A social media strategy provides both new and existing social media accounts a framework for effectively using your channels. A strategy saves you time and ensures everyone contributing to your channels are pulling in the same direction.
Forming a Strategy
Good strategy now pays dividends as you grow and mature your social media presence.
Your strategy should include the following:
Social Media Mission
A social media mission statement summarises your reasons, goals and hopeful outcomes for being on social media.
Audience
Your audience is the key group of people you want to reach with your social media content.
Social Media Goals and Objectives
Identify three goals - one short term that can be accomplished in the next week, one for 2 months from now and another for 6 months from now. Be as specific as possible.
Content
Brainstorm content ideas and descriptive words / phrases that will assist with a channel tone of voice.
Tracking and Reporting
There's no wrong answer here. Have a think about what you feel a successful post would be in terms of likes and comments
Resources
What does your workflow look like when composing posts or content for social media? Do you have the support you need? What resources do you need?
Social Media Mission
Your social media mission is the primary purpose of your social media in the simplest possible way. Here are some tips to help you write a clear and concise social media mission statement:
- Clearly define your purpose: Clearly articulate the purpose or reason for using social media.
- Keep it short: Your mission statement should ideally be one sentence, making it easy to understand and remember.
- Make it specific: Use language that clearly communities your goals and objectives.
- Use a consistent tone: Use a tone that aligns with your account.
Mission example 1
“Our mission is to increase engagement with potential collaborators and funders, and promote our research, facilities, and culture.”
Mission example 2
“We are using social media to raise awareness of the centre as an internationally recognised institute for research in material science and to increase the diversity of our community membership.”
Mission example 3
“Our social media mission is to create engaging content while sharing inspirational and authentic experiences that build pride and belonging in our student & staff community. *
* And ‘FOMO’ for everyone else.”
It might help to define your goals & objectives, target audience and tone of voice before you write your mission statement.
Crafting Your Social Media Mission
Every UofG department will have their own needs, goals and audiences and its mission statement should reflect that. Find out more about crafting your social media mission statement.
Featuring Gavin Edgar, Digital & Student Communications Officer, and Hannah Vuozzo Employability & Student Opportunity Communications Manager
Goals and Objectives
Establish clear goals: Determine your objectives for using social media as a college, school or UofG service. Whether it's sharing research findings, developing awareness of your area for recruitment purposes, or building networks with industry, having clear goals will help you focus your efforts. Be as specific as possible with goals that can be achieved in as little as 2 to 3 weeks all the way through to 12 months time.
- Identify specific goals and objectives for your social media strategy.
- Examples of objectives could include increasing brand awareness, promoting events, engaging with the university community, or driving website traffic.
- Ensure that your objectives align with the overall goals of your department.
- Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals to track your progress.
Audience
Understand your audience: Knowing your audience is one of the most important elements of a social media strategy. A good grasp on who it is you’re interacting with dictates every aspect of your social media planning.
Familiarise yourself with the demographics, interests, and needs of your target audience. Which platforms do they use most regularly? This will help you choose a platform and tailor your content and messaging to resonate with them effectively.
- Determine who your target audience is. Your audience should be as specific as possible such as potential students, alumni, industry professionals, or external researchers. You can get even more granular such as potential students based in Scotland or internationally. The ‘general public’ is too broad.
- Consider factors such as age, location, interests, and needs of your audience.
- Use platform specific analytic tools to gain insights into your audience's online behaviour and preferences such as Instagram Insights or Twitter analytics
Tone of Voice
Define your tone of voice: The tone and voice you choose will help convey your key message and align with your overall identity. It’s about defining how you speak online reflecting your department personality and values.
The tone reflects the overall feeling your social media content and account conveys. For example the tone can be serious, casual, formal, or humorous depending on the nature of your account and the audience you are trying to reach. Your tone might change depending on the nature of the content. The voice is the personality and style of language you use on your account.
To decide on your tone of voice consider the following:
- The audience you are trying to reach - students, industry professionals, or academics?
- Your overall goals
- The key message you want to convey
Finding Your Social Media Voice
How does your social media voice shape the way your message is received? Find out more about how you can create the right tone of voice for your audience.
Featuring Tasha Quinn, Socail and Digital Media Manager, and Elly White, Social and Digital Media Officer
Creating Compelling Content
How well does your message align with our content creation guidelines? Find out more about how you can create compelling content and how your content can stand out.
