How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media is a valuable way to connect with customers. Not only are social media platforms incredible for how they bring an audience to your business, they’re important for deepening your relationship with loyal buyers. These platforms allow you to connect with an audience, build brand awareness, and ensure buyers know exactly where to get your product. 

Trying to make the most of these platforms without any plan is like yelling in an already crowded, noisy room. Social media needs to have its own strategy within your broader marketing goals—one that’s specific to the needs of the audience there and what the platform(s) can do for your business.

This guide will help you understand what a social marketing strategy is and steps to create an effective one for your business.

What is a social media marketing strategy?

A social media marketing strategy is a detailed marketing plan that outlines the content a business will create and post on social media. It lays out measurable goals, plans to achieve those goals, performance indicators, and often a content calendar. 

Social media strategy is one part of an overall marketing strategy aimed at attracting and keeping customers . A social strategy will focus on tactics for achieving this on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook. 

Why social media is important in a marketing strategy

Social media was once a way for people to keep up with each other’s lives. It’s evolved to the point where most aspects of modern life are now reflected there, especially buying and brand engagement. By 2028, there will be six billion people using social media. That’s an enormous audience to tap into. 

Social media marketing fits nicely into other marketing strategies, like digital or email marketing, to make up a comprehensive plan for you to reach your customers. But it has its own subset platforms and channels, with different needs and different expectations. 

Social media in a marketing strategy can: 

• Send traffic to your website

• Establish your credibility and authority

• Help you understand customer needs and wants

• Build and deepen community connections

• Attract and tap into influencer communities

• Engage customers with user-generated content (UGC)

• Uncover new data about your business and products

10 steps to design a social media marketing strategy

If you’ve never waded into social media strategy planning before, start with this 10-step guide on how to create one for your business. Your business goals and audience can help to shape many of your decisions.

1. Set goals 

Before any other part of the strategy can really take shape, you first need to understand what your goals are for this channel and your business. 

Some common goals for social media include: 

• Increasing traffic to your business’ website

• Increasing brand awareness and reach

• Growing your audience and engagement

• Creating lead and conversion opportunities for sales

Like any other marketing goal, social media marketing goals need to be tailored to the channel and not generic. For example, a business new to social media marketing may have a goal to increase total website traffic by 10% month-over-month. That’s reasonable, specific, and actionable: Their posts can always feature a link to their website or a specific product page to keep traffic consistent. As time goes on, they might get even more specific and set a goal of growing social media-driven website traffic by 5% or having 20% of their website traffic come from social media.

2. Know your audience 

While there may be billions of people within your reach on social media, not every one of them is going to be your buyer. Do research on your audience. Build out customer personas, consider demographics, and look at some of their buying patterns to better understand how they want to be talked to on social media. 

The more specific you can be with your marketing, the more likely you are to reach people who want to see your products or content. That specificity will also help you to connect with potential followers and customers.

A great way to know your audience is to talk directly to them on the platform. Encourage open discussion and engagement via comments or direct messages. These are incredibly valuable primary sources of information you can use to refine your strategy and apply elsewhere in the business. 

3. Competitor research

Knowing what your competitors are doing on social media is crucial. Research your competitors to find gaps in their messaging and content opportunities. View it from the perspective of a potential customer: What posts are and aren’t interesting to you? What makes you want to click through a link? Is there anything you would do differently for yourself or your customers? 

This can help you refine your own brand’s voice and the types of content you post. But remember that one of the main reasons any brand thrives on social media channels is the authenticity of their presence. It’s about being specific and true to your brand, not copying anyone else or trying to fit in.

Read our full guide to competitive research

4. Choose social media platform(s)

There are an abundance of social media platforms to choose from. The social media platforms you choose should align with your industry and audience, what you plan to post, and overall goals. 

It’s imperative you don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach. Social media channels have different personalities just like people do. Get specific for each. 

