How to Develop an SMM Strategy?

Creating an SMM strategy is no longer about posting for the sake of posting; it's about strategic planning, patterns, and specific objectives. How do you account for all the nuances and ensure nothing is overlooked? The CIMA team has compiled a 10-block algorithm to help you!

Client Brief

Everything starts with a conversation. The development of any strategy begins by extensively communicating with the client to understand their needs and what they expect from social media marketing (SMM).

What should be included in the brief?

• Brand description: brand platform, brand book.
• Detailed information about the products (SKU): from technical specifications to marketing information.
• Target audience portrait: insights, hypotheses, analytics.
• Objectives: why the brand initially needs to launch social networks.
• Current social media presence: what they are satisfied with and what they dislike.
• Expectations from the new SMM strategy: what the client wants to change and achieve.

Ideally, you have a form with these questions that the client fills out. You then review it, identify what’s missing, and ask additional questions. This is the foundation of the entire strategy: do not skimp on this part. The more information you have about the client and the product, the more accurately your strategy will meet the client's expectations and solve their issues.

Goal Setting

The more specific the goal, the more likely that SMM will genuinely help achieve results. Therefore, your goal should be SMART:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Often, clients want everything immediately: a million subscribers, hundreds of comments, and all from potential customers. A common issue is wanting to publish their press release or focusing on outdated metrics like likes and followers.

Why is increasing the community size by 100,000 in six months a bad goal? It's specific and measurable, yes, but irrelevant. You can attract any number of bots or people not from your target audience (TA), and technically meet the goal. But this won't benefit the brand.

Examples of good goals:

• Increase brand awareness.
• Drive traffic to the website.
• Increase engagement in the account.
• Build an active community around the business.
• Monitor reputation and make adjustments.

Once you have defined the goal, quantify it. For instance, if you need more comments, aim to double the ERR relative to the current rate over six months. Or, if you want to increase brand recognition, analyze the capacity of the TA and plan an outreach campaign to a percentage of this number with a certain frequency.

Task Setting

The next step is to set tasks that help achieve the goal. For example, if you want more comments, add more discussion-provoking posts to your content plans, use game mechanics, and appropriate interactions.

Before setting a task, ask yourself, "What will this lead to?" This is a good question for all subsequent blocks—constantly ask yourself if what you're doing genuinely helps achieve the set goal.

Big Idea

The big idea is the overarching concept that the brand tries to communicate to the audience not only through its posts but also through its products. It’s the essence of all broadcasted content in a few words, the verbal concentrate of the entire strategy. An example is Snickers with their "You're not you when you're hungry." A big idea might already exist for the brand and be expressed in their slogan, but you can propose a new and vivid one that complements the existing idea for the duration of your collaboration. What does a big idea offer?

• Creates an emotional connection with the audience.
• Crosses cultural boundaries, understandable to the entire TA.
• Is universal and can be communicated across all media platforms.

Target Audience and Tone of Voice

If the SMM strategist does not understand the brand's target audience, a significant portion of the content will miss the mark. Each post and each image should serve not only the client's objectives but also the interests of the TA. The clearer the portrait of the TA, the easier it is to work with them.

What you need to know about the audience:

• Who are they—your people? (Socio-demographic characteristics: age, gender, salary, cities of residence).
• What problems does the brand or product solve for these people: earn money, eat deliciously, eliminate boredom?
• What type of content do they prefer: entertainment, educational, etc.?
• How do they consume content: do they like videos, stories, long reads?
• What platforms do they prefer: Facebook, Instagram, or maybe TikTok?
• Why does the audience need your content: to maintain health, keep up with news, laugh and relax?

The list of questions is, of course, not exhaustive: the more detailed the description, the better. It's also good to know the TA's insights about the product to understand how people use the product, what emotions it evokes, what its shortcomings are, etc. This is important to communicate with the audience

in their language.

By the way, about that: a separate place in the strategy is occupied by Tone of Voice—the way the brand communicates with clients. ToV should be consistent in everything: both on banners and on social network pages. It should work for you and facilitate communication with the audience. Remember, ToV is the opposite of professional jargon. You must be close and understandable to your TA.

Analytics

Without quality analytics, there's a risk of creating beautiful content that doesn't work. Analytics will help understand what sets the brand apart from others, whether you know the trends and new formats popular in the niche. The conclusions you draw at this stage are critically important for creating a content strategy. Here are two main areas of work:

What are competitors doing?

Competitive analysis is essential. Look at the best in the market, see what colleagues abroad are doing. Based on 5-8 competitors, compile a comparative table: platforms, number of posts, topics, interesting finds, ER/ERR. The same needs to be done with local brands.

SWOT

Be honest: analyze all weaknesses, identify strengths. In the future, you will work with this material; you need to understand well what works and what doesn’t. It’s good to refer to SWOT when the brand identity is unclear.

