did it wrong if you need to adjust keep your eyes open and always be learning from what is working if you enjoyed this video leave me a comment and let me know and feel free to ask any questions you have about social media strategy because i love talking about this stuff and i'd love to help you out also i would definitely appreciate it if you gave the video a like it really will help this video

out and support my channel as well you could also consider subscribing if you want to learn more about how to build an online business and market that business online because i make new videos about those topics every single week and i would love to have you join me for the next one also if you want to go way deeper with these things and you want to become a social media master and use social media to drive profit in your business and to grow your brand online then i would love to invite you to check out

startupsociety.com startup society is the online business training program that my team and i run where we work closely with online entrepreneurs to help them develop social media strategy and their marketing messages and learn how to sell their products online as well as creating digital products and launching those digital products so if those are things that you would like to work together on then just head to startupsociety.com to learn more about the program and sign up enrollment is actually currently closed because we only open it up every few months but it should be opening up in

just a few weeks so make sure that you head over there and you get your name on the wait list if you want to find out how to join as soon as enrollment does open that is all for today thanks so much for joining me i hope to see you back again here next week until then i love you i wish you all the best of success with your social media strategy and your business my encouragement to you is to stay focused and i'll leave you with that and i'll see you next week