16 Things To Include in Your Social Media Strategy Template
Whether you’re a business owner or a social media manager, a social media strategy plays a huge role in targeting the right audience and creating content that resonates with them.
A social media strategy serves as your blueprint or plan that will help align all your social media marketing efforts. It is the plan that you will implement to create content that speaks to your target audience.
Without a social media strategy, you might be posting the most aesthetically-pleasing content, but they don’t resonate well with your target audience. Or worse, you may post random content this week and don’t for the succeeding weeks (talk about posting and ghosting!)
In this blog post, I've listed out the essential components you need to include in your social media strategy template. These are all the things that I include in my clients’ social media strategy. I hope these will provide you with more direction and help you meaningful content that speaks to your desired audience on social media.
Industry Insights
I delve deep into what their target audience or desired target audience is searching for on different platforms (e.g., Instagram, TikTok, and Google). I usually do this on answerthepublic.com, Google, Google Trends, and Ubersuggest.
The reason why I do this is because I want to understand what challenges their target audience is facing and where they are looking for resources to help them fix their identified problem/s.
Here’s how you can do this:
Answer the Public
Go to answerthepublic.com
Click search
Type in keywords in your industry
Select the country where you’re selling your products or services
Click enter
After that, you’ll see the keywords and questions that people are searching for.
Go to google.com
Type in keywords in your industry
Check out the questions and keywords under ‘People also search for’
Google Trends
Go to trends.google.com
Type in keywords in your industry
Click ‘explore’
Ubersuggest
Go to neilpatel.com
Enter domain or industry keyword
Select the country where your target audience is based
Click ‘search’
I personally use these tools myself and have invested in social media listening tools because I only want the best for my clients. As a social media strategist, it is my job not just to create content but also to combine strategy with my content recommendations.
2. Brand Personality
To have a clear vision of how I want their brand to express itself online — I think about the brand’s tone of voice is, core values, and visual identity.
Brand tone of voice is the way the brand talks to their desired audience. This is crucial to determine because this is how your client’s target audience will perceive the brand and will determine how they will respond to the brand.
Here are examples of brand tones of voice: Professional and Informative, Creative and Inspirational, Friendly and Approachable, Confident and Assertive, and Empowering and Supportive.
3. Offers
You need to get clear and understand the brand’s offerings and how it will solve their target audience’s identified problem.
4. Goals and Objectives
Think about what you want to achieve in the short and long term and how you will achieve them through your proposed social media marketing initiatives. I always take into consideration their sales funnel and the action steps I will take for each step in the funnel.
Here’s an example of the different action items you can do on each stage of the funnel:
1) Awareness
a. Social media posts
b. SEO
c. Targeted ads
2) Engagement
a. Social media posts
b. Email newsletters
c. Website optimization
d. Website blogs
3) Conversions
a. Lead magnet
b. Sales offers
c. Customer testimonials
4) Loyalty
a. Customer service
b. Customer FAQs
c. Early access perks
d. Discount codes
5. Target Audience
Besides doing my research on what their target audience is searching for, I also learn more about their target audience or desired audience by researching who they are, what their personality is like, what their age is, what their lifestyle is like, what their goals would be, where they are based, and what their sources of information are.
This is where social media listening tools play a huge part. This is where I delve deep into the psyche of the brand’s target audience.
6. SWOT Analysis
I also do a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This is a good way to understand my client and the industry they are in.
7. Competitor Analysis
I also conduct a competitor analysis by learning more about their competitors, their products/services, and what their current initiatives on social media are.
Consider answering these crucial questions:
a. What types of content do they post?
b. Are they running ads, or are they doing purely organic posts?
c. Are they working with influencers/content creators?
d. What’s their price point like?
8. Content Pillars
The key to nailing your social media strategy is also to have content pillars — these are your key themes or topics that you will talk about on your platforms.
For example, one of my content pillars is to educate small to medium-sized business owners who are struggling to manage their social media platforms. I achieve this by providing them with helpful and informative content about social media strategy, how to streamline their social media workflows, and offering FREE resources.
9. Content Ideas
Sometimes clients that are not social media savvy will have a bit of a hard time understanding how content pillars work. That’s why I do provide them with sample content ideas for each content pillar to further understand what I am proposing to them.
10. Content Production Process
I always clarify how the client wants their content produced. I ask if they have time to create content themselves, or if they need me to take content for them, or if it will be a mixture of both.
If the client is based overseas, I usually provide a content creation guideline document. This is where I include guidelines on how they can take photos and videos (angles, lighting, and backdrops). For videos, I provide detailed voiceover scripts that they can use. Additionally, I also provide them with sample mood boards and content.
In some cases, some clients fly me overseas for a week or two to take a quarter’s worth of content. This is what I love about my job!
11. Brand Look and Feel
While most clients have a branding guideline, I usually still include a sample mood board in my social media strategy template for them to understand the creative direction we will take on their social media platforms.
Please don’t take this literally. I usually select photos, elements, content styles, and colors that would relate to their brand.
12. Sample Posts
I also provide some sample posts based on the content pillars and content ideas that I have proposed. The reason I do this is that I want them to have an overview of how I create content, my editing style, and how I would use their brand elements properly.
13. KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
KPIs are the things that you will measure when you execute your proposed social media strategy sample. You need to have these in place so that you are clear on what you will work on.
Here are some examples of Key Performance Indicators that can be measured:
a. Engagement
b. Reach
c. Impressions
d. Click-through rate
e. Conversion rate
f. Hashtag performance
g. Growth rate
14. Engagement Strategy
This is where I include the social media initiatives that I propose in order to increase the brand’s engagement and, at the same time, build a community of engaged audiences on their social media platforms.
Here are some examples:
a. Monthly giveaways
b. Liking and commenting on followers content
c. Liking and commenting on like-minded individuals (applicable for personal brands)
d. Instagram story Q&A
e. Instagram story Polls
15. Hashtag Strategy
Gone are the days when brands needed to use 30 hashtags per post. According to Neil Patel, the owner of Answer the Public and Ubersuggest, you can now use 3 to 5 relevant hashtags on your posts.
The hashtag strategy in my social media strategy template will serve as a guide to the niche-related hashtag categories we will focus on.
For example, if my client is a bakery in London, United Kingdom, specializing in celebration cakes, I will look up hashtags in their country under celebration cakes.
16. Other Considerations
The other considerations that I include in my strategy template are my suggested frequency of posts, what time the posts will come out, who is in charge of posting, and how many times each content pillar will be featured in a week.
If you found this useful, I have a FREE guide to crafting your social media strategy available for a limited time only.
Visit my website www.weevolvestudio.com to grab yourself a copy!