Social Media
Social media strategy tied to business goals
A social strategy answers three questions: which channels, what content, and how you will know it worked. We build that plan from your business objectives and your audience, not from platform trends.
Who it is for: Businesses posting without a plan, or choosing channels by habit rather than by where their buyers are.
Everything in this service
- Audience and competitor research
- Channel selection with clear reasoning
- Content pillars and format mix per platform
- Posting cadence your team can actually sustain
- Measurement framework tied to business objectives
What to expect
- A focused channel set instead of five half-run accounts
- A documented plan any team member can execute
- Social activity you can defend in a budget meeting
How social media strategy actually works
Choose channels from evidence, not from habit
Most channel line-ups were never chosen. They accumulated, because someone set up an account during a previous role, or because a competitor was there, or because a platform was in the news three years ago. The result is four or five half-run accounts, each too quiet to be worth finding.
The decision should come from four inputs. Where your buyers actually spend time, which you find by asking recent customers rather than reading a trend report. What your current channels already show, because even a neglected account has data on which posts got a response. Where your competitors are getting genuine engagement, not just where they are present. And what your team can realistically produce, because a platform that needs three videos a week is not a viable choice for a business with no camera and no time.
The honest output of this exercise usually includes a recommendation to close something. Two channels run properly will beat five run thinly every time, because consistency is what both the audience and the ranking systems respond to. A dormant account with a two year old last post is worse than no account, since it signals to anyone checking that the business may not be active either.
- Ask recent customers where they actually spend time
- Read your existing account data before assuming anything
- Check competitor engagement, not competitor presence
- Match the channel to the content you can genuinely sustain
- Recommend closures, and close dormant accounts properly
Objectives that are not follower counts
Followers are the most reported and least useful social metric. An account can grow steadily while producing nothing for the business, and an account can be worth a great deal while growing slowly. The objective has to be set at the level of what the business needs.
Four objectives cover most cases, and each implies different content and different measures. Awareness means being seen by people who do not know you, measured in reach into new audiences rather than impressions on existing followers. Consideration means being taken seriously by people evaluating you, measured in saves, profile visits, direct messages and branded search. Conversion means driving a specific action, measured in tagged link clicks and what those visitors do next. Retention means keeping existing customers engaged and reducing churn, measured in repeat engagement and support volume.
Trying to do all four on one channel at once is what produces a feed with no identity. Pick one primary objective per channel, and accept the trade-off. A channel optimised for awareness will post things that never send anyone to your site, and that is correct. A channel optimised for conversion will grow slowly and that is also correct. Judging either against the other measure is how good social programmes get cancelled.
- Awareness: reach into new audiences, not impressions on followers
- Consideration: saves, profile visits, messages, branded search volume
- Conversion: tagged clicks and what happens after the click
- Retention: repeat engagement and reduced support load
- One primary objective per channel, and live with the trade-off
Content pillars and the format mix
Content pillars are three to five recurring themes that everything you publish belongs to. They exist to answer the question of what to post today without a meeting, and to stop a feed becoming either random or entirely promotional.
Good pillars sit at the intersection of what you know, what your audience cares about, and what supports the objective. For most businesses they land somewhere near: teaching, which is showing how something works or answering a common question; proof, which is the work itself, results, process, and how a job actually ran; people, which is the team, the culture and the human side of the business; and point of view, which is what you think about your industry and where you disagree with the consensus. That last one is uncomfortable and usually the highest performing, because agreement is invisible.
The mix matters as much as the pillars. Promotional posts should be a minority of the feed, and the exact ratio matters less than the principle that most of what you publish should be worth someone time even if they never buy. Formats then get assigned per pillar and per platform: teaching often works as short video or carousels, proof as before and after or case detail, people as photography and unpolished behind the scenes footage, point of view as writing. Documenting this means a new team member can produce on-brief content in week one.
- Three to five pillars, documented with example posts
- Teach, prove, show the people, take a position
- Keep promotional posts a clear minority
- Assign formats per pillar and per platform
- A pillar with no content ideas after ten minutes is the wrong pillar
Reviewing competitors without copying them
A competitor review is for finding the gap, not the template. Copying what a competitor posts puts you permanently second on their territory, and it usually copies their mistakes as well.
