The Stages of Social Media Strategy

One of the challenges I’ve faced in social media has been explaining the strategy process and determining where business partners and team members would fit into the strategy. I ended up drawing a graphic to visually explain to executives the process and make my case of where I needed assistance. Here’s the simple graphic I use and the breakdown to explain the stages.

Creative and Campaigns

Planning projects and overall execution that integrates other stages in the process.

Content

Adding content includes aggregating post requests and scheduling according to posting cadence or campaign, as well as copywriting and editing for engagement. Content management includes scheduling the content during event, campaign or heavy traffic times.

Monitoring & Listening

Monitoring is reactive community management, while listening is preventive and proactive. This is where social CRM comes into place, where they can see and respond to issues in a timely manner on social channels. Listening includes web searches and using tools to discover trends to help prevent public relation issues, or engage with the audience with real-time content.

Reporting

Reporting is aggregating the numbers and performance of campaigns to verify milestones and goals.

Analytics

Evaluating the reporting and adjusting plans or strategy based on performance of campaigns.

 

I am a strong support of the campaign or project debrief. This helps to see what worked and what didn’t and adjust suggestions from past experiences. Did I miss a step? Let me know in the comments.