The making of a content strategy is not easy, it may take numerous step and change depending on your brand’s specific demands, platforms it uses, and other particularities. I’ll list below what should be considered minimum while creating this strategy.
Step 1: Set goals
Set a SMART goal, which means it should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. For example, increase lead conversion by 5% in 6 months.
Some examples of goals that can be set are:
- Increase brand awareness, establishing the company as an authority in its market;
- Boost website traffic by bringing in new visitors;
- Convert leads, making them interact with the brand.
Step 2: Research target audience
If the company has not already researched the audience, a comprehensive study will be conducted to find out their needs, characteristics, on what social media they are found, and their demographics.
With this information, a buyer-persona (idealization of an ideal client) should be made, with their interests, problems, what they like to read and are looking for, how we should approach their needs etc.
Step 3: Content creation
In this section, we define the type of content to be published (blog posts, eBooks, white papers, videos, infographics, etc.) and which will be promoted. All of the content should be relevant to the audience and take the buyer persona, brand’s tone of voice, and guidelines into consideration.
The team should prepare briefings containing:
- Type of content;
- Words length;
- Main and secondary keywords;
- Objective;
- Stage of he funnel strategy or buyer’s journey;
- Hyperlinks (inbound and outbound);
- Call-to-action;
- How the image should be choosen.
Finally, all of the content should be created.
Step 4: Define metrics
In this step we determine what Key-performance indicators (KPIs or just metrics) will be used to measure the success of our campaign. Some examples of metrics are:
- Likes;
- Shares;
- Engagement (the person interactes with the brand);
- Traffic conversions;
- Web visitors by channel source;
- Visitors conversion rate.
Step 5: Calllendar creation
Finally, here is an example of a social media editorial calendar. I included Sunday because I work every day of the week. it’s possible to squeeze metrics analysis into Friday or next Monday.
Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
Publish Organic post | Reply comments | Publish Paid Post | Reply comments | Analyze metrics | |||
Publish Organic Tweet | Reply comments | Retweet | Publish Promoted Tweet | Reply comments | Analyze metrics | ||
Publish Organic post | Reply comments | Publish Paid Post | Reply comments | Analyze metrics | |||
Publish Organic post | Reply comments | Post stories about the organic post. | Publish Paid Post | Reply comments | Analyze metrics |
Now that you know what is my process for creating a social media strategy, check out my social media copywriting samples!