Want to expand your brand’s marketing footprint into social media, or refine your strategy? Having a structured game plan is always recommended. Keeping your strategy simple might be the best choice to increase the benefits of what social could provide in return.

Platforms, formats, and content choices can vastly differ based on goals. However, these are a few considerations to keep top of mind.

Start with a goal. Always.

Before anything, be clear in what you aim to have your social presence achieve. It might sound obvious, but without a set purpose it may derail the delivery and increase frustration in measuring what success looks like.

A bird’s eye view and one easy to identify goal is the best approach. Examples could be defined by audience or consumer awareness, increasing community following and engagement, and increase sales touch point efforts as an integration to overall marketing plans.

Once you have a grounded direction, defining the metrics relative to the goals are easier to control and will be important for accountability in tracking progress. This will also help to learn from captured data results and allow you to test and refine the ongoing strategy.

Lean into an intended audience and focused content strategy.

Have the goals set? Align the “what” with the “who”. Work on a content posting plan to serve the purpose, to the intended audience.

• Brand perception and character. Establish a clear communication profile, for example will it be neutral, professional, funny? Tie it to fit with how you want your audience to relate. Visual tone and theme are important in keeping an overall on-brand consistency.
• Align to the goals: entertainment for engagement, product news and features focused for awareness and sales consideration…etc
• Audit the competition on all considered platforms. Competitive comparison can facilitate finding a white space opportunity that sets you apart or help validate creative direction.

Speaking of platforms, note that not all platforms are created equal. A social strategy does not mean the need to have an account across all existing options. Differences in audience and demographic reach, formatting, and platform purpose all need to be considering carefully.

• Video is powerful.

Algorithms on social platforms are increasingly prioritizing videos. Viewers tend to stay engaged longer on platforms, and most often engaging more. It is a good reason why YouTube is such a powerful search and entertainment platform, Tik Tok’s addicting video platform continued rise to fame, and accelerated efforts on enhancing video watch and discovery by Facebook and Instagram.

Related: Video Advertising: Why All Brands Should be Doing it and Where

For quick reach and impact consider testing Paid campaigns.

Ultimately organic reach will be limited in reaching the masses, especially while building a new profile and following. Top platforms such as Facebook/IG prioritize advertisers paying for boosted posts and structured campaign ads. As with any paid media marketing efforts the same rules would apply, by defining the clear objective first. The benefit of most, if not all platforms are the options to set optimization based on certain overall objectives or KPI needs. Ensure the choices in platform, audience targeting whether it is mass reach or niche, and tactical formats also all align.

For more info and how Anvil can support you in building a strategy for 2021, contact us, and follow on social for additional insights and updates.