How to build a creative social media strategy for ANY brand
If you’re a brand looking to create your social media strategy or you are a rising social media manager looking to navigate your first client audit, this article is for you. In this guide, I run through the basic frameworks required to audit your brand for the first time!
Who is this article for:
If you’re someone who is just signing on your first social media management client or are thinking of building your portfolio with an example consultation, this article is for you!
Becoming a social media manager has really changed my life in so many ways. As an entrepreneur and freelance social media manager for almost 3 years, I’ve learned so much about the process, the nuts and bolts that create a strong social media strategy, and all the pain points in between that aren’t talked about.
My experience is rooted in a brick & mortar business, an online business, and a hybrid one. To be precise—A technology brewing-forward coffee start up, the #1 Japanese food blog in the food blogging space, and an independent artist business with occasional pop-ups (my own brand!).
In this article, I’ll take you through exactly what, where, why, and how you should approach pitching to your first client.
Where to find your first client:
For the sake of this article, I’ll assume that you already have your first client call scheduled and ready to go.
If not, here are some ways to explore finding your first client:
Job Roles: Find some social media management roles on job boards like Linked in or Indeed.com and pitch yourself as an applicant / send your cold pitch.
Cold Emailing; Find companies that you admire (small to medium is a strong first client) and pitch your solution to them in a video walkthrough (using screen-recordding platforms like Loom.com) or just sending your pitch deck.
Local Outreach: Find brick and mortar stores near you that you believe in or connect well with the owners and offer them a 3 month paid trial of your services before signing on longer with you for a full year.
Networking: If you have events happening near you, prepare business cards, a portfolio site, and try to put your name out there so if anyone hears of a call for social media managers, your name will be first to think of.
First Stage: Analyse their page
The first step of the process is to take an audit of what they’re currently already doing. What seems to be working? What doesn’t seem to be working? From a first time visit, can you answer the key questions of:
What is this brand?
Why did it begin? What is the founder’s journey?
What can I expect from this brand?
Second Stage: Research Competitors and Market
In this next stage, our goal is to really understand the landscape of the industry that your client is from. To start, I would usually use resources like SEMRush or Google Search or even ChatGPT to find competitor names that I can compare with the client’s business. Do your due diligence when integrating GenAI into your process of course.
When assessing these competitors, here is a workflow to follow:
Identify 3 competitors: they can be either selling the same type of product OR targeting a very similar type of audience. For example, a clothing brand and a jewelry brand can both be used as reference since they could target a similar demographic of someone who enjoys chic, elegant outerwear.
Take an organic assessment: Are there patterns you notice about the competitor’s social media page and their content. Do they have a website? What’s their key offer? Which long and short-form platforms do they engage in? What are creative elements you can be inspired from to integrate into your proposed strategy?
Research Trends: Sometimes, there could be strategies that are already implemented that you might not see with each competitor. Look into blog posts, articles, and industry specialised pages on the best trends for your client’s industry. You can also use Google Trends for this to find the best keywords.
Third Stage: Establish Marketing Funnel, Unique Selling Proposition, and Proposed Strategy
Ultimately, social media is just a smaller piece of a bigger puzzle. Social media should inform marketing coordination in the same way that tactics are a part of larger strategies. We can break these down into three key components:
Establish Marketing Funnels: If a group of 15 people were to enter a brick and mortar were to enter a store, there is only often a certain percentage of the group that will make a purchase or take action–this is known as conversion rate. In relation to social media, this means that of 100 people that will visit your social media profile, only 10-20 people might actually take the next step–visit your website, book a consultation call, check out your recipes, buy your product. A marketing funnel is a structured way to assess how people are first reached, educated, converted, and nurtured. You can refer to the graphic below to see how this works. Creating this objective funnel for your client can really showcase your ability to see a larger strategy and HOW the social media plan can assist their bigger goals to convert their clients from strangers to superfans.
Unique Selling Proposition: You can prompt this with the client or try to ideate on your own–What are 3 words that come to mind when people think of this brand? Are these aligned with the intention of the client? The goal is to establish a position for the brand within their market that allows them to stand out. It’s better to stand out for a niche value rather than be a jack of all trade that has lower conversion rate.
Strategise Marketing Coordination: Now, its time to bring it all together! In your final pitch deck, you should have the final components of: Introduction, Agenda, Social Media Audit, Competitor Research, Marketing Funnels, Unique Selling Proposition, and Proposed Marketing Strategy, and (your) Social Media Pricing Rates. The marketing strategy is really just a digestible breakdown of your recommended strategy in as simplified a language as possible. Your function is to be the expert and guide for your client to improve their workflow, relieve their stress and uncertainty in their process, and be their trusted advisor for social media marketing. Your goal is to show and prove that you really understand where social media fits into their bigger business goals.
Fourth Stage: Pitch, Workflow, and Growth
Now that you’re ready to pitch, prepare by practicing your pitch deck and be ready with potential negotiation and boundaries if necessary.
Ultimately, there is a multi-stage process of digital marketing through social media –marketing strategy, content ideation, content production, post-production editing, distribution, analytics, and reporting.
Depending on the stage of growth and perhaps modality (brick & mortar vs online business) of the client, they may expect you take on just a few of these roles OR ALL of them. Knowing your boundaries + whether you want to be a generalist or specialist with this client will be key to putting the right value on your work and scaling your freelancing career.
Over time, you will learn which industries, modality, and strategies you enjoy the most. Perhaps you enjoy shooting content, or maybe you realize you enjoy the analytics and social media research side. You could become a social media consultant, social media videographer/photographer, social media analyst, etc. There is not one right way to develop your career path.
In another article, I want to cover some of the pros and cons of being a social media manager, and more in-depth information on the nuances of my personal social media manager experiences.
If you’re interested in a booking a consultation with me as a social media manager or are interested to learn more, visit madelineliu.com or email me at madelineliu.co@gmail.com to continue the conversation!
Cheers,
Madeline
