Social media marketing: What it is and how to build your strategy

Looking to fine-tune your social media marketing strategy? Now’s the perfect time to make it happen. 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.

That’s why we put together a comprehensive guide to creating a social media marketing plan from scratch. Whether you’re totally new to social or want to double-check your priorities in 2024, this guide has you covered. 

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing means using social media platforms like Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter) and Facebook to promote your brand and sell your product or service.

If your business comes out with a new item and you plan to promote the launch on social media, that’s social media marketing. If you interact with your customers via comments, that’s social media marketing. And if you create engaging content that showcases your brand’s values and story, that’s social media marketing too.

This form of marketing requires you to use social media management skills and tools. Just as you prepare other aspects of your marketing strategy, you need to have a plan for your social media marketing.

What is a social media marketing strategy?

A social media marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan that integrates your social media efforts with your team’s goals and the broader business objectives. This alignment ensures that your activities are not only optimized for performance but also deliver measurable results that contribute to your overall marketing success.

A well-defined social media marketing strategy also sets clear boundaries around your team’s time and expertise. Social media is a unique channel, and while nearly everyone uses it, this widespread usage often leads people to overestimate their expertise.

Every social media manager has faced requests to share content that isn’t formatted correctly or doesn’t align with the overarching campaign. Having a robust social media marketing strategy empowers you to confidently say “no” when necessary, ensuring that your efforts remain focused and effective.

What are the benefits of a social media strategy?

This question can feel like a bit of a no-brainer to marketers that live and breathe social. That said, being able to clearly articulate the advantages of a cohesive social media strategy is crucial for securing buy-in from other stakeholders. Here’s how a well-defined social media strategy benefits your brand and business:

It increases brand awareness and engagement

According to The Sprout Social Index™ 2023, more than half (53%) of consumers say their social media usage has increased over the last two years. Amid a fractured cultural landscape, social media has emerged to fill a seemingly endless need for content.

When brands commit to a cohesive social media marketing strategy, they develop the consistency needed to form a brand identity that cuts through the noise to resonate with a target audience. Case in point: Figo Pet Insurance.

In 2022, the Figo team committed to sharing four to five TikTok videos per week. Over time, they were able to pinpoint what messages appeal to their audience. These efforts led to audience growth and multiple viral videos.

As you refine your strategy over time, you too can craft more precise messaging that not only attracts more fans but also drives greater engagement.

It promotes brand trust

Social’s impact on brand trust is palpable, particularly for younger consumers.

According to a Q2 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey, 78% of consumers surveyed strongly/somewhat agree that—compared to a year ago—a brand’s social media presence has a larger impact on whether or not they trust that brand. That number goes up to 88% for Gen Z. What influences that trust the most? The content you post on social.

In the 2010s, a poorly designed website might deter consumers due to concerns about fraud. Today, the same principle applies to social media. If consumers get to your profiles and see irregular updates, inconsistent messaging or content that doesn’t align with where it’s been posted, it’s going to raise red flags and undermine trust.

It supports performance measurement

Your social media marketing strategy creates the infrastructure needed to prove the ROI of your efforts. Without one, you may be able to report on social media KPIs, but it'll be much harder to showcase how they align with strategic objectives.

For example, say you work with an automotive brand and one of your top business objectives is to increase market share with parents of young children. With that in mind, you can develop a strategic content pillar around this specific audience, and report on the performance of those posts over time.

With a social listening tool, you can even measure how your brand’’s share of voice stacks up against key competitors. This is a highly effective way to gauge your brand’s visibility and market share within your industry.

Learn more about social listening tools

It drives revenue

Our Q2 2024 Pulse Survey also found that social media is the top channel for product discovery, with 81% of consumers surveyed using the channel to shop around for their next purchase.

As social commerce adoption continues to skyrocket in the US and abroad, social media now supports a full-funnel experience. Even B2B brands are using social media to enhance lead generation and drive pipeline growth.

For example, when Simpli.fi, an advertising success platform, integrated employee advocacy into their social media strategy, the company realized $90,000 in earned media value in three months.

How to create a social media marketing strategy

Now that we’ve defined social media marketing and its benefits, let’s walk through how to create a plan.

Here’s our six-step process for developing a social media marketing strategy that drives results.

