How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy: 9 Steps [+ Free Checklist]

A social media marketing strategy gives you a strategic blueprint for managing content and engagement across social media channels. Learn how to create your own.

If you want to leverage social media to grow your business, you need a strategic plan in place. A social media marketing strategy provides the blueprint you need to move forward with confidence.

Instead of playing it by ear or posting “as the spirit moves,” why not plan ahead and create a strategy that helps you achieve those big audacious marketing goals?

Below, we’ll explore how to create a social media marketing strategy with expert insights from HawkSEM’s Associate Director of Paid Media, Magnolia Deuell.

What is a social media marketing strategy?

A social media marketing strategy is a detailed document that lays out your social media goals, tactics, and metrics for all channels.

Having a strategic social media plan in place helps businesses build brand awareness, engage their target audience, drive site traffic, generate leads, and boost sales.

Your documented social media strategy provides a blueprint for all social media activity across channels, including content creation, social media management, influencer collaborations, analytics, and more.

Leveraging the reach of social media can help you reach virtually any target your marketing team is aiming for. (Image: Unsplash)

How to create a social media marketing strategy

When it comes to social media marketing, there are many moving parts that need to work together if you want to see results.

A strategy helps you combine these different elements to achieve your digital marketing goals.

Let’s go through the 9 steps of building a social media marketing strategy:

1. Set SMART goals
2. Build audience profiles
3. Research your competitors
4. Conduct a social media audit
5. Choose the right social platforms
6. Develop a social media content strategy
7. Create a social media calendar
8. Outline engagement best practices
9. Identify KPIs and metrics

1. Set SMART goals

You can’t achieve your social media goals if you don’t know what they are. Specific and measurable goals will guide your social strategy and allow you to track progress.

Whether you want to boost brand awareness, drive traffic, generate leads, or increase conversions, you need to set goals that are clearly defined and align with your overall marketing objectives and business goals.

Get started by setting SMART goals:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Let’s say your overall marketing objective is to grow your audience on social media so you can increase visibility. Here’s an example of what your SMART goal might look like:

Increase followers on TikTok by 10% by the end of 2024.

This goal is specific because we know exactly what we are doing and where we are doing it (increase followers on TikTok).

It’s also measurable (10%), attainable (reasonable percentage increase), relevant to the marketing objective, and time-bound (by the end of 2024).

Pro tip: Deuell stresses the importance of setting different goals for each social media channel. “For example, if you generally see higher engagement on Instagram, continue creating content that is improving your engagement rates, month over month.”

2. Build audience profiles

If you want to reach your target audience on social, you need to understand them inside and out.

And we’re not just talking about demographics like age, gender, location, income, and education. You’ll also want to explore psychographics such as interests, opinions, challenges, values, aspirations, and online behaviors.

With this information at your fingertips, you’ll be able to create strategic social content that resonates with your audience and helps you build deeper connections.

Gather customer data

There are a few different ways that you can get the data you need to better understand your customers:

• Online surveys
• Customer interviews
• Focus groups
• Polls on social
• Industry data reports

Don’t be afraid to actually talk to your customers to find out more about them. Find out which social networks they like to hang out on and what types of content they like to consume.

Create buyer personas

Once you have gathered your data, it’s time to build buyer personas. These are detailed profiles of your target customers that include demographics, psychographics, details about their online behavior, and a breakdown of their goals and challenges.

The more detailed your buyer personas are, the more valuable they will be when creating social media content.

Give each persona a name and back story. You may even want to include a photo so that when you review the profile, you have someone very specific in mind.

Pro tip: Remember, you are talking to a human, not only a potential customer, reminds Deuell. Refer back to your buyer personas as you create social content to remind yourself of the specific people you’re talking to.

3. Research your competitors

While you don’t want to copy your competitors, competitor research can help you learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t for your audience.

Plus, the only way to know how you can stand out in your market is to know what your competitors are already doing.

Do a competitive analysis

Start by conducting a social media competitive analysis. In order to figure out what your competitors are up to, you’ll want to visit their social media profiles and make notes on:

• Which social media platforms they’re active on
• Messaging and brand voice
• The target audience for each platform
• Types of content and topics of social posts
• Posting frequency on each channel
• How and how often they engage on each channel
• Use of branding across their content
• Collaborations with influencers and thought leaders

Mine the gaps

Once you’ve conducted a competitor analysis, you’ll have all kinds of insights you can use to make some strategic decisions about your own strategy.

But you don’t just want to borrow from what works for your competitors. You also want to identify the gaps that you may be able to fill.

For example, let’s say that most of your competitors are not active on LinkedIn. But you know that your audience spends a lot of time there. This is a gap you can fill by being more active on the platform.

