How to craft social media strategy from A to Z..

He said.. - We need to improve our Marketing Strategy, What’s your opinions?

-- It’s time to Start our Social Media Presence!

- So How to start ?

-- Of course we will use Facebook!, Twitter should be listed too!, but the World is going mobile so we must use Instagram, may be vine too, but .. how about B2B customers.. so should we create a LinkedIn company Page or a personal account .. What about Google Plus ?

- Oh, How we will manage all of them!!

-- Ok, Social Media is important but Let’s start it later!

- hey, didn’t you see our competitor is 1M Fan!!

-- What?! , No we must start now! But what we will do ?!

As Agreed, If you failed to plan you are planning to fail!

And it may be the most important rule in social media.. So let’s start building social media Strategy that make sense!

Crafting a social media strategy from scratch is not an easy task, but by applying SOSTAC model developed by PR Smith, you will be able to create a social media strategy, applicable to any type of business by following the 6 steps of the SOSTAC model,

1) Situation analysis

2) Objective

3) Strategy

4) Tactics

5) Actions

6) Control

The following example will allow you the apply the SOSTAC model on any line of business for social media planning.

imagine if you are going on a trip, before you start the trip you need to..

1) Situation analysis.

First you should ask yourself ..

• Where are you now?
• What do you need out of this trip?
• How much money do you have?
• What’s the options that are available to visit?

In your Business, to get your Situation Analysis, you should ask:

• What’s your current online presence?
• What’s your problems in this presence?
• What’s your Strength and Weakness points?
• Who’s your targeted customers?
• Who’s your customers?
• What resources do you have ?
• Who’s your competitors and what’s their situation?

2) Objective.

Now you know where you stand and you are ready to choose where you are going for? by this we mean sitting your objectives, where you want to go on the long and short term.

Keep in mind that your objectives must be “SMART” Specific, measurable, able to achieve, realistic, and timely.

- Specific, Where you want to go and what expected results to get from this objective.

- Measurable, You must be able to measure your objectives, so you can track if they need updates or not?

- Be realistic about what you are able to achieve, don't set your expectations too high when you know the results already via your data expectations.

- Timely, all objectives on social media need to be set within a time line.

3) Strategy.

After you choose where you want to go, the next question will be "How will you  go there?"

Which road you will take, the highway, the train or any other way that will take you there!

By this we mean, what strategy you will use to achieve your objectives?.

What ever it takes within your resources is considered your strategy, but this step is more strategically beneficial rather than tactical one, Strategy is the big picture that describes how you will get there.

4) Tactics.

It is the chosen transportation type on the road to go there upon your strategy, you will use the train or plane or the bus.

Tactics are the details of the strategy, what you will do within the strategy you planned.

It's the chosen platforms and tools that allows you to achieve your strategy objective perfectly.

5) Actions.

How you will pay the fees, will set in the front of the bus or you will take the last flight on your way!!.

Actions are making your tactics happen, it`s the process where you manage your social media platform, and implementation of the tools and the content planned in Tactics step.

6) Control.

Is all about choosing who you will take with you, who will be responsible for the map and packing the bags and who you will ask if you are lost or you didn't go there.

Control is all about monitoring whether your objectives are being achieved or not (KPIs) and who does what on every step of the plan.

- Your KPIs, are your key performance indicators, the metrics you use to know if you are achieving your goals successfully or not.

SOSTAC model can be applied to any social media planning and applicable for any business, try it out and tell us what you think?