Step 1: Set goals and establish KPIs

Social media strategy planning starts with your goals. Whether you want to expand your team, build a larger following or a more active community, taking the time to define your social goals is the first step to reaching them.

The goals you set will inform the key performance indicators (KPIs) you track, and how much time and energy you’ll need to dedicate to your campaigns.

Example social media goals for 2024 and beyond

What really matters is that you set realistic social media goals. We recommend tackling smaller objectives that allow you to scale your social efforts in a way that’s both reasonable and affordable.

Below are some example social media marketing goals that businesses of all shapes and sizes can pursue.

Goal example 1: Increase brand awareness

Brand awareness means getting your name out there. Some 68% of consumers say the primary reason they follow a brand on social media is to stay informed about new products or services, according to The Sprout Social Index™.

Try to avoid solely publishing promotional messages and strike a good balance with authentic content that emphasizes your brand’s voice and story. The Sprout Social Index™ found that consumers don’t see enough authentic, non-promotional content from brands on social.

For example, in this TikTok video, Sani, a family-owned apparel company features a day in the life of the brand’s founders while visiting India for business.

If you want to increase brand awareness, here are the social media metrics you’ll want to focus on:

• Reach: Post reach is the number of unique users who saw your post. How much of your content actually reaches users’ feeds?
• Impressions: At the post level, impressions are how many times a post is displayed to someone. Impressions are a good indicator of how popular a piece of content is, and that people may be viewing a post multiple times.
• Hashtag performance: What were your most-used hashtags? Which hashtags were most associated with your brand? Having these answers can help shape the focus of your content going forward.
• Video views: This may come off as a vanity metric. But on certain channels, like TikTok, views count as impressions, and are therefore important to monitor.

Goal example 2: Generate leads and sales

Whether online, in-store or directly through your social profiles, followers don’t make purchases by accident. For example, are you alerting customers about new products and promos? Are you integrating your product catalog into your social profiles? Are you running exclusive deals for followers? Social media gives you an avenue to generate revenue.

Here are the metrics you’ll want to track if you’re focused on lead generation and sales:

• Conversions: A conversion is when someone takes a desired action, like purchasing something from your site or signing up for an upcoming event.
• Conversion rate: Conversion rate measures how well your social ad or campaign is convincing people to take a desired action.

Goal example 3: Grow your brand’s audience

Bringing new followers into the fold means finding ways to introduce your brand to folks who haven’t heard of you before. Growing your audience also means discovering conversations around your business and industry that matter the most.

Digging through your social channels is nearly impossible without monitoring or listening for specific keywords, phrases or hashtags. Having a pulse on these conversations helps you expand your core audience (and reach adjacent audiences) much faster.

Important audience growth metrics include:

• Follower growth: Your follower growth measures the net new followers you gained in a specific time period.
• Follower growth rate: The percentage that shows you how quickly your audience is actually growing—or slowing—within a certain time period.

Goal example 4: Provide holistic customer care

The Index shows over half of consumers believe the most memorable thing a brand can do on social media is respond to customers.

Although 76% of consumers value quick responses, providing quality customer care isn’t just responding rapidly. Consumer expectations have evolved. Some 70% of consumers expect brands to provide a holistic experience with personalized responses that fit their unique customer service needs.

This means companies need to experiment with messaging and content when approaching customer care. For example, does your team have a protocol for handling @-mentions and comments? Do you have templated responses to FAQs? Does your brand promote user-generated content and hashtags? Your customers can be your best cheerleaders, but only if you give them a reason to grab the megaphone.

If you want to improve your business’ approach to social customer care, here are the customer service metrics you need to track:

• Average first reply time: The time it takes for your team to send out the first reply to an inbound customer message within business hours.
• Reply or response rate: The rate that brands respond to messages or comments that they receive on a daily basis.
• Resolution rate: The percentage of customer inquiries that are fully resolved. This metric can reveal how equipped your entire company is to address customer inquiries.

Goal example 5: Drive traffic to your site to illustrate ROI of social efforts

The Sprout Social Index™ shows 46% of marketers plan to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of advertising spend to connect the value of social to business goals in 2024.

Simple enough. If you’re laser-focused on generating leads or traffic to your website, social media can make it happen. Whether through organic promotional posts or social ads, keeping an eye on the following metrics can help you better determine your ROI from social media:

• Website traffic: Monitoring website traffic can help you properly attribute increases to specific campaigns or viral posts.
• Social media referral traffic: This describes people who visit your website directly from social media pages and posts.

