How do you create a successful social networking strategy?

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Social networks can be a powerful lever for developing your business, provided you use them correctly. To do this, your social media strategy needs to be carefully thought through. Here are 5 best practices for creating an effective social media strategy tailored to your needs.

1. Social media strategy: define your objectives

There are different types of objectives. Depending on your activity, they can be diverse, varied, or even multiple. Generally speaking, two objectives stand out from the rest:

• Acquiring brand awareness
• Acquiring new customers

Yes, it is possible to increase your customer portfolio without using social networks (thanks in particular to outbound marketing). Similarly, good visibility on social networks is not always synonymous with increased sales. In this case, it's more a question of following what we call "vanity metrics", which will both nurture the presence of your existence in your target's mind, while proving your expertise. In short, it's quite rare for notoriety not to lead to lead generation, but it does happen.

When defining your objectives, pay attention to why you want to communicate through social networks. These are the fundamental pillars of your social media strategy.

2. Choose the right social networks

Creating content for social networks can quickly become an energy-consuming business. Don't fall into the trap of believing that publishing everywhere will produce better results. It's better to concentrate on 1 or even 2 social networks, and manage them properly, than to be on all of them, without being able to keep up with the pace of publication.

Once again, the choice of social networks depends on your target audience. And here, be careful. Just as LinkedIn isn't just used by BtoB companies, Instagram and TikTok aren't just favored by BtoC companies.

It's up to you to analyze where your target audience is. Thanks to the correct use of keywords in social network search engines, but also by analyzing your competitors' strategies, you should be able to understand which social networks are best suited to your target, in direct relation to your objectives.

3. Choosing social media content

Over the past two years, video has experienced a considerable boom, with 800 videos posted on YouTube alone by 2023. According to a Wyzowl study , 94% of French people visit the platform every day to consume content. Among the most popular video formats, short videos stand out for their appeal and rapid consumption. In this respect, TikTok stands out from the crowd, with an engagement rate 45% higher than Shorts and 26.8 times higher than Instagram Reels.

Although video is the format most appreciated by consumers, photos, infographics and carousels are not to be outdone. Particularly on Instagram and LinkedIn, where, after video, we find the carousel format in second place, followed by the photo format in third.

4. Organize yourself to be regular

Part of the key to a good social media strategy is your ability to keep it regular over time. There's no point in starting out at a steady pace, with more than 4 posts per week per network, if your in-house team isn't able to produce the required content. It's better to publish less, but still publish every week.

In your social media strategy, you need to take this organizational point into account, as well as establishing a publication plan from the outset, by analyzing the best-performing days and posting times for your target audience, by social network.

5. Programming your social media content

Since organization leads to performance, it's time to think about the organizational tools you plan to use. To program your publications, there are numerous software programs such as AgoraPulse or Swello. To take moderation of your accounts a step further, automation can be a good way of increasing your results, depending on the objectives you've set. Once again, there is a wide variety of suitable tools, such as PhantomBuster or Instaboss.

Finally, although I won't go into the frequent algorithmic changes of social networks, you need to take into account the speed at which they evolve. Whether it's a question of trends or user consumption, one month doesn't make another. Be flexible in the operational implementation of your strategy, and take the time to methodically analyze your post statistics at the end of each month.

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