The secret to social media success for brands isn't virality. Sure, it helps if you can get a ton of eyeballs on your page, but if that's not driving meaningful engagement, then it's not doing anything for you.
The best social media strategies aren't built on going viral - they're built on careful planning, execution, and consistency over time.
If you're ready to get serious about your social media channels and start generating actual leads, this is what you need to know.
Elements of an Organic Social Media Strategy:
The 7 C's of a Social Media Strategy
When crafting organic content that drives engagement, a good place to start is with the 7 C's of Social Media Marketing. This best-practice guide gives you a roadmap for creating a winning social media strategy. You'll find a few slight variations of the adjectives included in the 7 C's online. Below is my recommendation based on experience.
1. Community
The first place you should start with any marketing effort is identifying who you're trying to target. If you haven't created or updated your personas, now is the time. Personas are fictional representations of real people, based on data about your buyers. Having clear personas gives you a sharp focus. For social media efforts, it helps you identify the social networks that your persona(s) are likely to use.
It's much more effective to try to be where your personas are online than to post to every possible social network. Quality > quantity goes a long way on social media.
2. Content
Once you identify your target audience, the next step is deciding what type of content to post. This doesn't necessarily mean that you need to have every post mapped out right now. Instead, it's about developing a general strategy.
What are you trying to do with your social media? If you're an eCommerce brand, do you want to cultivate FOMO around your product? A B2C (retail) company might want to create inspirational content that pushes customers into taking action. For B2B brands, you may want to establish your brand as a thought leader or provide helpful resources. Think beyond just "I want to sell products" or "I want to get leads" - think about how you will serve your followers.
3. Creation
Content creation can include blog posts, images, videos and other helpful resources. Your content may originate on your website (ex., a blog post) and then be distributed through social media (like a link to that blog post). Or it could be original content created specifically for social media.
The best social strategies use a mix of both repurposed content and brand-new content created specifically for social.
4. Curation
Social media is a social tool - it's right in the name. This means that curation is also a vital part of your social media strategy. When you curate content, you share something that you haven't originally created. On social media, this can be a simple as sharing a post from another profile, or as complex as a LinkedIn article that rounds up information from multiple sources.
Curation helps pad out your content production so that you don't always need to create something new to have content on social media, but it's important for another reason, too. When you share others' content, they are more likely to share your content with their audience. This practice helps you reach a much wider pool of people beyond just your followers.
5. Collaboration
One of the biggest benefits of social media is the potential to gather user-generated content (UGC). On social, these often take the form of text posts, photos or videos about your brand. For an eCommerce company, it might be a content creator using your product in a video. For a B2B brand, it might be a user on LinkedIn tagging a salesperson they met at a conference.
UGC is a sort of self-guided collaboration: you're not asking people to create this content, but they are naturally. There's also influencer marketing, which is that more direct collaborative effort. Either way, this type of content is vital for your social success. You can help inspire collaboration by giving your audience a nudge: invite them to upload content with a specific hashtag or tag your brand in the post, in exchange for a discount or entry into a prize contest.
Related Content: 2025 Marketing Trends You Can't Ignore
6. Conversation
For better or for worse, social media is a place where your audience can and will engage with your brand. This means that everyone will be able to see interactions that take place in your comments section. It can't be overstated just how important these conversations are: they're the entire backbone of most social media websites.
Engaging with your audience is essential. React and respond to comments. For disgruntled comments, make every effort to show you're trying to resolve the issue. The most effective tactic is to ask commenters to send you a DM or call to find a solution.
The only time you don't want to engage is with trolls. I know it's hard to resist, but don't poke back. It's best to let trolls wear themselves out as they shout into the void, rather than engage. It's easy to lose your cool. It's better to just ignore. For truly vile comments, most social media websites have hate speech rules in their Terms of Service that will allow you to report nasty comments - don't be afraid to do so!
7. Conversion
Even with organic content, it's important to consider the actions that you want your audience to take. This is true for everything you post. Do you want your audience to click on a link and buy something? Do you want them to schedule a consultation? Do you want them to leave a comment? Share your post?
You may have more than one desired action for each post, but you should always keep your main goal in mind when creating and sharing content. Having this clear goal will help you develop compelling content and give you something to measure against.
Developing a Paid Social Media Strategy:
The 5 P's of Social Media
In addition to the 7 C's of Social Media, there's another catchy memory aid for social structure: the 5 P's. This strategy overlaps with what I've covered above, but it also has a few unique elements that make it an effective starting point when creating paid social media content, like ads. If you plan on advertising on any social network, you'll want to follow these tips.
1. People
Like with your organic strategy, knowing your audience is important for any paid strategy. Beyond just having your persona in mind, you'll want to use demographic and interest-based information when choosing your audience for those ads.
Networks like YouTube will allow you to target based on interests and topics, which should line up with what your persona tends to want. Networks like LinkedIn will allow you to create lookalike audiences from demographic information about your current customers.
Related Content: How to Get User Data: Cookieless Targeting in Online Ads
2. Product
Quite simply, ads need something to sell. The product may not be physical—it could be a request for a quote, a demo, or even a non-profit donation. Any ad you run needs to have a clear product that the advertising strategy is meant to promote.
And yes, your brand can be the product, too. That's often the case for brand awareness campaigns, where the goal is to increase your reputation in your industry.
3. Price
The price for social media advertising is twofold:
- The price you'll pay for ads (advertising budget and time spent)
- The price you're asking your customer to pay
Like with the product, your price may be something intangible. If you're asking clients to book a meeting with you, then your "price" is their contact information and their time.
4. Place
Place refers to the specific ad network and the type of advertisement. Depending on your channel, you may have several options to choose from. For example, video ads can be bumpers before or after other videos, posts in the feed, or above or below content.
The right placement for your ads is influenced by the previous 3 P's. The most effective placement is determined by who your buyer is, what you want them to buy and your price.
5. Promotion
The final P stands for promotion, which is the core part of social media advertising. However, it also asks you to consider how you're promoting the subject of your ad in your other online marketing efforts. Will you use organic social posts as additional support? Will you be directing visitors from your ad to a landing page? Are you going to use follow-up emails to further nurture leads?
Like all digital marketing efforts, your social media advertising doesn't exist in a bubble. It's important to view it as a piece of the puzzle and determine how it fits with your other marketing tactics to drive leads.
Success on social media isn’t about chasing virality - it's about showing up consistently with content that resonates and converts.
By grounding your approach in the 7 C’s and 5 P’s, you’ll be set up to create a strategy that actually delivers leads, not just likes.
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