Content Strategy and UGC

This is a voluminous block: what are we talking about with the audience, how often, and in what formats. There is no universal answer to the question "How much content should there be?": you need to look at the activity of the audience, whether KPIs are being met or missed with such posting. Content plans with a strict fixed rubricator are a bit outdated, but there are many approximate schemes for distributing content of different types: how much should be educational, entertainment posts, etc. Here are some examples. What needs to be mentioned in the content strategy?

• Social networks and posting volume: write where you will post posts and in what quantities;
• Visual identity: explain why you are proposing such colors, graphic elements, and fonts, how the logo will be used. Show visually how the design will support brand values;
• Communication strategy: tell about the tone you will use to communicate with the TA, how you plan to engage them and create a community around the brand;
• Examples of publications: add 2-3 posts with statics, 1—with animation. It is important to show the variety of mechanics, pay special attention to Stories and the overall look of the feed;
• UGC: how we will motivate people to generate content themselves. The more user-generated content, the more loyal the attitude towards the brand. But there must also be its own concept and its own framework;
• Moderation: how we will respond to comments and how often. According to a Sprout study, the optimal time to respond to a comment is 4 hours. But in practice, it's all 10 hours by which the TA has already lost interest. Explain to the client how you plan to solve this problem.
  Remember: you create content not for yourself and not for the client, but for the target audience. Therefore, do not mix your preferences with what really appeals to people who will subscribe to the brand's social networks.

Promotion

Here we show the client what future advertising on social networks might look like, explain why we use some tools and ignore others. Here are 5 main aspects that need to be thought out in advance:

• Advertising campaign ecosystem. This is a visual scheme that makes it clear to the client what each block of work is responsible for, what are the optional and main directions in promotion. It's easiest to design the advertising campaign ecosystem as an infographic.
• Targeting. We explain how much we spend on each social network. Here it would be good to note that advertising may not shoot from the first time, tests of creatives and selection of the most relevant audience are needed. Separately explain the goals of each format: ads with a button will raise involvement, carousels will lead to the store, etc.;
• Seeding. Show an example of creative and explain the principle by which you will select sites for seeding. It's best to give several links to communities for clarity;
• Opinion leaders. You need not only a list of bloggers who are potentially willing to cooperate, but also examples of formats: photos, videos, stories, live broadcasts. You can take screenshots from the accounts of these same bloggers if they have already posted advertising in the required format;
• Special projects. These can be collaborations, large-scale contests, simultaneous launches at several bloggers. Here you need specifics: clearly write out the mechanics, explain the uniqueness of your offer. Show in approximate figures how your creative plan will help get closer to the goal set at the very beginning.
  KPI, budgets, and timing

If KPIs, timing, and budgets are in harmony, working on the project will be easy and pleasant. KPI is primarily about dynamics;

indicators should track real progress. Remember: KPIs should match your goals! Therefore, the set of metrics for different brands can and should differ. At the same time, you will have to accept that likes and subscribers will still not disappear from the reports, although they already say little. Here are some more relevant metrics:

• Reach. The number of unique users who saw your post is now more important than any other metric. Social network algorithms are constantly changing, and reach shows whether you are making content in vain;
• Clicks. By tracking clicks, you can understand what piques people's curiosity and prompts them to buy the product. Link clicks show whether your marketing funnel is working;
• Engagement. This is the total number of interactions with content, divided by the number of posts and community participants and multiplied by 100%. You can also calculate engagement from average reach, for one post or one day. This metric helps track audience reaction to content and adjust post topics and rubricator as a whole;
• Feedback. The metric is not about numbers, but about reputation. It's always better to dig deeper and find out what people are saying about the brand, how much positive and negative there is. Track comments, mentions, hashtags.
  A good strategy that helps achieve KPIs requires time and money. When you have done a tremendous amount of work creating a strategy, make sure it is really feasible within the budget. Be honest with yourself and the client. Write out why tasks take so much time and resources. And also—the more precisely the timing is spelled out, the fewer questions will arise in the future.

Rechecking

The final, but not least important block. Make sure that the SMM plan you proposed is consistent:

• the strategy fits within the brand positioning;
• the set tasks serve the common goal;
• task execution fits within the budget;
• content and promotion are interconnected;
• metrics track the real progress of the strategy.
  Developing an SMM strategy is one of the most challenging tasks in marketing, as it requires the ability to see the whole picture and somewhat look into the future. This is important because no matter how wonderful the strategy is, you will most likely have to adjust it. For example, when you get to know the TA and its reaction to the content better. Set achievable goals, lay a good analytical foundation, and choose a powerful and capacious Big Idea—and it will be easier for you to change to achieve the desired result.