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Social Media
Strategy Builder
By Aneta Hall (@anetah)
This document is designed to help you build a sustainable social media strategy based on Forrester’s POST
methodology that focused on identifying your audience and objectives before focusing on social technology
and tactics.

Aneta Hall

Table of Contents
PEOPLE .................................................................................................................................................................................... 2
TARGET AUDIENCE .............................................................................................................................................................. 2
COMPETITORS ..................................................................................................................................................................... 2
ORGANIZATIONAL READINESS ............................................................................................................................................ 3
OBJECTIVES ............................................................................................................................................................................. 4
STRATEGY ................................................................................................................................................................................ 5
SOCIAL CHANNEL SELECTION .............................................................................................................................................. 6
SOCIAL CHANNEL INTEGRATION ......................................................................................................................................... 7
CROSS-DEPARTMENTAL SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION ...................................................................................................... 8
TACTICS ................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

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Aneta Hall - twitter: @anetah | blog: anetahall.com | G+: gplus.to/anetahall

PEOPLE
TARGET AUDIENCE
When thinking about social media, it’s critical to specifically define the audience you want to reach. “The general
public,” for example, is too vague. Each organization has many different types of constituents who can be reached
through social media channels. The challenge is figuring out who you really want to reach.
Who is your target audience you are trying to
reach in SM?

What’s their mindset with respect to your brand or
product?
What is your overall marketing/communication
plan for this target group that involves traditional
or online channels? Are there synergies there?

How does your target group use social media for
business and how for personal use?*

What social networks does your audience
frequents online?*

What are common discussion topics among your
target audience is social media?*

What key points do you want to make with your
audience?

What will make them pay attention to you in Social
Media?

* if you don’t have information about your target audiences’ social media technographics we suggest investing in social media eco-system research

COMPETITORS
Who are your direct and indirect competitors?

How is your competition utilizing social media?

2

ORGANIZATIONAL READINESS
Social media marketing may be low-cost, but it does require time. Even for a company that does not actively participate,
someone has to monitor what is being said about your organization and—assuming you don’t want to operate in a
bubble—your competition. For businesses wanting to get actively involved, there is, of course, an even greater time
commitment.

What’s your marketing resource pool?
(List resources as well as agencies and their focus)
How much time do you expect to devote
specifically to social media?

Which social media channels do you or your staff ❑Facebook
have experience with, either personally or ❑Twitter
professionally? ❑LInkedIn
❑Google+
❑Blogging
❑Video sharing sites (like YouTube)
❑Other_______________________
❑Other_______________________

❑Community Management
❑Social content creation & marketing
❑Social media monitoring
❑Social campaign creation
❑Social advertising
❑Social Customer Service

Describe your content strategy with respect to
your target audience?

What content-related assets/resources are ❑robust pipeline of fresh content created on a regular basis
available to your organization? ❑Lots of photos
❑Experienced photographer(s)
❑Lots of video content
❑Other_______________________
❑Other_______________________

What social media related assets/resources are ❑Existing blog
available to your organization? ❑Experienced writers ready to create blog content
❑Existing twitter handle
❑Experienced twitter user ready to manage your handle
❑Existing SM community
❑Experienced community manager
❑SMEs in ready to share their thought leadership
❑Other_______________________
❑Other_______________________

3

What social media monitoring/analytics resources ❑Access to SM Monitoring Platform (Radian6)
are available to your organization ❑Trained resource ready to listen and engage
❑OR Funding to support social media monitoring for your
program

OBJECTIVES
Before you can make decisions about which social media to use, you should be clear on your goals. Be specific—
“reaching out to people” is too broad, for example. This type of goal will make identifying your strategy difficult and
measuring your progress all but impossible.
Limit your objectives to just 2 high-level objectives.

EXAMPLES OF BUSINESS-SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
 Generate broader brand awareness
 Establish the company as a thought leader
 Promote product or service
 Network and prospect for sales leads
 Perform customer and market research
 Monitor your competition and/or your industry
 Improve Customer Loyalty
 Optimize customer service
 Improve public relations and customer relationships
 Attract new talent and performing initial background checks

OBJECTIVE What’s the purpose? Why is How it is currently What defines success?
this goal important to your org.? measured?
What are you able to
measure?
1:

2:

4

STRATEGY
Consider the following social media strategy frameworks as the backbone of your social media strategy.

1) Social content marketing
Utilizing social media to amplify your content
applicable for the following objectives: broad usage for most business-specific objectives incl. brand awareness,
product promotion and customer loyalty building
2) SME engagement in social media
Rely on your company’s subject matter experts to engage with relevant audiences
applicable for the following objectives: Network and prospect for sales leads,
3) Social community building
Energize and nurture your audience to build brand fans & increase viral outreach
applicable for the following objectives: customer loyalty, establish company as a thought leader
4) Social intelligence gathering
deep focus on gathering and analyzing social data
applicable for the following objectives: customer or market research, customer loyalty, public relations,
customer service

OBJECTIVE Strategy Framework(s) Describe what success looks like
1:

2:

5

SOCIAL CHANNEL SELECTION
Each social media channel is good for something different. Consider the strengths and weaknesses of each tool
against your objectives stated earlier and come up with the answers to the following questions.

Rate each channel as to how well they’re likely to help you meet them, on a scale of 1-5 (1=not very, 5=extremely). Also consider how
easy it will be to create content, and how much experience you have with the channel.

Strategy #1: Strategy #2: CONTENT: How EXPERTISE: How well T R
easy will it be for versed are you or your O A
you to produce staff in this channel? T N
the necessary Will you have resources A K
content to be trained? L
Blog

Twitter

LinkedIn

Facebook

Google+

Other
social
network
YouTube
(or other
video
sharing)
Other
_______

6

SOCIAL CHANNEL INTEGRATION
Having a great social media presence is certainly one critical element in your overall marketing strategy, but social media
should never stand alone. In fact, we often find that the best way to bring social media into an organization is in
conjunction with and as an addition to an existing campaign or overall marketing strategy.

Physically integrating social media into your existing marketing tactics is relatively simple.
Integration will really show you the value of social media by illustrating that the whole of social media + other marketing
tactics can great a whole outcome far greater than the sum it its parts.

How will your social media strategy support and enhance your marketing & Internet strategy?

Strategy Component How Does Social Media integrate?
Email

Web site

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Marketing/Advertising

Others:

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CROSS-DEPARTMENTAL SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION
The next generation in truly effective social media deployment will involve not just the
Marcomm or PR team but will include the entire enterprise in its sights. Coming up with ways to leverage social media
across the organization can be one of the most impactful things that you do with social media for your organization.

Take some time now to look at the following list of common corporate departments or lines of business and brainstorm
how you need to work together to make your social strategy a success. You should also add departments or functions
that are specific to your business and how social media could help them as well.

Business Development/Sales

Customer Service (A MUST!!!)

Product Management

Information Technology
(Tech Central, GOL)
Human Resources

Marketing

Public Relations

Legal/Risk Management

Training

Subsidiary Brands & Offsite Locations

Dealers/Branches/Distribution Partners

Others

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TACTICS
TACTIC TECHNOLOGY NEEDED DEPENDENCIES OWNER

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Social Media strategy Builder by Aneta Hall

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