The review looks at five to eight comparable accounts and records concrete things: how often they post, which formats they use, which posts got genuinely above-average engagement for their follower size, what themes they return to, what tone they use, and what they never talk about. Sorting their posts by engagement rather than by date is the fastest way to see what their audience actually responds to, which is often quite different from what they post most.
The useful output is a list of gaps. Topics everyone in the category avoids. Questions customers clearly ask that nobody answers publicly. Formats nobody uses. A tone the whole sector shares that you could break from. If every account in your industry is formal and posts stock imagery, that uniformity is the opportunity. One caution: an inflated follower count with almost no engagement is a signal to ignore that account entirely, and it is also a reminder that buying followers or engagement is a waste of money that damages reach. We will not do it and we advise against anyone who offers it.
- Review five to eight comparable accounts, not the whole sector
- Sort their posts by engagement to see what really works
- Record what they never talk about, which is the opening
- Compare engagement rate, not follower totals
- Ignore accounts with bought followers, and never buy them yourself
Resourcing the plan honestly
A strategy that assumes capacity nobody has is a document that gets ignored by March. The resourcing section is the part that decides whether the rest of it survives.
It has to be specific about people, skills, tools and money. Who writes, who films, who designs, who schedules, who replies to comments, and who approves. What each of those takes in hours per week at the proposed cadence. Which skills are missing entirely, because a plan built on video when nobody can edit video is a plan to fail slowly. What tools are needed and what they cost. And whether there is paid budget, since organic reach on most platforms is a fraction of your following and a plan with no promotion budget should not forecast reach as though it has one.
Where capacity is short, the answer is to reduce scope rather than quality. Fewer channels. Fewer posts. Simpler formats that the team can genuinely produce every week without heroics. It is far better to commit to two posts a week for a year than to promise daily and stop in six weeks, because the stop is visible to everyone who checks. A strategy should also say what happens when the person who does this goes on holiday, since that single unanswered question breaks more social programmes than strategy ever does.
- Name the person for each task, not the department
- Estimate hours per week at the proposed cadence, then check they exist
- Say plainly which skills are missing
- Do not forecast organic reach as though paid budget exists
- Plan for holidays and departures before they happen
Setting measurement before anything is published
Measurement agreed at the start is a plan. Measurement agreed at the end is an argument. The framework should be written before the first post goes out, so that success is defined by something other than how the month felt.
It needs four things. The metrics that match the chosen objective, and explicitly the metrics you are choosing to ignore. A baseline, captured now, of where each channel currently sits, because growth without a starting point is unprovable. A realistic timeframe, since organic social is slow and judging a new channel after four weeks produces the wrong decision almost every time. And a review point, usually quarterly, where the strategy itself is questioned rather than just the posts.
It is also worth writing down what would make you stop. A channel that has had a fair run, with consistent posting and honest effort, and has produced nothing measurable, should be closed rather than carried indefinitely out of habit. Deciding that in advance, with the criteria written, makes the conversation straightforward later instead of political.
- Capture a baseline for every channel before starting
- Name the metrics you will ignore as well as the ones you will use
- Set a realistic timeframe before judging a new channel
- Review the strategy quarterly, not just the posts
- Write the conditions under which you would stop
A clear path, step by step
- 01
Research
We study your audience, competitors and current channels to see what is really happening.
- 02
Choose channels
We recommend the focused set of platforms where your buyers are, with the reasoning shown.
- 03
Define the plan
Content pillars, formats, cadence and tone per channel, documented so anyone can execute.
- 04
Set measurement
We agree the numbers that count as success, so results are judged against goals, not vibes.
Why choose us for this
Strategy starts from your objectives, not from trends
We tell you which channels to drop, not just add
The plan hands off cleanly to your team or ours
Common questions
Do we need to be on every platform?
No, and trying is usually the mistake. Two channels run well beat five run thinly. We recommend the focused set your audience actually uses and say why.
What if we already have a social presence?
We audit it first. Existing channels tell us what your audience responds to, and the strategy builds on that evidence rather than starting from zero.
Explore related work
Want this for your business?
Book a free visibility call and I will tell you honestly whether I can help.
How this is delivered
One person leads every project. Where a job genuinely needs a specialist, I bring in people I have worked with before and manage them, so you get one point of contact and one invoice rather than three suppliers blaming each other.
- You talk to the person responsible for the work, not an account manager
- Specialists are briefed and managed by me, and their work is checked before it reaches you
- One contract, one invoice, one place to chase