Any combination of these goals is fair game and can help you better understand which networks to tackle, too. When in doubt, keep your social media marketing strategy simple rather than complicating it with too many objectives that might distract you. Pick one or two and rally your team around them.

Bonus resource: A great deck can bridge the gap between raw social data and direct business value. Use this presentation template to pitch a compelling vision for your next campaign, initiative or annual strategy

Get the deck template

Step 2: Research your target audience and select your networks

Making assumptions is bad news for marketers. Both leaders and practitioners can disprove assumptions from the valuable insights social data provides. With the right tool, marketers can quickly research their audience. No formal market research or data science chops necessary.

What you need to know about your audience to influence your social media marketing strategy is already available. You just have to know where to look.

Remember: different platforms attract different audiences. Social media demographics and benchmark statistics are great for understanding where your target audience lives, but it's also important to understand the nuances of each social network so you can decide where your business needs to be.

For the sake of narrowing down where you should spend your time, below is a quick overview of each of the major social platforms:

X

Simple and straightforward, X is a solid starting point for most businesses. Requiring minimal setup and providing a place to go back and forth with followers directly, there's a reason why X remains one of the go-to platforms for customer service. If you’re trying to master the social media marketing basics of hashtags, tagging, brand voice and social media etiquette, look no further.

Facebook

Facebook is a must-have for brick-and-mortar businesses looking to target local customers. Allowing check-ins and reviews, it’s a prime place to grow a dedicated local following. Plus, they have an incredible chatbot functionality that can take your customer service strategy and marketing campaigns to the next level.

Like many social algorithm changes, the platform’s algorithm change in late 2022 posed a challenge to some businesses looking to grow their Pages and stay in touch with fans consistently. The earliest algorithm prioritized Likes, but today’s is much more sophisticated and focuses on showing users the most relevant, meaningful content based on inventory, signals, relevancy scoring and other factors. That said, Facebook’s ad platform is the gold standard for social media ads because it can help businesses cut through the noise and lessen the impact of algorithm changes.

Instagram

At its core, Instagram is a network centered around visual content. A major hub for brick-and-mortar businesses, e-commerce shops and influencers alike, the platform encourages brands to get creative. From eye-popping photos to clever captions, it’s all about finding unique ways to show off what you’re selling.

Threads

When Meta released Threads on July 5, 2023, the social network received over 100 million registrations less than a week after its launch, making it the most rapidly downloaded app ever. The launch of Threads sparked conversations about its role in the fediverse, or decentralized social media.

But, for now, Threads is a text-based social network that users can sign up for through their current Instagram account. Users can post on mobile, but Threads is also available on desktop. Threads are great for brands who already have Instagram accounts because the sign-up process is pretty seamless.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a network laser-focused on business trends and networking. LinkedIn is a goldmine, especially for anyone networking in the B2B space. Looking to get in touch with an influencer, marketing manager or CEO? Chances are you can find them here.

There are so many benefits of using LinkedIn marketing beyond networking, including content distribution and lead generation. We also have a guide for LinkedIn best practices so you can get full advantage of those benefits.

Pinterest

Pinterest marketing is insanely popular, especially among Gen Z and Millennials. Over 465 million people use this visual pinning platform every month to find inspiration and their next purchase. Pinterest is noted to be one of the best networks for social selling. Like Instagram, Pinterest thrives on imagery and inspirational content where products serve as the proverbial centerpiece.

TikTok

TikTok reached 1 billion users in September 2021 and remains one of the most popular apps in the world. Along with its viral trends and niche communities, the short-form video app is known for its hyper-personalized algorithm that keeps users scrolling for hours. TikTok marketing has changed the game for brands, allowing them to connect with customers in an entirely new way. 

YouTube

Although some might not regard YouTube as a traditional social network, the platform’s active and engaged community speaks for itself. Considering that video represents the top-performing type of content across nearly every social network, YouTube is a great place to house your videos if you’re already producing them.

Picking networks for your social media marketing strategy

There are more than 15 social media platforms your brand can use, but don’t spread yourself too thin. Rather than try to dominate them all, you should consider which platforms make the most sense based on your industry and target audience.

