How to Create a Social Media Strategy

Deciphering what the latest algorithm is favouring and staying up to date with trends is what turns a lot of freelancers away from marketing their business on socials. Here’s a hot take that we say to that; mastering storytelling on socials is what will set your business apart from the rest. The internet is busy, so creating an identity and a sense of community online is key to standing out and attracting new clients. So this week let us help you wrangle a new social media strategy for your business. 

Why is Social Media Important For My Business?

Great question! Socials are great for building brand awareness, nurturing leads, driving sales and community building. Like it or not, has become a go-to research channel for consumers at large. Think about when you look at a new brand, you’re likely stalking their socials. This makes your pages a powerful touch point for clients, it acts as an authentic reflection of you and your work. Testimonials and case studies speak volumes about your business and can do more to win a client than a pitch often. 

Let’s Set Some Goals 

Before we can even touch on how to craft a social strategy for your biz, you’ll need to define your goals. There’s no right way to do this so here are a few tips to get you started: 

  • Look at the big picture. Why do you need a good social presence? If it’s to gain more clients, What resources do you need to make to make this a reality? Could include case studies, and reels with your expert opinion showcasing how you would do something for a brand. We recently saw a great example of this on TikTok where Styling with Kenzie did a video on styling Emilie Kieser, then she hired her. This can be the power of socials!

  • Think about your target audience. What type of content would they like to see? We love to save other successful freelancers’ posts in our industry and create our own versions.

  • Keep in mind your business’s holistic marketing strategy and see how socials can complement it.

  • Tie your social media to your business goals and KPIs. This could be growing your email list, and client base or getting more views on an offering. Tracking KPIs like this allows you to tweak your social strategy and work out what’s working. 

A few example goals and KPIs to set: 

  • Brand awareness (growth, engagements) and consideration (link clicks, web traffic)

  • Find new sales opportunities (conversations to join)

  • Uncover brand expansion opportunities

  • Reputation management (engaging with inbound messages)

  • Increase customer satisfaction

  • Inspire customer loyalty

  • Product launch analysis

  • Competitive analysis

  • Lead generation (qualifying leads) 

  • Testimonials 

How to Create an Effective Social Strategy 

Now you have your goals squared away you can create your plan. When creating your plan we suggest focusing on the following; ensure your content solves challenges, focus on networks that provide value, create engaging content, showcase your services and how that solves X problem, engage instead of ignore, track, improve and market your effort!

4 Universal Social Tips For Biz 

There’s no shortage of social tips out there to help fine-tune your strategy, however, some are relative so below you can find our four universal tips to help you.

  1. Build a human social presence; Seems obvious, but make your social presence feel human. No copy-paste replies, write your captions like they were written by a real person - not chatgpt, include your personality and what makes you authentically you!

  2. Don’t just promote! Don’t let your social presence become a dumping ground for offers, building an audience means being genuinely helpful, not salesy. 

  3. Show up consistently. Boring we know but this means consistently posting, replying to comments and DMs and posting to your stories. 

  4. Experiment! Experiment with different types of content to see what lands and to keep people entertained. 

Use Social Media Marketing Tools 

Thankfully, we aren’t short on social tools to choose from nowadays that can help you do the heavy lifting. Our go-to is Planoly but depending on your needs, you might consider investing in a combo of the following:

  • Scheduling tools that allow you to queue up content across multiple platforms

  • Analytics tools that measure content performance and engagement 

  • Listening and monitoring tools that make it easier to track audience conversations

Remember, if all of this makes your mind whirl you can always hire an FF social media to run your socials for you via our jobs board. 

Tia Meyers