Social Strategy: 4 Evergreen Rules to Master an Always-Evolving Game

I could advise you that long-form content is in, carousels are being prioritized, storytelling is trending. Knowing that these things are constantly evolving, I’d rather start the year off with a few evergreen rules that will steer you through your social media management through every season.

It’s great listening to social experts and what they recommend, especially when trying to grow your account. But it doesn’t mean that it is a true and trusted formula that applies to everyone. For example, a social expert is going to tell you that you need to post four to five times per week, yet they don’t specify which type of accounts that works best for. On our Interrupt social channels, for instance, we found that too-frequent posting was actually hurting our account. By focusing on higher-quality posts two to three times a week, we saw much better results. Of course, these things are great to try and sometimes do help, but it’s important not to just blindly follow recommendations. Instead, test things out and learn what works best for your brand.

Your audience should help determine what you post on your social channels. When you’re creating content for your brand, you should be creating it for your audience, not just for your company. Perhaps the director of marketing wants you to post this, or the creative director wants you to post that, or some guy in the sales department says he didn’t really like that last post. It’s great getting feedback and engagement from others in the company about social. However, if it’s something that your followers don’t want to interact with, crowdsourcing internal feedback might lead you to just cater to the employees that follow your social media. Yes, you should be creating things that resonate with your company. But you can still be authentic while learning what your audience wants to see and wants to know.

This might seem like a given, but you’d be surprised how many stumble here. Social media is all about doing the “trendy thing.” That applies to content as well as cadence. For example, do you ever see text-only carousels? No photos, illustrations or icons, just words on screen. While those technically aren’t “in” anymore, they still work well for some brands, like media companies. So they keep creating that type of content (as they should). This goes for series on your socials, too. If you’re doing a series on your channel and not sure why it’s so engaging but people love it, keep doing it. Even if your strategy is changing, make sure you keep what your audience obviously likes and responds to. People like consistency and patterns. If someone knows they can come to your social channel and know what to expect, you’ve nailed it.

Your audience should help you determine your strategy, and you should find that your team is primed to shift easily. Social media management requires agility and flexibility. If you’re doing a series on your social channel but your audience isn’t really engaging with it, stop doing it. Give it time if it’s new, but feelings aside, you want to post things that your audience actually wants to watch. This sounds scary, but this can be fun because you can really experiment and try new things. That’s the beauty of social media. Algorithms change, audiences change, so you have to be willing to make the shift when it’s time.

Social media “mastery” is an overrated (and elusive) goal. In reality, this is a zone of experimentation, flexibility and constant conversation with your audience. It requires authenticity. That’s what makes your social media unique. And because of that, there’s no one-size-fits-all for social media advice. Take these four approaches into the rest of the year as general guides that will help you shape and evolve a strategy that’s specific to you.