8 Essential Elements of a Social Media Marketing Strategy
#1: Identify Business Goals
Every piece of your social media strategy serves the goals you set. You simply can't move forward without knowing what you're working toward.
Look closely at your company's overall needs and decide how you want to use social media to contribute to reaching them.
#2: Set Marketing Objectives
Goals aren't terribly useful if you don't have specific parameters that define when each is achieved. For example, if one of your primary goals is generating leads and sales, how many leads and sales do you have to generate before you consider that goal a success?
#3: Identify Ideal Customers
If a business is suffering from low engagement on their social profiles, it's usually because they don't have an accurate ideal customer profile.
#4: Research Competition
When it comes to social media marketing, researching your competition not only keeps you apprised of their activity, it gives you an idea of what's working so you can integrate those successful tactics into your own efforts.
#5: Choose Channels and Tactics
Many businesses create accounts on every popular social network without researching which platform will bring the most return. You can avoid wasting your time in the wrong place by using the information from your buyer personas to determine which platform is best for you.
#6: Create a Content Strategy
Content and social media have a symbiotic relationship: Without great content social media is meaningless and without social media nobody will know about your content. Use them together to reach and convert your prospects.
#7: Allocate Budget and Resources
To budget for social media marketing, look at the tactics you've chosen to achieve your business goals and objectives.
#8: Assign Roles
Knowing who's responsible for what increases productivity and avoids confusion and overlapping efforts. Things may be a bit messy in the beginning, but with time team members will know their roles and what daily tasks they're responsible for.
Source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/essential-elements-social-media-marketing-strategy/