Featuring Elly White, Social and Digital Media Officer, and Jamie Small, Students' Representative Council Marketing and Communications Lead
Content
Develop a content strategy: Create a well-thought-out content strategy that aligns with the goals and values of your department. Consider a mix of promotional content, educational materials, student stories, faculty achievements, and industry updates.
- Plan ahead for big events or campaigns related to your faculty or school.
- Create a content calendar that outlines key dates, themes, and topics to cover.
- Develop a mix of content types such as words, images, video and graphics to cater to different audience preferences.
- Ensure your content is valuable, relevant, engaging, and aligned with your objectives and audience interests.
- Leverage storytelling, user-generated content, and collaborations with faculty or students to enhance engagement.
Tracking and Reporting
Monitor and analyse performance: Without regularly checking your social media stats it's very difficult to understand what content is being engaged with by your audience.
You can very easily be caught up on the content hamster wheel without realising you’ve gone off track and your audience isn’t responding to what you’re putting out. It is recommended to consistently review your stats.
If you are building a new channel you may do this more regularly on a weekly or monthly basis. Alternatively a quarterly report may be more appropriate depending on the purpose of your report and who will be reading it.
- Monitor your social media performance using analytics tools provided by the platforms or third-party applications.
- Track metrics such as reach, engagement, click-through rates, conversions, and follower growth. Use platform specific analytics tools such as Instagram Insights or Twitter Analytics.
- Regularly analyse the data to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement.
- Generate reports to share with key stakeholders and use the insights gained to refine your strategy.
- Continuously iterate and optimise your social media approach based on the data and feedback received.
We’ve developed a social media reporting template for you to use in each section below.
To access your Tweet activity: On a desktop or laptop computer, visit analytics.twitter.com and click on Tweets. In the Twitter app for iOS or Android, tap the analytics icon visible in your Tweets.
| Month | Your stats |
| Total Tweets | Your stats |
| Tweet Impressions | Your stats |
| Profile Visits | Your stats |
| Mentions | Your stats |
| New Followers | Your stats |
Top 5 Tweets (ranked by impressions)
| Tweet | Impressions |
|---|---|
| Engagement Rate | Your stats |
|---|---|
| Link Clicks | Your stats |
| Retweets | Your stats |
| Likes | Your stats |
| Replies | Your stats |
| Video Activity | Your stats |
|---|---|
| Published Videos | Your stats |
| Total Views | Your stats |
| Total Minutes Viewed | Your stats |
All of these stats can be found in your Facebook Insights. To see the the page insights:
1. From your Feed click pages in the left menu
2. Go to your page
3. Click Insights in the left menu.
Total Page Followers:
Total Reach:
Top 5 Posts (based on engagement rate)
| Posts | Impressions |
|---|---|
| Video Activity | |
|---|---|
| Minutes Viewed | |
| Top 3 Videos |
| Your Followers | |
|---|---|
| Men | |
| Women |
| Top 3 Age Groups | |
|---|---|
| Top 3 Cities | |
|---|---|
In order to view insights and metrics on Instagram, you need to have an Instagram business or creator account. There are a couple of different ways to access your insights from the Instagram app. (Keep in mind that these are only accessible on the mobile app, and not on desktop.) It is suggested that you capture these stats at the end of each week as the insights available within Instagram are very limited.
Activity
| Followers | Activity |
|---|---|
| Interactions | |
| Profile Visits | |
| Website Clicks | |
| Accounts Reached | |
| Impressions |
Content
| Top Post |
|---|
| Top 5 Stories | Activity |
|---|---|
| Top 5 Reels | Activity |
|---|---|
Audience
| Followers |
|---|
| Top Location |
|---|
| Top 3 Age Ranges |
|---|
| Men | |
|---|---|
| Women |
Resource
Assess the resources available to you, such as personnel, budget, content assets, and tools. Identify the strengths and limitations of each resource to better allocate them in your social media strategy.
- Identify individuals who want to be involved in the content creation process
- What’s your budget for paid and boosting posts
- What existing hardware do you have and what do you need in order to be effective on your channels (phone, microphones, lighting, software)
Remember that social media strategies should be adaptable and flexible, allowing room for experimentation, learning, and evolution based on your audience's response and changing trends in the digital landscape.