As we enter 2024, it is essential to consider reviewing your brand and communication goals and plans. Creating or revising your social media marketing strategy will set you in good stead for a successful 2024.
According to project management company Monday, “Social media takes up a lot of our time. In 2020, users worldwide spent an average of 145 minutes per day on a social media platform. Plus, about 80% of consumers make a purchase based on social media ads at least some of the time.”
Based on this information, there is so much opportunity to speak with your target market and achieve your business goals through an effective social media marketing strategy.
Where to start, you ask? Let’s dive right in!
What is a social media marketing strategy?
A social media strategy is a comprehensive plan of action for all activity you intend on sharing on your social platforms. As social media management tool Sprout Social says “In a landscape with more competition, content and networks than ever, a succinct strategy gives you the focus needed to say “no” to efforts that don’t serve your goals.”
This type of strategy requires a range of detail which will provide you with a solid guide to refer to as you proceed with your social media content creation throughout the new year.
The main areas for a social media marketing strategy include:
- Key objectives: What would you like to achieve for your business through social media?
- Target market: Who are you speaking to right now and who would you like to reach?
- Key messages: What are you saying and in what tone?
- Channels: Where will these messages go and where is your audience present?
- Content plan and development: How will you visually represent your messages and strategy?
- Timeline: How will your strategy be broken down across 12 months?
- Measuring and optimising: Ensure you are constantly tracking your plan to ensure it is providing results that align with your objectives.
- Reporting: This is a step that can sometimes be forgotten, but it’s the most important! ALWAYS review and report on your strategy. This will give your business an insight into what work you are doing and what goals the business has achieved.
We understand that this sounds like a lot of detail but if you break it down into individual steps, you can work your way through the strategy at a digestible pace. It also helps if you align with key members within your team. Using resources around you to help build the strategy will make the work load lighter and everyone will be on the same page.
Review the year that was
Before you jump straight into the new year, let’s reflect on last year’s strategy. It’s essential you look at your current strategy and how it supported your social media plans for the year that was.
The key areas you need to reflect on include:
- Performance metrics: Did you achieve your goals for the year that was e.g., growth, engagement, or traffic? Do the results meet the benchmarks you have set?
- Internal review: Did the strategy align with your businesses’ processes? Did you undertake activity that could have been simplified or executed in a different way?
- Budgetary review: Did you stick to your budget? Did you overspend? If so, why?
Once you have taken these points into consideration, it will put you in a good position to propose a new social strategy for 2024.
Set goals for the new year and keep your metrics in mind.
Now you have reflected on what did and didn’t work well in 2023, you can take those learnings into the new year with you!
Setting your goals for the new year will involve taking the learnings from 2023 and then reshaping them for 2024, plus adding in some new ones! Some main areas to focus on when goal setting can include:
- Set new benchmarks and goals. Use the S.M.A.R.T framework for ease of implementation and ongoing tracking.
- Realign your focus on the right target market. Over time, your audience changes throughout their journey. This means the customer you had at the start of 2023 may be different in 2024.
- Refine your content to speak to the right audience and ensure it’s supporting your goals. This can include new colour palettes, updated key messages and different business focuses.
It’s important to keep your strategy in mind as a guide, but don’t let it shackle you! You can always revisit your strategy and refine it over time. Social media management tool Hootsuite states, “As you start to implement your plan and track your results, you may find that some strategies don’t work as well as you’d anticipated, while others are working even better than expected.”
Don’t forget your campaigns!
As part of your social media marketing strategy, don’t forget to consider your campaign plans for the year too. Campaigns are an ideal way to promote major activity within your strategy, that require specific messaging or content.
Educational platform, Digital Marketing Institute, put it perfectly when they said “Your social media strategy is the big picture; the ‘who, what, when, where, and how’ of your online marketing activities. Social media campaigns, meanwhile, live within your strategy. You might have multiple campaigns in a year, and they are more targeted, focusing on a particular message or goal, such as a product launch campaign.”
When plotting out your social media strategy, outline your key campaign periods throughout 2024 to ensure you allow ample time for additional planning, management, and content development.
Bring on 2024!
We hope that you’re feeling inspired to commence working on your 2024 social media marketing strategy (if you haven’t already).
Remember to reflect on 2023, celebrate the wins and learn from the mistakes. This will give you great insight for your planning and will give you a stronger strategy to reach your social media goals in 2024!
Finding it all a bit hard to navigate and would prefer to leave it to the experts? We can help – Shoot us an email or DM today!
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