#1 Content Strategy
The purpose of a content strategy is to be an internal tool that's helpful when planning, producing, and publishing content. It should make it easier for everyone in the organization to understand what type of content and which formats are relevant for each target group and which social media channel. So, before you start publishing content, ask yourself:
- What is the purpose of this piece of content?
- What message do we want to communicate?
- Who do we want to reach and why?
- What should they do when they have seen your content?
The content strategy often goes hand-in-hand with a content plan. A content plan is usually a multi-faceted and ever-changing mix of seasonal, campaign-focused, spontaneous, and ongoing content. The content strategy isn't supposed to be set in stone since the world moves fast, and you and your team need to be flexible and adapt when necessary.
#2 Channel Strategy
Your channel strategy should answer the following questions:
- Which social media channels are your target audience active on?
- What's the purpose of your activity on these same channels?
Think this one through – and back it up with data where possible.
For example, maybe you know your younger audience is mainly active on TikTok and Twitter. In contrast, the older segment might mainly be on Facebook – but both will expect customer support to be available on Facebook. If that's the case, you might want to dedicate LinkedIn for recruitment, IR, and cultivating partnerships instead, while mainly using Instagram for showcasing your company to potential recruits doing their research.
#3 Customer Journey Strategy
This part is a bit more complex, especially if your organization isn't part of the traditional B2C/ B2B space. For starters, the customer journey consists of four stages: awareness, consideration, decisions, and loyalty. A key here is to use a clear call-to-action in each step to ensure that the customer continues to the next stage. And since the customer journey takes place on your social media, it's strongly connected to your content and channel strategy. We know that this can be overwhelming and take time to implement as a consumer-oriented or B2B company, but it's a vital part of social media management.
Why and where does someone find out about your brand initially? It can be from a recommendation, through an organic search, an ad, or through valuable content. Which of these touchpoints happen on social media or can be routed through and amplified by it? How does social media play into your sales funnel? Your upsell, customer retention, and loyalty? The answer is: where it makes sense – and you won't know where it makes sense unless you map out the common paths.
Non-profit organizations, local governments and departments, political parties, and other organizations may not sell a physical product or have a "sales funnel" in the same way. But that doesn't mean your audience doesn't have very specific touchpoints with you over their lifetime. So the better your strategy for being there when needed, the better an outcome you will see across the board.
You know you have a good customer journey strategy if: you understand all typical and most possible paths your target group takes when engaging with you or a similar service, and can pinpoint the touchpoints where social media can be used to intersect with their needs.
#4 Optimization Strategy
What is your strategy for optimizing everything as you go? Do you have measurable KPIs? A way to follow up and take action on them? How will you optimize in practice – will you perform A/B testing of your content, ask for feedback, or set NPS scoring in play?
It’s not enough to have a vague intention to improve. Instead, you need to have an actionable plan and get your team on board to follow through. What data will you look at when and how, and what is the continuous process for taking action on the insights? Having a written plan in place will move you further along into truly data-driven social media management.
You know you have a good optimization strategy if: you have someone responsible for optimization, you know what to measure, and you have a process in place for taking action on what you see.
#5 SMCC Strategy
SMCC is an acronym for Social Media Customer Care. So, why does customer support need a strategy? Because without it, your team won't know how to best approach customer complaints (or praise), what metrics to focus on, and how to stay true to your brand's tone of voice.
Looking at companies with excellent customer support on their social media, they all have one thing in common: a cohesive approach. A few examples are that they might have a dedicated support handle on Twitter, a unison way of responding publicly, and a script for transitioning public queries into private conversations while making sure other customers note that the complaint or feedback is taken care of.
There are a few crucial elements to a successful SMCC strategy: everyone on your team needs to know how to respond to complaints, feedback, and praise publicly and in an onbrand tone of voice. It's also essential that the metrics on which their activity is measured are clear and, of course, that the entire team is on the same page when it comes to actual errand managing.
And most importantly, the SMCC strategy isn't worth much without a good content and channel strategy to go along with it.