Popular social media platforms include:

• Instagram: Mixed visuals platform (static images and short-form videos) that also has social commerce integration

• TikTok: Short-form video content served to users on a personalized algorithm

• Pinterest: Aesthetics-first platform showing users static images and videos they can pin to moodboards for later 

• LinkedIn: Professional networking platform often used for product announcements, sharing industry expertise, or company news 

• YouTube: Video platform that’s primarily best for long-form video content that’s informative or interesting, like how-to or behind the scenes videos, or short documentaries 

• Facebook: Social gathering spot with commerce capabilities where users can find business information or write reviews

There are emerging social media platforms, such as Bluesky, that may be worth investigating to see if your audience might be there, too. Each platform has the opportunity to use a mix of written and visual content to engage an audience. It’s just about striking the right balance on the right platform and matching your content to the channel.

Read our guide to posting on social

5. Develop a content strategy

Creating and posting content on a whim isn’t going to move you consistently toward your goals. If you’ve done all of this groundwork on audience and competitor research, you need to have a content strategy to execute on that information.

A content strategy will include elements such as: 

• Content types and assets

• Publishing schedule 

• A calendar to manage when posts go live

• Noteworthy holidays to avoid posting or to have themed posts

• Resocializing opportunities (e.g. reposts of UGC)

Every content strategy is different for every brand. But it helps define parameters around what gets posted, why, and where, which is important for understanding what your audience is engaging with and how to refine it if needed. 

6. Create content and post regularly 

After defining your content strategy, you’ll need to create your content. Because there are many different social media channels and platforms, each with specific audience and content needs, it’s important to diversify the type and format of the content you post.

Content can be a mix of the following: 

• Product announcements

• Brand news

• Inspirational or motivational content 

• Memes

• Product education and how-tos

• Contests and giveaways

• UGC and influencer cross-promotional content

• Events or local community meet-ups

For example, a hair care business may have an Instagram account where users can learn about new products or tips. But on another channel, like YouTube, they might post longer how-to video content to show what to do with their products. The owner might highlight product announcements on TikTok, but post about entrepreneurship on LinkedIn.

Try using tools to help with both your content calendar and content creation. Look for tools that can help you:

• Schedule posts across multiple platforms at once 

• Analyze the best times to post for your brand or industry for best engagement opportunities

• See trends and viral moments, and understand if you should participate

• Browse free visuals to use for your content

• Manage your content calendar in an effective way from one dashboard

See our list of top content creation tools

7. Engage with your audience

If you’re looking to build a community, engagement is key to that. Actively engage with your audience by responding to comments or direct messages. Provide opportunities for your buyers and followers to have their say via surveys or polls on the platform. Repost any user content or posts where your brand is tagged. 

The goal is to create opportunities for your audience to feel like they’re part of something, not just spectators online. That engagement also puts a human face to the business, which can help you stand out from competitors and major brands.

8. Monitor performance

A social media marketing strategy isn’t complete without performance goals. Each post may have its own set of measurements or metrics it needs to reach, but your overall strategy should be focused on achieving a specific set of goals. In the hair care business example above, the brand may want to increase its brand awareness on Instagram. That goal will be measured by new follower count, engagement on posts, and views.

Each goal should be measurable and each of your posts should be tied to at least one of your goals. Regularly keep tabs of how your posts are performing in relation to those goals. Some of the tops metrics to track:

• Reach: How many people are viewing your posts

• Engagement: How many people are actively clicking on or engaging with your posts

• Click-through-rate (CTR): How many people are clicking on a link that goes to your website or a product’s page from a social media post

9. Consider growth opportunities 

Your social media marketing strategy may start in one place and end in another. Allow room for your social media profiles and content to grow as your brand grows.

If you are outgrowing your strategy and are in need of other opportunities, consider: 

• Partnering with influencers to bring in a different audience

• Partnering with other brands for community causes and cross-posts

• Using paid social ads 

• Expanding into new social channels or types of content

• Making your goals more ambitious

• Updating your overall social media strategy

10. Adjust and refine tactics 

Make time to look at your strategy and the data that’s come from executing on it. For example, if that same hair care brand did reach its goal to increase traffic by 10% month-over-month, and is actually getting 15% or 20%, it might be time to change the goal or pivot to something else that needs growth—engagement rate or total sales. 

Every social media marketing strategy will eventually have to change, because social media changes constantly. There are new trends, new content types, and even new platforms emerging regularly. Users’ behavior shifts and algorithms have to keep up. But thinking of your social media marketing strategy as a foundation makes it a lot easier to refine your tactics within it if anything changes.