This also works for types of content and content topics. If a lot of your competitors are focused on text posts, you might want to test short-form videos or use more graphics.

If they’re not talking about something that’s important to your industry, make sure you cover it in your own content.

4. Conduct a social media audit

Now that you’ve audited your competitors’ social media profiles, it’s time to do the same for yourself.

Performing a social media audit for your brand can help set some initial benchmarks for your strategy as well as help you identify what you’re doing well and where you need to improve.

As you look at each of your social media profiles, consider the following:

• What content formats are working best? And which aren’t getting a lot of traction? (IG Reels? Text posts? Carousel graphics?)
• Which topics are the most and least popular based on social media user engagement?
• Are your social media followers primarily from your target audience? Do different personas follow you on different platforms?
• How often are you posting on each platform? What time of day is your audience most engaged?
• What does your most engaging content have in common? (This could be topics, format, type of content, etc.)

Document everything about your current social media presence and make note of any areas where you’re excelling and areas where you need improvement.

Also, make a note of initial metrics like audience size and engagement so that you know where you’re starting from.

5. Choose the right social platforms

Not all social media platforms are created equally. Select the platforms where your target audience is most active and align with your brand’s objectives. Quality over quantity is key.

Choose the platforms

Start by identifying the channels your audience uses and what types of content they like to consume there. Then, consider what each platform is best suited for before choosing your primary channels.

For example, Facebook is a great place for bringing in new leads and customers via advertising. But you’re more likely to get better organic reach on YouTube or TikTok.

Twitter is a great platform for connecting with industry influencers and thought leaders. But LinkedIn might be the best platform for attracting new talent.

After you’ve identified which channels you will focus on, you’ll need to create a strategy for each channel based on audience behavior and best practices.

For instance, you might post more often on Instagram than you do on YouTube. And post more educational content on YouTube while posting more engagement-focused content on IG.

We recommend starting with 1-2 primary platforms and then adding additional channels later once you’ve mastered those.

Trying to be on too many different platforms at once can hinder your ability to post quality content to any channel.

Set up & optimize profiles

Once you’ve determined which platforms you will be active on and how to use each to achieve your goals, it’s time to set up and optimize your profiles.

If you are not yet on a channel you’d like to use, go through the process of setting up your account and sharing the information with your team.

Once you have the accounts, make sure they’re optimized according to social media best practices for the channel. Here are things to consider when optimizing your profiles:

• Do you have social media SEO keywords in your profile that people might use to find accounts like yours?
• Is your branding consistent across platforms? (This includes your main profile image and banner image.)
• Is your business name and voice consistent in your bio for each channel?
• Have you optimized your bio according to best practices for this channel?

Pro tip: “Don’t expect every channel to meet every single goal you have,” says Deuell. Some channels might be used primarily for greater visibility while others may be used more as a place to engage with your audience.

6. Develop a social media content strategy

One of the most important parts of creating an effective social media marketing strategy is developing quality content.

To consistently create the kind of content your ideal customer actually wants to read, you need to have a strategy in place to guide content creation.

Choose content formats

Choose content formats based on what resonates with your audience and what’s appropriate for the social media network. Consider not just the medium (video, image, etc.) but also the length.

For example, mixing long-form and short-form content on YouTube will increase your reach and engagement. YouTube Shorts will catch a user’s attention, but having longer video content on your channel will get them to stick around!

To make sure you have a mix of content types, don’t just document which types of content you’ll create. You should also identify a balanced mix between the different content types.

For example, maybe you post one long-form video each week and two short-form videos each day.

Choose content types

When creating your social media marketing plan, you’ll also need to consider what types of content you plan to post on each channel. These content types might include:

• Product-focused: New products, product updates, UGC featuring products
• Educational: Tutorials, tips, best practices, definitions
• Entertaining: Fun activities, videos with trending sounds, quizzes
• Inspirational: Inspiring stories, quotes, and images
• Behind-the-scenes: Day in the life of your employees, how products are made, office tours
• Promotional: Ads, previews, tutorials, demos, special sales & promotions

Choose topics

In addition to a mix of content formats and types, you’ll also want to find the right balance of different topics.

The easiest way to get started is to create 4-5 content pillars or topics that you frequently cover in your content. Then, make sure you are creating content for each content pillar.

For example, our content pillars at HawkSEM might be SEO, PPC, social media marketing, content marketing, conversion rate optimization, and ecommerce marketing.

Pro tip: Deuell recommends not using the same content strategy across all of your platforms. “Understand which part of your target audience is most active across each platform so that you can create more strategic content,” she says.

7. Create a social media calendar

You want to plan your content in advance to ensure consistency and avoid last-minute scrambles. A content calendar will help you maintain a consistent posting schedule and allow for strategic content curation.

