How to build a social media marketing strategy in six steps

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing means putting your business in front of people through platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube. With your own posts and videos, with conversations in comments and messages and with ads. The aim is not to collect likes. The aim is for people to get to know you, trust you and become customers.

Without a strategy, social media often becomes something you do when there is time left over. Sometimes a post works and mostly it doesn't. Nobody knows why. A strategy makes every post work towards the same goal. You will find the basics in 5 social media marketing best practices. Here we go a step further.

Strategy, plan or calendar?

These words often get mixed up. This is how we keep them apart.

• Strategy. The choices. Why are you on social media, for whom, on which platforms and what makes you stand out?
• Plan. The execution. Who does what, how often and with what budget?
• Content calendar. The posts themselves, per week or per month, with date, platform and topic.

So a social media marketing plan is the strategy plus the plan. Always start with the strategy. A calendar without choices behind it mostly creates busywork.

Six steps to your strategy

1. Set your goal

What should social media do for your business? Choose one main goal and at most one secondary goal. For example more enquiries from your area, more job applications or more awareness among a new audience. Make it specific. What do you want to see in six months' time that isn't there now? Agree straight away how you will measure it.

2. Know your audience

Who are your customers, what is on their minds and what do they ask before they buy? Use what you already know from conversations, emails and quotes. Write down the ten questions you hear most often. Those are your first topics. Also think about who you don't want to reach. That makes choices easier.

3. Choose your platforms

Choose based on your audience and your goal, not on what is popular. Business customers and recruitment often call for LinkedIn. You will find local consumers on Instagram and Facebook. If you show what you do on video, TikTok and YouTube Shorts fit. Start with one or two platforms and give each its own role. Instagram to show what you make and LinkedIn for recruitment, for instance.

4. Choose your themes and formats

Choose three or four fixed themes to post about. You may hear them called content pillars. For a heating engineer, those might be projects, tips for homeowners, the team and vacancies. Then choose the formats that suit each platform, such as short video, photos, carousels with tips or longer posts. Fixed themes make it easier to come up with topics. And your audience knows what to expect from you.

Decide on your tone too. Do you address people formally or informally? Are you mainly businesslike or more light-hearted? Keep it the same on every platform.

5. Make a plan and share the work

Write down how often you post, who creates the content, who publishes it and who replies to messages. Choose a rhythm you can keep up in busy weeks too. Work ahead with a simple content calendar and schedule your posts. Agree how much time and budget you spend each month. Outsourcing part of it? Then also write down who does what.

6. Measure and adjust

Pick two or three figures that match your goal and track them every month. If it is about enquiries, look at clicks to your website and enquiries from social media. Add a UTM code to your links for that. You can make one with Google's Campaign URL Builder (opens in a new tab). Google Analytics will then show you what comes in. If it is about awareness, look at reach and views.

Set a fixed moment each month to look back. Do more of what works. Let go of what does nothing. How to measure engagement is covered in our article on social media engagement.

Organic and paid in your strategy

You build organic reach with your own posts. You buy paid reach with ads. A good strategy names the role of each.

• Organic is for trust and for the bond with people who already know you.
• Paid is for reaching new people in your area or audience faster. Or for giving a promotion or vacancy an extra push.

A handy approach is to promote posts that already do well organically with a small budget. That way you already know the message lands. Put in your strategy how much you want to spend each month and when you stop or scale up.

An example on one page

This is what the strategy of an imaginary heating company might look like. It all fits on one sheet of A4.

• Goal. More enquiries for heat pumps from the local area. The secondary goal is finding new engineers.
• Audience. Homeowners in the area who want to make their homes more energy efficient.
• Platforms. Instagram and Facebook for homeowners, LinkedIn for recruitment.
• Themes. Projects with a before and after, tips for saving energy, the team at work and vacancies.
• Rhythm. Two posts a week and a few stories. Comments answered within a working day.
• Paid. A small local campaign with the posts that do well organically.
• Measuring. Every month, clicks to the website, enquiries from social media and job applications.

This is not a fixed recipe. It shows how little room a good strategy needs.

How often should you revisit your strategy?

Your content calendar changes every week. Your strategy doesn't. Look at your figures every month and improve the execution. Review the strategy itself roughly every quarter. Is the goal still right? Are your customers still on the same platforms? Are your themes working?

Platforms regularly change their features and the way they show posts. A fixed moment to look back stops you doing the same thing for years while it delivers less and less.

How we approach it

We build the strategy together with you, in plain language and on one page. We start with your goal and your customers. Then we choose the platforms and themes and make a plan that fits your time and budget. We create the content, or we help you and your team do it yourselves. Every month we show you what it delivers and adjust. Fail fast, improve fast. Read more about our Social media service.