Craft a winning social media strategy + FREE TEMPLATE

If you want to plan out a successful social media campaign but aren't quite sure where to start, don't worry! This blog has you covered. We break down the five steps needed to create a solid social media strategy to help you launch your winning campaign and glean results. Those steps are:

1. Understand the social media landscape
2. Set clear objectives and goals
3. Understand your target audience
4. Craft engaging content for that audience
5. Monitor, analyze, and adapt your strategy

Let's get started!

Step 1: Understand the social media landscape

When preparing a social media campaign, you must start with a broad view of your subject matter on both the platforms you're reviewing and the trends you analyze on those platforms. This comprehensive view provides deep awareness and informs you enough to prevent messaging blunders and place content on the correct platforms. Although you can achieve some of this analysis with social monitoring tools, a social listening tool, like Infegy Atlas or Infegy Starscape, is required for a full scope. 

Related: Learn more about the differences between social listening and social monitoring in this blog.

Step 2: Set clear objectives and goals

Understanding why you want to engage with an audience on social media is essential. Is your intention to build brand awareness or drive engagement? Or maybe you want to level up a promotional tactic to increase revenue. Each of these has different KPIs to review when measuring the success of your efforts, so isolating exactly what you want out of your campaign helps guide those decisions and efforts.

Luckily for us, there is a tried-and-true method that marketers have already identified to help you identify your goals—the SMART framework.

• Specific - Define precisely what you want your goal to be. While it helps to have one primary goal, it is sometimes acceptable to have multiple secondary goals that feed into your primary goal.
• Measurable - There should be a KPI that you can measure and track as you pursue your goal to ensure success.
• Achievable - The goal has to be something realistic - it should not be to go viral. This is difficult to achieve and not realistic for all campaigns. Examples could be a 20% increase in post engagement or a 5% increase in website traffic. 
• Relevant - Don’t make the goal to increase conversion in another channel or outside of your scope. 
• Time-bound - Give yourself some time, but hold yourself accountable with reasonable amounts of time. Depending on the scale of your campaign, this could be weeks, months, or even quarters.

Step 3: Understand your target audience

We already know it's important to put content on platforms where your target audience is to ensure proper engagement or success based on your goals. For example, in 2022, the second season of "Emily In Paris" was set to launch, so Duolingo latched on to this release and created a social media campaign offering a free service membership to anyone named Emily. The campaign drew 2 million organic views, and over 7,000 Emilys signed up for the service.

We don't know Duolingo's exact strategy for this campaign, but here are some interesting points we found that Duolingo could have implemented when approaching it.

Audience identification:

^{Figure 1 - Source bio analysis of “Emily in Paris” and related audiences; Dec 2023 - March 2024 (Infegy Atlas Data).}

1. Fans of the show: Naturally, the campaign targeted fans of "Emily in Paris," assuming their interest in French culture, language, and the show's setting.
2. Language learners: Individuals with an interest in learning French or improving their language skills, possibly inspired by the show or motivated by the desire to travel to France.
3. Travel enthusiasts: Those who are interested in travel, particularly to Paris or France, and are likely to be engaged by content related to the city's culture and lifestyle.
4. Young adults: Given the show's demographic, the campaign likely focused on young adults, particularly women, who could relate to Emily's experiences, aspirations, and challenges.

Step 4: Craft engaging content for that audience

Although all of these steps are important, creating relevant and helpful content is probably the most crucial step in creating an effective social media campaign. Engaging with the right audience in the right ways ensures your content will get the desirable views. Let's return to our "Emily in Paris" example now that we have our audience identified. Below are some tactics to consider when building this content.

• Leveraging current pop culture: Duolingo knew the first season of Emily in Paris was successful and that the interested audience was a good target. Linking their social media campaign to this popular show was an effective partnership. The fan base already existed and was engaged already. Figure 1 shows how much synergy these two brands could have.
• Incentivizing participation: Offering a promotion is a way to engage an audience. Traditionally, a lower price point will increase demand. Basic economics teaches this. The Duolingo deal was also a creative way of incentivizing. Choosing those named Emily made it original and more likely to increase engagement. It also drew a direct line from Duolingo to the show. Creating original promotions is one way to increase engagement in the campaign.
• Celebrity/Influencer endorsement: Using influencers in a social media campaign is a common way to get increased engagement in a campaign. In the Duolingo campaign, they used Lily Collins, aka Emily from “Emily in Paris,” to increase the volume and engagement in the campaign. This influencer/celebrity was perfect for their target audience and group. We can see that those discussing Emily in Paris are also discussing Lily Collins in Figure 2.

^{Figure 2 - Entity table related to “Emily in Paris” (January 2020 through March 2024); Infegy data.}

• Social media techniques: All social media campaigns should contain and leverage hashtags. It is an easy way to identify the number of times a campaign is referenced and, therefore engaged with.
• Type of content: When building a social media campaign strategy, make sure that you consider how you will deliver your message. You can build text (blog, Twitter/X, Reddit), visual static image (Instagram, Twitter/X, Pinterest, Facebook), short-form video (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok), and long-form video (Youtube). What content you make must fit the platform your particular audience is engaged in. For example, Instagram and Twitter/X images or short-form videos would be the best form to move our content.
• User engagement: Consider how you would like your users to engage in your campaign. It should relate back to the objective you set forth in step one. Here, it’s important to create captivating messaging and encourage either sign-ups, likes, or shares. All will elevate your campaign in the different algorithms available on the different platforms.

Additionally, something to keep in mind, you can target the wrong audience or go viral for the wrong reasons. Completing a thorough audience analysis and following the steps above closely and honestly helps avoid those types of issues.

Step 5: Monitor, analyze, and adapt your strategy

You can analyze how well your campaign strategy is performing in four buckets: brand awareness, engagement, conversion, and audience growth. Below are some illustrations to describe each.

1. Brand awareness: Track metrics such as reach, impressions, and social media mentions to gauge how widely your campaign is seen and talked about.

^{Figure 3 - Post volume pertaining to Duolingo (October 2020 through March 2024); Infegy data.}

2. Engagement: Measure likes, comments, shares, and engagement rates to understand how interactively your audience is responding to your campaign content.

^{Figure 4 - Engagements pertaining to Duolingo (October 2020 through March 2024); Infegy data.}

3. Conversion: For campaigns aiming at sign-ups or website visits, use tracking URLs and monitor click-through rates (CTRs), conversion rates, and the number of new sign-ups or specific actions taken on your website.

4. Audience growth: Keep an eye on the growth rate of your followers or subscribers during the campaign period.

As you’re analyzing your campaign, you’ll glean insights and adapt the campaign based on what you find. Examples of this adaptation include content optimization, audience engagement, and A/B testing.

1. Content optimization: If certain types of posts (e.g., video vs. image posts) or themes (e.g., humorous vs. informative) are performing better, adjust your content strategy accordingly.
2. Audience engagement: If engagement is high at certain times of day or days of the week, consider adjusting your posting schedule to these peak times.
3. A/B testing: Experiment with different call-to-actions, post formats, or landing pages to see what drives higher conversion rates, and use this information to refine your approach.

Takeaways for your brand

Harnessing the power of social listening tools is pivotal for deciphering the dynamic social media landscape, providing businesses with invaluable insights into emerging trends and audience behaviors. Employing the SMART framework facilitates the establishment of precise objectives and goals, steering campaign strategies towards quantifiable success metrics. Through thorough analysis of social listening data, businesses can tailor their content strategies to resonate deeply with their target audience, fostering heightened engagement and brand affinity. To learn more about social listening and how it can help guide your social media strategy, schedule a customized demo today!