Choose a posting schedule

Your content calendar will include details like what days and times you will post to which channels. It will also include details about posting frequency. These are all things you’ll need to decide on before you start creating content.

When developing a posting schedule, consider when your audience is most active on these channels. For frequency, consider the best practices for each channel and what your team can consistently do.

Social media trends

Just because you plan your content ahead of time doesn’t mean that you cannot include important updates or address trends in the moment. But be strategic about what social media trends you participate in.

It can be tempting to jump on every social media trend or viral sensation in an attempt to stay relevant and engage with your audience.

However, exercising caution and evaluating if a trend aligns with your brand identity, values, and overall marketing objectives is important. Blindly participating in every trend can dilute your brand’s messaging and confuse your audience.

Document your plan

Whether you use a social media tool like Hootsuite or just create your calendar in a simple spreadsheet, you’ll need a place to document your social media calendar.

Use this space to plan all your content across channels. It will help you make sure your posts are spaced out and scheduled for optimal times as well as help you keep up with a consistent posting schedule.

8. Outline engagement best practices

If you upload social media posts and then do nothing, they will end up in the content landfill. Social media is a two-way conversation; you need to use your content to engage with your audience.

To engage your audience on social media, follow these best practices:

Respond to your audience

Respond promptly to comments, messages, and tags. This shows your audience that you value their input and are committed to providing excellent customer service.

Encourage user-generated content (UGC)

Encourage your audience to create and share user-generated content related to your brand. This will boost engagement, create a sense of community, and promote brand advocacy.

Run contests and giveaways

Organizing contests, giveaways, or user-generated content competitions can create excitement and incentivize engagement. These initiatives can generate a flurry of activity and encourage your audience to share your brand with their networks.

Tell compelling stories

Use storytelling techniques to captivate your audience. Share behind-the-scenes videos, success stories, and customer testimonials that resonate emotionally with your audience.

Pro tip: “Social media gives brands the space to connect with individuals authentically, unlike other ad spaces — use it wisely,” says Deuell. “Include human interest stories with emotional appeal in your content strategy. 

Collaborate with influencers

Influencer marketing is a powerful way to connect your brand to engaged social media followers in your industry. Build partnerships with influencers whose values align with your brand and whose audience matches your target market.

Invite them to engage

Use your content to encourage conversations and engagement. You can do this by taking polls, asking questions, and doing live content and segments such as AMA (Ask Me Anything). This two-way communication builds trust and loyalty.

9. Identify KPIs and metrics

To ensure that your social strategy delivers the results you aim for, you need to be able to analyze your data and calculate your return on investment (ROI).

Establish your social media key performance indicators (KPIs) before you begin tracking and measuring social media analytics.

Ideally, these KPIs should be in line with your overall business strategy. Once you’ve decided on your KPIs, choose the right metrics to help you measure these KPIs over time.

Here are some examples of metrics you should track to measure your social media marketing ROI:

Reach and impressions

Monitor the number of people who see your posts and the overall impressions generated. These metrics will help you gauge the visibility and exposure your brand is receiving.

Engagement metrics

Analyze social media metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and clicks to assess the level of audience engagement you are generating.

Higher engagement rates indicate that your content is resonating with your audience. If your reach is high but engagement is low, this is a sign you need to reassess your strategy.

Conversion rate

Use tracking tools and analytics platforms to measure social media campaign conversions. Set up conversion goals on platforms such as Google Analytics to monitor click-through rates and attribute conversions to specific social media channels.

Both ecommerce and lead generation business models benefit from understanding the customer journey and the role each channel plays in conversions.

Referral traffic

Use Google Analytics to track the amount of traffic your website receives from social media platforms. This will help you gauge the effectiveness of your social media efforts in driving website visits.

It can also help you understand which platforms are driving the most traffic so you can begin to prioritize these social media channels.

For example, if you see that most of your traffic is coming from Instagram, you might ramp up your posting and engagement on that channel for even better results.

Customer feedback and sentiment analysis

Monitor social media conversations to gain insights into customer sentiment and feedback regarding your brand. Analyze sentiment trends to identify areas for improvement and capitalize on positive feedback.

Pro tip: “Use social listening tools to understand, by channel, what your audience is engaging with and talking about,” Deuell says. “This will help guide your content strategy to address your audience’s needs proactively.”

3 tips for managing social media with a team

Often, the social media strategy you create will involve multiple team members and have many moving parts. Your team needs to run like a well-oiled machine for all your hard work to pay off.

Here are some tactics you can implement to help:

1. Foster cross-functional collaboration

Break down silos and encourage collaboration among team members from different departments, such as marketing, design, and customer service. Each team brings unique expertise and insights that can contribute to a well-rounded social media strategy.

Encourage people across teams to regularly communicate and share ideas to leverage your organization’s collective knowledge and skills.

