Social Media Content Strategy for a Small Business: How to Create One in 5 Steps

Find out effective ways to create your social media content strategy.

Social media is a handy tool for growth, especially for small businesses. It helps you reach a wider audience, establish your brand, and allows you to connect with your consumers — all without having to break the bank. If you’re struggling to find the time to plan and manage your social media, or if you’re not sure where to start — don’t worry. This article will show you how to create a successful social media content strategy in five simple steps. Before we get to that, let’s start with the basics: What actually is social media content strategy?

What is a Social Media Content Strategy?

Put, a social media strategy outlines everything you want to achieve from social media.

It usually includes the following: 

  • The type of content you’ll post
  • The platforms you’ll use
  • Your social media goals and objectives
  • Your target audience
  • The roles and responsibilities of your team

Having a strategy in place makes sure that your social media content has a purpose. Everything you post contributes toward a larger goal, from increased exposure to more backlinks, all of which help your business succeed. 

How to Create a Social Media Content Strategy for a Small Business in 5 Steps 

Now, let’s take a look at five simple steps you can follow to create your own social media strategy. Completing these steps will improve your white label social media dashboard and lead you to success.

1. Set your Goals 

Goals are the most important element of a social media strategy.

Think about it. Without professional goals in place, how will you know whether your social media efforts have been successful? 

So make sure you identify what your goals are going to be and how you’ll measure them. 

Here are some of the most popular goals for social marketers to give you some inspiration. 

You’ll also want to make sure that your goals are SMART. 

If you’re not familiar with SMART goals, it’s a framework to create clear and realistic goals. 

The SMART acronym stands for:

  • Specific: If they’re vague, they’re open to interpretation — which could lead to a whole mess of problems. 
  • Measurable: Goals need to have success measurements in place. These will tell you when you’ve reached your goal.
  • Achievable: Your goals must be achievable. Sure, they can be bold and challenging. But if they’re not realistic, you’ll never reach them. 
  • Relevant: SMART goals always feed into the bigger picture. In other words, your social media goals need to align with the company’s objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs).
  • Timely: Every goal needs a deadline. Without it, how will you know when the goal is complete? 

Using SMART goals will give your social media strategy the best chance for success. The goals will be clear, achievable, and in line with overall company objectives. 

2. Define your Brand Voice

When you start posting on social media, people will form an opinion about your brand. There’s no way around it. 

That’s why it’s so important to define your brand voice as part of your social strategy. 

The content you publish must align with your brand voice. 

That’s true, whether it’s the images you use, the captions you post, or the content you share. Everything influences your brand perception, so you need to think carefully about what you want your brand perception to be. 

Let’s look at an example of how to use social media to define your brand voice. 

Earlybird helps families invest in their children’s future. Granted, it’s not the most exciting topic. But using its brand voice, Earlybird has created light-hearted, engaging, and fun content.

It posts about monetary gifts for children through a combination of short videos and funny posts. Yes, there are a few serious posts about the service, but on the whole, the brand voice for Earlybird is lighthearted and engaging. 

3. Choose the Right Social Media Channels 

There are a lot of social media channels out there to choose from. So much so that it can feel pretty overwhelming trying to figure out how to use them. 

But the good news is, you don’t have to. You need to pick the channels that resonate with your audience. After all, there’s no point using platforms that your audience isn’t interested in, right? 

And this is even more important as a small business. 

You don’t have the time or resources to use every social media platform. Instead, you need to find the ones that work for your business and focus on using them to their full advantage. 

Take PandaDoc, for example. This document workflow platform uses LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. It has found the platforms that work for the business and is sticking to it. 

Or take a look at SwagBucks, an online coupon provider. It has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And that’s it. 

By honing several channels, these businesses can focus their social content strategy on those specific platforms. 

If you’re not sure how to choose the right platforms for your business, consider how other businesses have chosen their social channels. 

4. Hire the Right People 

As a small business, we know that you might not have the resources to hire a social media manager

But we can’t stress how important it is to have your accounts managed by someone who knows what they’re doing. 

Sure, you can try to manage your accounts and learn on the job. 

But to make the most out of your social strategy, you need to hire the right people, especially through PEO companies. This will help you get the best results possible. 

It might seem like a lot of hassle, but it’ll be worth it. 

So how can you find the right people? 

Spend some time interviewing and reviewing applications until you find the right fit. It would be best if you had someone experienced with social media management and a great fit for your company culture. 

If you’re not able to hire someone, consider using a freelancer or external agency. The same process applies — you need to find a person or company with the right experience and align with your company culture. 

5. Continually Track and Measure Progress 

The work isn’t over when your strategy goes live, and your social channels are up and running. 

You need to track and measure your social media activity continually. 

Why?

For two reasons: 

  1. To make sure things are running on track: You’ve got your SMART goals in place, so you need to make sure you’re on track to reach them. If things are falling behind, you can make changes before it’s too late. 
  2. To make improvements: Reviewing progress is a great way to identify improvements. By measuring the success of your strategy, you can see what went well and what didn’t go as planned. This gives you the chance to learn from your mistakes and make changes from now on. 

So make sure you keep on top of how your social media is performing. 

If you hire someone else to manage the accounts, meet with them regularly to check on progress and keep yourself up to speed. 

Create a Social Media Strategy for Success

So there you have it. You now know what a social media content strategy is, along with five of the best practices for creating your own. 

As a small business, you need to have a social media strategy. There are 4.48 billion social media users around the world. So if you’re not making the most of your social channels, you’re missing a lot of opportunities. 

Hopefully, this article has given you the foundation you need to get your social media strategy up and to run. And remember: a social media strategy gives your content purpose. It aligns your social media activity with overall business goals, helping your company grow and succeed.

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