Do your homework on your existing social media audience and focus on networks where your core audience is already active. You need to do further analysis before you can determine what your real-world social customers actually look like.

That’s why many brands use a social media marketing dashboard that provides an overview of who’s following you and how they interact with you on each channel.

For example, Sprout’s analytics dashboard puts your audience demographics front and center. It highlights which social networks see the most activity, helping you ensure you spend your time on the right network.

You can also use analytics to determine if you should create a new social media account. With Sprout, you can view X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest data side-by-side in a customizable format that’s exportable by date range and profile.

There are plenty of other sources of valuable audience data to supplement your social media insights. This includes your Google and email analytics, your CRM, your customer service platform or even your best-selling products.

All of the above will ultimately influence everything from your marketing messaging to how you’ll approach customer service or social commerce.

Step 3: Create (and curate) timely & engaging social content

No surprises here. Your social media marketing strategy hinges on your content. At this point, you should have a pretty good idea of what to publish based on your goals, audience and brand identity. You probably feel confident in which networks to cover, too.

But what about your content strategy? Below are some tips, ideas and inspiration that can help.

Defining your content strategy

Coming up with a content strategy might seem like a lot of legwork, but it all really boils down to your goals.

• Looking to educate your audience in the B2B space? Publish blogs, news and opinions relevant to your industry.
• Trying to push e-commerce products? Post action shots of your products and photos of others showing off your swag.
• Focused on customer service? Tips, shout-outs and company updates are fair game.

Regardless of what you might post, coming up with a hashtag to couple with your content is a brilliant branding move.

Hashtags can be used to get your attention and encourage people to share their photos interacting with your brand.

Find your brand voice

One of the best ways to stand out on social media is to define your distinct brand voice. Chances are you’ve seen a post from a particular brand that just feels like, well, theirs.

The quippy, casual tone that makes Discord’s X presence beloved by casual users and moderators alike is a great example.

Of course, not every company will benefit from the same sort of tone. The key is to present yourself as a human rather than a robot. Adopt a consistent brand voice and style that’s appropriate for your business.

Bake timeliness into your strategy

Timeliness is arguably more important than ever for marketers. Not only are you expected to put out fresh content regularly, but also to always be “on” for your followers. But you can’t always expect customers to operate on your clock. And timeliness is a tall order when you’re strapped for resources or are part of a small team.

As evidenced by our best times to post on social, brands have a lot of ground to cover in terms of frequency and how much content to push. It’s important to pay attention to the optimal times for engagement so you can automate the most tedious aspects of your social presence without having to worry about posting in real time.

But, quick question: When is your brand available to engage and interact with customers?

You might see some recommended times to post late in the evening, for example. But if your team isn’t there to communicate, what’s the point of posting at the “preferred” time?

When you’re able to do so, ensure your social media or community managers are available and ready to answer any product questions or concerns when you post. Take time to review the best times to post on social media, but remember that it’s just as critical to engage after posting

You should also consider taking advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and automation so you can serve and engage with customers when your team is offline, which leads us to our next point.

Take advantage of short-form video

Thanks to the rise of TikTok and Instagram Reels, social video is booming. Short-form productions continue to dominate the social space across all platforms due to their high engagement rate.

Sprout Social’s 2022 Index data shows that consumers find short-form videos 2.5x more engaging than long-form ones. Some 66% of consumers report paying the most attention to short-form content as well.

Thanks to advancements in DIY and remote video production, you don’t need massive budgets to be successful. All you need is a laptop or smartphone and a few tricks of the trade, like video length best practices and editing tools.

Share posts that show off your brand’s uniqueness and human side

Both personal and personable content should be a cornerstone of your social media marketing strategy. Don’t be afraid to remind followers of the humans behind your posts. Remember that over a third of consumers are looking for authentic, original content from brands.

For example, Zoom has excellent original content on their Instagram and TikTok accounts, like this Reel that explores the different signs in the workplace:

Step 4: Collaborate with influencers

If you haven’t already, it’s time to tap into the power of influencer marketing. Social partnerships are very effective when executed correctly: they can help drive traffic to your website, produce compelling content and inspire purchase decisions.

But consumers care about creators’ qualifications, so choose wisely. The two most important qualifications of content creators working with brands is their experience with the product/service and their authenticity.