For example, you might have the social media team meet with your company’s subject-matter experts once a month to brainstorm new topics.

2. Define roles and responsibilities

Accountability is key to success. Clearly define each team member’s roles and responsibilities by assigning specific tasks such as content creation, community management, analytics tracking, and campaign implementation.

Put these tasks in a shared project management tool where you can assign tasks and due dates. This clarity ensures everyone understands their responsibilities, avoids duplication of efforts, and maintains a consistent approach.

3. Develop a content creation process

Defined processes that everyone follows make for smooth content creation.

When everyone is on the same page about how things are done, they can concentrate on their own tasks and not have to wait for others to complete their tasks for content to move along.

Here are some of the processes for which you’ll need to define workflows, assign roles, and set deadlines:

• Ideation or topic planning
• Writing social media copy
• Designing social media graphics
• Recording & editing social media video
• Approving posts before publishing
• Scheduling and publishing posts
• Tracking metrics and creating reports
• Repurposing high-performing content
• Replying to messages and comments
• Following and engaging with other profiles
• Paid social media marketing efforts

When everyone on your team follows the same processes, you will get more consistent results.

Don’t expect every social media channel to meet every single goal you have. (Image: Unsplash)

Social media marketing strategy checklist

As you create your own social media marketing strategy, use this checklist to make sure you don’t leave anything out.

1. Set SMART goals

• Brainstorm goals for your social media channels.
• Make sure these goals align with your overall business objectives.
• For each goal, make sure it’s:
  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant
  • Time-bound

2. Build audience profiles

• Do some audience research—customer interviews, polls, focus groups, online surveys, industry reports, etc.
• Collect demographic information like age, gender, location, education, income, and marital status.
• Collect psychographic information like values, desires, goals, interests, aspirations, and online buying behavior.
• Create detailed buyer personas for each of your ideal buyers based on the data you’ve collected..

3. Research your competitors

• Do an analysis of your competitors, making a note of:
  • Which social media platforms they’re active on
  • Messaging and brand voice
  • The target audience for each platform
  • Types of content and topics of social posts
  • Posting frequency on each channel
  • How and how often they engage on each channel
  • Use of branding across their content
  • Collaborations with influencers and thought leaders
• Analyze your competitor data to develop some insights about what’s working for your audience and what isn’t.
• Mine the gaps in the competitive landscape by identifying topics, formats, and channels you could leverage to get ahead of the competition.

4. Conduct a social media audit

• Review your brand’s social media channels, making a note of what’s working best and what needs improvement.
• Analyze this data to make some conclusions about what your audience wants to see more of. Incorporate that into your strategy.
• Identify benchmark social metrics like audience size and engagement, which you can use to measure progress moving forward.

5. Choose the right social platforms

• Identify which channels your audience uses and what types of content they like to consume there.
• Consider which channels are best suited for the types of content you plan to post.
• Choose 1-2 primary channels where you want to actively post and engage.
• Develop goals for each channel and decide on types of content and posting frequency.
• Set up your profiles and optimize them according to each channel’s best practices.
• Make sure branding, company name, and brand voice are consistent across profile bios.

6. Develop a social media content strategy

• Identify content formats you plan to use based on the channels you will be active on.
• Pinpoint content types that you will include in your content mix (educational, promotional, product-focused, etc.)
• Identify 4-5 content pillars that will drive your content topics across channels.

7. Create a social media calendar

• Identify what days and times are optimal for posting on each channel.
• Create a posting schedule you can stick to.
• Find a content publishing tool or create your own content calendar that you can use to plan your content each month.

8. Outline engagement best practices

• Outline a process for how, when, and who will respond to audience messages and questions on social media.
• Determine ways to encourage user-generated content, and put a plan into place for how you’ll share UGC.
• Identify contests and giveaways you can run to encourage more engagement on social media.
• Brainstorm ways to tell compelling stories like behind-the-scenes content.
• Find influencers that are a good fit for your brand, and make a plan to reach out and collaborate with them.
• Identify some ways you can regularly invite your audience to engage, such as polls, questions, giveaways, etc.

9. Identify KPIs and metrics

• Pinpoint your KPIs based on your social media goals.
• Choose metrics that align with your KPIs.
• Determine how you’ll track these metrics over time, including processes and tools.
• Make a plan to review performance metrics over time so you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

The takeaway

With a strategic social media plan, you’re more likely to meet your goals—whether that’s to elevate your brand’s online presence, engage your audience, drive site traffic, or boost conversions.

Focus on your social media data to drive your strategy and ensure that you have the right marketing tools to help you monitor your campaigns.

Need help getting started? That’s where we come in. Get in touch today to take your social media marketing strategy to the next level.

This article has been updated and was originally published in July 2023.