how to create a social strategy.
posting without a strategy is noise. here is how to build one, step by step.
a strategy answers who, where, what and how you will measure — before you post. goals, audience, pillars, platforms, metrics.
most brands post first and think later. a strategy reverses that: a handful of decisions made up front that turn random posting into a system. here is the step-by-step most agencies overcomplicate.
— 01start with goals and audience.
what should social achieve — awareness, leads, sales? and who exactly are you talking to? every later decision flows from these two. skip them and you are guessing in public.
write down one business outcome and one number, with its current value. enquiries a month, bookings, cost per acquisition — the figure both you and anyone you hire will judge the work by.
then describe the customer narrowly enough that it excludes people. a strategy aimed at everyone produces content aimed at nobody, and the exclusions are what make the decisions easy later.
and audit what you already have before planning anything: existing enquiries, reply times, the search profile, what happens between an enquiry and a sale. that usually finds something expensive.
— 02pillars and platforms.
choose three to five content pillars and the one or two platforms where your audience actually is. better to win on two channels than be mediocre on five. this is the core of a real strategy.
pick three or four pillars — commitments about what gets made, not topic categories. one of them has to answer the buying questions, or the account will build an audience without producing enquiries.
give each pillar a repeatable format, so nobody has to invent anything in a busy week. formats survive; ideas do not.
and choose one platform to be genuinely good at, plus search and an owned list. a small team across five channels produces five accounts nobody would follow.
— 03cadence and metrics.
set a sustainable posting rhythm and the kpis that match your goals. write it all down in one document both sides agree on — that document is your strategy.
set the cadence at what you can hold through a busy month, batch production into one day, and bank two weeks before publishing anything.
then decide the review rhythm: monthly for the account, quarterly for the strategy. reviewing direction monthly guarantees churn and prevents compounding.
and report on the one number with its baseline visible. a strategy without that is a posting schedule, and it will be judged on how the feed feels rather than on what it produced.
— 04what a finished strategy fits on.
one page: the outcome, the number and its baseline, the customer, three or four pillars with their formats, the platform, the cadence, and who approves.
if it needs more than that, it contains decisions nobody will remember under pressure. the test is whether someone new could produce a publishable week from it on their first afternoon.
related on the dispatch: arabic & english in the uae, when to change your strategy, an influencer strategy for dubai.