In this third and final part of our series on creating social media strategies, we’ll give you a practical example of how you can put your strategy into motion.
In part 1, we emphasized the importance of vision. Remember, you have to “see” where you’re going before you begin marching forward. Mapping out a detailed plan from start to finish that’s tailored to your company is the perfect way to define your vision. In part 2, we broke down the foundation elements of a company’s social media strategy. Together, these will help you gain a full understanding of why social media should be important to your operation.
Marketing Works recently developed and implemented a workable tool. We hope you’ll use our approach as an inspiration for developing your own social media strategy.
The direction of our strategy’s vision has multiple levels:
- A main goal that is tied to the business’ success
- Realistic objectives
- An overarching strategy
- Supporting strategies
Consider these a mirror. Any idea that does not support the overarching strategy or tie back to the goal should not be included in the initiatives within the social media strategy. It’s also important to consider available resources – what capacity does your team have to implement? What is your budget?
Take Marketing Works, for example. We leverage our social channels to help us attain our agency’s overall revenue goal. That’s why our overarching strategy is to position ourselves as thought leaders to generate qualified leads and as a great place to work to attract the best talent. That means the content we produce and post and the way we interact with our fans and followers on social media must support the strategy.
Now take a look at our three supporting strategies, which include leveraging our blog, capturing leads by showcasing our social media savvy and thought leadership and showcasing our culture to attract employees. Each sub-strategy is broken down into elements, tactics, responsibility, a timeline and metrics.
The more detail you include in your social media strategy, the more prepared you’ll be for your dynamic journey ahead. Our strategy is four pages long and accounts for just five months of activity! We wanted a clear, results-driven approach, which is exactly what a strong strategy provides. After we implement this plan, we should be engaging our audience on the deepest level.
If you’d like to see a sample of our social media strategy or want advice on creating your own, please email info@marketingworks360.com.