Grow Your Business with the Best Social Media Strategy

What is a social media strategy?

A social media strategy encapsulates your specific social media goals, the approaches you’ll use to achieve them, and the data analytics to measure your performance against those goals.

Here are some tips and proven best practices to help you build a social media strategy that delivers maximum ROI:

1. Perform a social media audit, as a first step in developing your strategy. Consider using a company “outsider” to perform an unbiased deep dive into what strategies are performing well, and why.

2. Implement different goals for each social media channel that are specific and granular, not broad.

3. Create a mission statement for each channel that reinforces alignment with your goals.

4. Every social media goal should be aligned with your marketing organization’s broader objectives.

5. Resist the all-too-common urge to use # of followers in your goals. While it is viewed as the high impact number we all know and love, it’s also a number with questionable value, depending on the platform.

6. Carefully consider the right data analytics to track for each channel. Secondly, the dynamics of each channel will help differentiate the likelihood and value of “user actions” by your followers.

7. Build a social media content calendar that specifies the day/time, topic/type of content, and who is responsible for each new posting. Your calendar helps ensure your posts are spaced out strategically and published at the time your audiences are most likely to see them.

8. Once your content calendar is complete, use a digital scheduling tool such as Hootsuite to queue your finalized content in advance of the designated send date, rather than having to manually doing so every day.

B2B social media strategies

A Business-to-Business (B2B) social media strategy template provides a comprehensive roadmap to achieving your business's online marketing goals. From the social media channels you should be focusing resources to how often you’ll need to post new content and what data analytics should be used to measure success, we’ve got you covered.

Here are the basic elements of a simple social media strategy template you can leverage to focus your efforts, establish smart goals, and gain a deeper understanding of how to analyze the data:

Business Goal > Social Media Goal > Data Analytics

1. Grow your brand > Followers and awareness > Followers, clicks, shares

2. Convert prospects into customers > Click-throughs and conversions > Click-throughs, website traffic

3. Convert customers into evangelists > Interaction and shares with network > Mentions, shares, likes

Your social media strategy template can be further populated from here to help you build a more detailed document. This will enable you to drill down on every social media channel or account to establish specific goals, who is responsible for achieving them, and what data analytics you’ll use for each channel.

B2B social media strategies — tips and best practices

A Business-to-Business (B2B) social media strategy template provides a comprehensive roadmap to achieving your business's online marketing goals. From the social media channels you should be focusing resources to how often you’ll need to post new content and what data analytics should be used to measure success, we’ve got you covered.

1. Invest in social media marketing research that helps you develop (target) audience personas for each individual channel

Understanding each persona and what type of content they are most likely to engage with is essential to converting followers into customers.

2. Leverage your social media marketing research findings to develop insightful analytics

The right analytics provide your business with invaluable insights into your followers key demographics—to better refine your social media strategy and provide the content each audience will most likely want.

3. Study your competitor’s social media strategy to identify strengths and weaknesses

Analyzing your competitor’s social media channels, and their followers, is a surefire way to reveal any weaknesses—and capitalize on them.

4. Get creative with interactive content to boost engagement

You can encourage greater responsiveness and participation with interactive social content, such as polls, contests, giveaways, or customer features that make your followers feel like a valued member of an online community—and identify with your brand.

Organic social media strategies

One of the keys to a successful organic social media strategy is developing and staying true to a smart content mix.

To achieve your social media goals and objectives, make sure your organic social media content strategy and content calendar reflect the mission statement you’ve designated for each channel. This will help ensure that the content you post is aligned to drive key performance indicators (KPIs) that support your overall marketing goals.

A good form to follow is the 80-20 rule:

• 80% of your content should provide value by informing, educating, or entertaining your target audience.
• 20% of your content should sell your brand and unique value.

Here are some simple organic social media strategies to grow your following and business objectives:

• Focus your resources where they’ll have the greatest impact
• Prioritize the data analytics on the number of shares you’re seeing
• Post content that is “evergreen”
• Don’t be afraid to experiment with your content posting frequency
• Utilize a platform’s unique targeting technology to achieve better engagement and clicks
• Educate yourself on what types of content provide the greatest organic reach
• Over-engage (not over-send) your target audiences. Most consumers love attention and personalized interaction, and will be much more likely to click through.

Pro Tip: Determining the right posting frequency for your social media strategy

If you’re developing a new social media strategy—or working on strengthening your existing one—you are probably analyzing how often new content should be posted to each channel. It’s a fine line. Post content too frequently and you could risk your audience unfollowing you. Post content too infrequently and you could risk looking like you’re not worth following.

While there’s no “right” number (social media is far from an exact science), there are trusted recommendations from industry experts you can use as an informal guide.

Here are some recommendation from industry experts on suggested posting frequency to consider, as your resources may allow:

• Facebook: 1 time per day
• Twitter: 1-3 times per day
• LinkedIn: 1-2 times per day
• Instagram: 2-3 times per week

How a social media strategy template for events can grow your business

A strong social media strategy serves as a crucial tool for engaging and acquiring new attendees to your events. With Eventbrite Boost, our all-in-one marketing platform, deploying that strategy is easier than ever.

Check out these helpful tips and best practices featuring the leading platforms for creating a social media strategy that will grow your events business:

Facebook

If Facebook is the powerhouse of the social media landscape, Eventbrite Boost is the key into that powerhouse. Driving a tried-and-true social media engagement strategy, Eventbrite enables you to seamlessly add your event to Facebook from your organizer dashboard. Attendees can buy tickets directly on Facebook, share your event with their friends, and add it to their Facebook calendar.

Instagram

Instagram is the premier social media platform for visual storytelling with powerful features that include Instagram Live, Reels, and Stories that allow event organizers to creatively engage and convert followers into customers. It is a powerful tool that powers a social media content strategy to build your brand and sell more tickets through captivating storytelling via Instagram’s video features.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an important component of a successful social media strategy content mix—to reach prospective attendees in a targeted industry, drive traffic to your events website, sell more tickets, and grow your events business. As the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn generates leads 227% more effectively than Facebook and Twitter, making it an essential platform to prioritize in your social media strategy.