The Pandemic changed the way a lot of companies were able to do business during 2020. Some companies did suspiciously well, while other companies struggled to keep their masks on, hands clean, and bank accounts out of the red. This has so many asking, what is the new secret to success in this digital world where consumers are more difficult to convert and keep than ever?

A study done by HubSpot revealed that approximately 86% of people surveyed mute the TV, change the channel or skip ads, and that 75% of people surveyed no longer accept advertisements as truth. These trends represent an important shift in where and how people are now exposed to advertising.

With the ever-changing landscape of business practices and consumer attention being more and more difficult to attain and maintain, social media strategy is the elephant in the room that is either signing checks or sending brands on a slow, painful trip to the morgue. Customers want honesty from brands, actually, they are demanding it. These same customers also expect transparency, require immediate attention at all times of the day, and prefer that all of this is done in an environmentally friendly AND sustainable way. So how can brands create a social media strategy that will support successful social media campaigns that will propel them into greatness?

What is Social Media Strategy?

Before crafting a social campaign that you just know will go viral, save the world, and make your brand one that future marketing professionals reference as their touchstone, a brand has to fully understand how to form a social media strategy and what that even means for them.

Social media strategies encompass everything and anything a brand is planning to do, marketing-wise, through social media channels that will help it reach strategic goals with specific audiences in mind. A thorough social strategy should not only detail the brand’s wants and needs, but it should also list specific ways the brand intends to reach these goals. Specifics and detail are key components of planning and building a social strategy because the more detailed your plan is, the more effective and efficient the outcome will be. Think specifics regarding audience, designated platforms, differentiated goals for each individual platform, and how your brand will consistently measure successes and failures. For a helpful step-by-step (and super detailed) guide on how to create a social media strategy, click here!

Strategies should include platform diversity based on where your users spend the most of their time. Brands should also consider creating and implementing targeted live-streaming and strategic video content to meet audience demand, adhere to platform specific best practices, and to keep up with the competition-who is undoubtedly live-streaming at this very moment. Videos and live-streams are a great way to authentically connect with audiences from anywhere in the world all at one time.

According to Oberlo’s social strategy trend report, a brand’s 2021 social media strategy should focus heavily on the social commerce aspect of their brand, what authenticity looks and sounds like for their brand, messaging apps to stay in touch with their audience, and additional was to provide customer service through social media platforms. Creating a strategy that incorporates these trends in an audience specific and industry related way, are nonnegotiable moves for brands who want to meet the demand of their customers and expand their reach.

Key Move: Work as a team to develop a cohesive social media strategy that is not only attainable but also sustainable for your brand.

What is a Social Media Campaign

Once a brand knows who they want to target, which platforms will best serve their audience, and how they ultimately hope to benefit from their social media strategy, it’s time to determine how to kickstart their social media impact with a bad-to-the-bone social media campaign. Social media campaigns get people-the right people-talking about your message, spreading the word on your brand, and creating social currency that is accepted by all major businesses, consumers, oh, and also by Starbucks connoisseurs.

“A social media campaign is a series of coordinated activities aimed at achieving a specific goal over a set period of time, with outcomes that can be tracked and measured.” (Cyca, 2020) But wait, that sounds exactly like what a social media strategy is! You’d be right, except for one crucial difference between the two- the timeframe. A social media campaign typically has an expiration date on it and should pack a huge immediate punch resulting in a TKO of whatever the brand is trying to sell, push, or do.

Think about the images above when creating a social media campaign and considering the needs of your brand. A successful social campaign should impact a brand’s audience in some, or all, of the following ways:

-By changing the way the audience thinks about something

-By getting the audience to perform a specific action (like donating, for example)

-By making and audience change the way they have previously done something.

The Risk You Take When You Fail to Plan

Planning is paramount in order to execute a proper social media campaign. If a brand fails to thoroughly articulate the how, what, and why of their social media strategy, this could result in major audience backlash, irreparable damage to the brand’s reputation, and costly problems that snowball.

Planning how to spread your message and testing this strategy through platform analytics, will help brands refrain from sharing content that is insensitive, socially ignorant, or totally misses the mark. Once content is released, no amount of back peddling, deleting, or apologizing can save a brand from audience backlash, and major hits to their digital reputation. Depending on the industry, this kind of mistake could mean money lost for shareholders, stakeholders and owners, and could potentially do enough damage to shut a brand down completely.

Companies have tried to come back from social blunders in the past where they’ve shared things they didn’t mean to, or created content that hit on levels they hadn’t yet considered (this is what the planning, brainstorming, and analytics are great for). Not only is it time consuming to try and fix mistakes that can’t be put back into the bottle, but it can end up costing a lot of money to try and piece back together the broken mirror and regain audience trust.

So remember, when your brand feels ready to jump into the social media ocean, or perhaps upgrade from a lifeboat to a charter boat, work as a team to first form a sustainable social media strategy, and then work to create and perfect a social media campaign that will have your audience missing you when its gone and desperate for more content in the future.

References:

Cyca, M. C. (2020). 7 of the Best Social Media Campaigns (And What You Can Learn From Them). HootSuite.Com. https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-campaign-strategy/

Derakhshan, A. D. (2020). How Brands Can Develop a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy in 2021. Entrepreneur.Com. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/361479

HubSpot. (2019). 71% More Likely to Purchase Based on Social Media Referrals [Infographic]. HubSpot.Com. https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30239/71-more-likely-to-purchase-based-on-social-media-referrals-infographic.aspx

Newberry, & LePage. (2021). How to Create a Social Media Strategy in 8 Easy Steps. Hootsuite.Com. https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-create-a-social-media-marketing-plan/

Walker-Ford, M. W. F. (2020). 10 Social Media Trends to Guide Your Online Strategy in 2021. SocialMediaToday.Com. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/10-social-media-trends-to-guide-your-online-strategy-in-2021-infographic/591677/