Identify creators who align with your brand and consider how they can help you craft stand-out content for your audience.

What consumers want from influencer-brand collaborations

According to the 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, consumers overall look to engage with influencers who align with their personal values (53%) and seem authentic (47%), even when posting sponsored content and taking part in brand campaigns.

Across ages and genders, honest and unbiased content stops audiences mid-scroll, while aspirational content is least likely to catch their attention.

However, the report also found that authenticity is losing its appeal among younger generations. While trust in influencers remains strong—and is even growing among younger consumers—only 35% of Gen Z value authenticity, compared to nearly half of Millennials, Gen X‌ and Baby Boomers.

This indicates that younger generations are more aware of the influencer-brand relationship and how it influences their buying decisions, but they’re comfortable with it. Instead, they prioritize other indicators of trustworthiness, such as follower count, posting frequency‌ and community loyalty.

Step 5: Bring other departments into the mix

Social media teams have a unique advantage when it comes to understanding customer sentiment. You’re the eyes and ears for your brand online. Those insights can do more than just inform marketing strategy.

They can transform your business. Stand-out social media teams will approach cross-department collaboration with enthusiasm and intention.

Which departments can benefit from social data?

The short answer? All of them. Index data shows 76% of social marketers say their team’s insights inform other departments.

However, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Instead, start where you think you can make the most impact. Here are a few ideas to jumpstart your strategy.

Human Resources

Collaborating with human resources on social-first employer brand initiatives can do more than just fill open roles quickly. It can attract stronger, more qualified candidates as well. Many companies have embraced social recruiting strategies, such as publishing creative “we’re hiring” posts on LinkedIn to attract top talent.

Sales

Data from The 2023 Sprout Social Index™ notes marketers plan to track conversations and sales directly resulting from social efforts in 2024 to better connect the value of social to business goals. Sharing social insights with your sales organization can empower reps to work smarter in the context of increasingly digital customer journeys. Consider learning more about social selling to leverage the power of online networks even further.

Product and merchandising

You’ve probably received quite a few feature or product requests while managing your brand’s social inbox.

With a social media management tool, you can distill those messages into actionable insights for your product or merchandising teams. These insights can complement existing roadmap research, creating a customer-focused plan that delights.

Customer care

Monitoring customer service metrics like average reply time, average wait time and response volume can help your social customer care team identify what is working well and spot opportunities for improvement. Marketers are using social media customer service software to elevate their support strategies and get the most out of their tech stack.

Step 6: Evaluate and improve your social media strategy

By now you should have a big-picture understanding of your social media strategy. However, it’s important to adapt your strategy throughout the year.

Without continuously analyzing your efforts, you’ll never know how one campaign did over another. Having a bird’s eye view of your social media activity helps put things into perspective. This means looking at your top-performing content and adjusting your campaigns when your content stalls.

There’s no denying that a lot of social media is a matter of trial-and-error. Monitoring the metrics behind your campaigns in real time allows you to make small tweaks to your social media marketing strategy rather than sweeping, time-consuming changes.

Doing social media marketing right starts by being diligent about your data. You can be reactive in the short term to get the most out of your running campaigns, and then proactively use these takeaways to inform your next strategy overhaul.

To guarantee that you get in front of as many customers as possible, monitoring your growth is a major must-do. With Sprout, social reports can clue you in on everything from your top-performing content to how engaged your audience is. These reports are crucial for accountability and guaranteeing your numbers continue to tick upward.

 Reporting on data is also important for the sake of sharing valuable insights from social with your coworkers and colleagues. Remember that 60% of organizations use social data daily—be one of the brands that embrace it.

Sharing this information in regular reports not only holds you accountable for your efforts but also highlights the impact and bottom-line results your social strategy produces.

Based on your data, you can better assess whether your KPIs truly ladder up to your overarching company goals or whether they need to change. 

And with that, we wrap up your social media strategy guide for 2024 and beyond!

Is your social media marketing strategy future proof?

This guide highlights plenty of moving pieces to maintain a modern social presence. That said, putting together yours doesn’t have to be a drag.

If you set actionable goals and address each of the steps above, you’ll already be way ahead of the curve when it comes to your social media marketing strategy.

And if you try out some of the Sprout Social features we shared in this article, sign up for a 30-day trial today.