Designing Social Media Strategies For Clients
There are plenty of things you can do to help your clients experience success. You can focus on SEO for their website. You can focus on user experience. You can focus on print ad campaigns. But for now, let’s focus on social media. We’re taking you behind the scenes to show you what goes into the social strategies we create for our clients. Each social strategy we design is unique because it depends on several factors related to our clients and their businesses. However, we've managed to streamline our process to result in an epic social media strategy for each client and we're excited to share a few details!
STEP ONE: ANALYZE CLIENT GOALS + PERFORM SOCIAL MEDIA AUDIT
Two things serve as the foundation of each social strategy that we design: our clients’ goals and the audit we perform of their social media presence. It’s important for us to take a look at the effectiveness of their current content, networking, and marketing strategies so that we can build a strategy based on what is working well. Anything that is generating less than stellar results for our clients prompts us to brainstorm solutions and improvements that we can incorporate into the strategy.
We also want to have a clear understanding of our client’s goals, so we take a look at our discovery call questionnaire and any follow-up questions over email. If for example, we know that our client’s primary goal is to build her mailing list, then we know that the strategy has to include list building techniques that make sense on the social media platform she’s using.
Understanding our client’s goals also helps us know which platforms to focus on to meet those goals. As social media strategists, we understand that there are some platforms that are better suited to reach certain goals such as Pinterest for list building + traffic, Facebook, Instagram, + Twitter for networking, and Twitter, Instagram, + Facebook for cultivating communities.
STEP TWO: FIND THEIR TRIBE
Our next step after we have a tentative roadmap from the audit and goals is to move onto analyzing our client's target audience. The core of our strategy involves getting her content in front of the right people.
What does this look like? We search for FB groups, Instagram hashtags, Pinterest group boards, etc. to help her connect with her tribe.
This is often the most critical part of the strategy because the latest and best marketing techniques don't matter if they are not being applied to the right audience.
STEP THREE: BUILD A STRATEGY THAT ADDRESSES CLIENT GOALS
Next, comes the meat of the strategy: the content, marketing, and networking strategies that will result in an engaged audience who will take the desired actions our client is hoping for (opting-in to their mailing lists, clicking over to their blogs, booking discovery calls, purchasing their products, etc). Based on the platform, the strategy to accomplish each goal might look a little different.
For example, networking on Twitter might mean encouraging her to participate in Twitter chats at least once per month, while on Instagram that could look like directing her to explore a relevant, industry hashtag each week and connecting with Instagram users who fit her ideal client avatar.
We also have to consider the social media management tools a client already has or is willing to invest in while we are building her strategy. Sometimes we can draft two versions of a strategy that highlight manual and automated techniques.
The time that she can devote to social media is also an important factor. Some clients have a more generous, relaxed schedule where they can spend up to 2 hours per day and others have stated that they could only afford to spend 30 minutes per day. It doesn’t serve us or our clients well if we design a strategy that they cannot implement within the timeframe they have.
STEP FOUR: BREAKDOWN STRATEGY INTO DAILY, WEEKLY, + MONTHLY ACTIONS
After we are confident that we have designed a strategy that fits their schedule and paves the way towards their goals, we break it down into the daily, weekly, and monthly action steps that our clients need to take to maintain their presence on social media.
This is often our clients’ favorite part of the strategy because they know exactly which steps to take moving forward. Some of our clients have even found success by passing off the strategy to their VA so that they can feel confident that their team members are taking actions that will help them meet the goals of their business.
STEP FIVE: PRESENT + EXPLAIN HOW TO IMPLEMENT STRATEGY
When the strategy is complete, we email our clients the action plan in the form of a Google Doc so that they have a chance to review it. Then we hop on the phone or video chat to walk them through the strategy and answer any questions.
STEP SIX: ASSESS RESULTS TO MAKE MODIFICATIONS
Most of our clients see results within a week of implementing the strategy. The action steps we provide are so straightforward that it doesn’t take much for them to jump right in and start executing their strategy. Usually, we don’t have to make many modifications, but what that could look like is the addition of more tools, resources, and guides to streamline the management of their social media networks even further!
Designing social media strategies involves quite a bit of work on our end, but it is so worth it when our clients tell us about their amazing results!
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