Whether you are just starting out on social media, or already have company pages set up, having a social media strategy is a must. It is a simple plan that helps to outline all the components needed for an effective and successful social media presence.

So, what should you be analysing and developing as part of your social media strategy?

The end goal

Before setting out on your social media adventure, first determine what you are trying to achieve by having social media accounts, and how you want to measure achieving that goal. For example, is the goal of social media accounts to drive more visitors to the website, or is it to provide a communication channel to reach customers, and allow them to reach you.

Understanding what the goal is for having social media as part of the broader marketing strategy will shape which metrics to track and ensure social media accounts are working for you. Some common metrics include conversion of leads generated through social media, engagement with posts, or follower growth.

A deep dive into target markets

Before hitting the ‘sign up’ button to every single social media platform, first define who the target audience is and check what platforms they are using. This isn’t a one stop analysis. Over time new platforms could emerge, or the purpose of those platforms could evolve, as we have seen with the likes of LinkedIn and Facebook.

Understanding the evolution of platforms can determine whether these changes affect where your audience ‘is’. Additionally, as a business expands and adds new offerings, it will need to make sure that whoever these new offerings are targeting, are also being targeted via the social media strategy. For example, if your fund was initially only offered to institutional investors, but you have now made the decision to launch ETFs to target retail investors, how will you start reaching and communicating with that market?

Define your social media voice

Like with a brand voice, you also need to define a social media voice, which in most cases flows from the brand voice. For example, the voice can be humorous, informative, authoritarian or friendly. Identifying the tone of voice, helps to shape the language, style and expressions that are used in the content creation process for social media posts.

Having a defined voice also helps to provide direction for the marketing team with how the social media accounts interact with users of the platform. This includes responding to comments (regardless of if the comments are positive or negative), responding to other user’s posts where your company is tagged, or initiating conversations.

Build a content strategy and calendar

Content is king – especially for social media. Once the different social media platforms have been set up, make sure the content published is relevant to target audience and communicates key messages effectively.

Having an understanding of who the audience is and how they digest information on social media platforms will help to shape in what format content should be shared. It could be in the form of short form videos, graphical content or simply longer content pieces.

For example, if you publish a fund update, is it most effective posting a link to the fund update which sits on your website, or publishing part of the fund update in the caption of the post.

Be consistent and accountable with posting on social media. This can be managed by building and deploying a content calendar to help manage the frequency, timing, and type of content you plan on publishing. It is also a useful tool when planning out marketing campaigns that require social media as one of the communication channels, and also monitoring the effectiveness of the types of content that gets posted.

Which leads us onto the next important point for content, which is deciding what content should be posted on social media. Outline what content you plan to post about on social media, and determine whether all of this content is appropriate for all the social media channels (going back to the points about where your target audience is and how they digest information). By having key metrics defined, you can track whether the content being published is working or not. Where necessary, make adjustments by either experimenting with converting the content into a new format, or changing the frequency/timing of the post.

For example, posting a link to a fund update may be necessary for an institutional target market via LinkedIn, but for retail investors on Instagram who may be interested in an ETF, a graphical representation of the ETF’s performance might be more appropriate and relevant.

As with any strategy, a social media strategy needs to be flexible to adapt to any changes, and it needs to be monitored for its effectiveness. There is no point putting effort, time and money into social media and not being strategic about it. The marketing landscape continues to change, and being aware and monitoring your social media strategy will be the best approach to getting the results you want and making the most out of social media.

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