Developing and maintaining an effective organic social media strategy is a herculean task. A mere decade ago, branded social media duties were derided as “intern duties” not worthy of much attention. Today, most major brands employ entire teams of social media strategists dedicated to maintaining organic social media strategy across multiple platforms for hundreds of thousands of followers.
It’s completely understandable if you look at revamping your own organic social media strategy and feel it’s just too daunting to do alone–but you can do it! Though an effective social media presence requires dedication and persistence, it can be done with a team of one if you follow our guide to a maintainable organic social media strategy.
Getting Started on Your Organic Social Media Strategy
How you start depends on whether you’re launching new social media accounts or taking over old ones. If you’re starting from scratch, the first thing to do is decide which platforms you need to be active on. Take a look at what social media websites your competitors use. Research social media profiles of brands you want to emulate. While you don’t want to copy the content of other companies, you likely share a customer base with these organizations, so it is worthwhile to be present in the same spaces as them.
Once you’ve settled on where you will implement your organic social media strategy, you’ll want to select usernames for each platform. You’ll want your username to be consistent with your brand. So if you’re launching an Instagram account for Coca-Cola, it’s best to get the username “@cocacola” or as close to that as possible.
Getting the same username across platforms is also ideal, but you may need to compromise. Say “@cocacola” is available on X but not on Instagram, yet “@cocacolasoda” is available on both platforms. Though “@cocacola” is a cleaner username, having a consistent branded username across multiple platforms takes precedence. So you’d want to go with “@cocacolasoda” instead.
After you select a username for each platform, draft a short and sweet bio that can be used across platforms. If you’re not sure what to put in your bio, feel free to add your mission statement. Be sure to select one profile picture to use across all your accounts.
Conducting a Social Media Audit
If you’re starting new accounts from scratch, you can skip this step. If you’re taking over existing accounts, though, running a social media audit is necessary for launching a new organic social media strategy.
We’ve already written in-depth about social media audits, why they’re important, and how to do them. But here’s a quick recap of the four steps to a strong social media audit:
- List the social media platforms you are active on. Note the usernames, bios, and profile pictures you use for each. If you’re inactive on a platform, now’s the time to decide if it is worth keeping!
- Record your performance on each platform, gathering the metrics available to each post like comments, reach, and likes.
- Group your posts by similar type and average the metrics for each post type. Then, use those averages to determine which type of posts perform best–and which don’t.
- Using your new data, develop S.M.A.R.T. goals to fuel your next social media strategy.
Your audit should give you a sense of what platforms and posts are most popular for your brand. If you’re running your social media accounts alone, you should limit the platforms you’re on to the top two or three. Overall, use your audit to guide your organic social media strategy moving forward.
What to Post on What Platform
You might think the best way to streamline your social media strategy is to simply post the same content across platforms. But each platform serves a different purpose and is optimized for different types of content, so you should plan your posts accordingly.
Instagram started as a photo-sharing app that has evolved into a hub for photo and video content. When posting on Instagram, you want your posts to be visual-focused. Your posts shouldn’t rely on your followers reading your caption to understand them. Post captions should be short and sweet, or, at least, not detract from the value of your visuals. You’ll want to instead focus on including the appropriate hashtags in your captions (which we will get to in a bit).
LinkedIn is a professional networking website that has slowly become more like a social media platform that emphasizes user-to-user engagement. It is mostly a business-focused platform, so your content should reflect that. Users on LinkedIn aren’t searching for the instant gratification of TikTok or Instagram, nor is it a visuals-first platform. That means you can use your LinkedIn account for lengthier, text-heavy posts. Just be sure that your posts are informative and inspire action.
Facebook is not the social media juggernaut it once was, but it is still a pillar of most brands’ online presence. Though it isn’t a professional networking platform like LinkedIn, it does similarly emphasize user-to-user interaction. Unlike LinkedIn, Facebook does place priority on posts with strong visual elements. So your best bet with Facebook is to view the content as a hybrid between LinkedIn and Instagram. Yes, you want your posts on Facebook to feature eye-catching visual content. But Facebook users also appreciate solid written content as well, so don’t shy away from wordier posts to accompany your visuals.
X (formerly known as Twitter)
X is a short-form social media platform with a strict 280-character limit. Posts can be accompanied by photos and videos; however, text-only X posts (formerly known as “tweets”) still have incredible virality. You should use X to share relevant links, quick updates, and video posts. Engaging with followers is also very important to your X strategy, so make sure you dedicate time to interacting with the users on your timeline. .
TikTok
TikTok is the new king of the social media landscape. Though it can be challenging to devise creative content to post, it’s almost a requirement for brands hoping to reach modern audiences to be on TikTok. TikTok is a video platform first, foremost, and almost exclusively. Captions on TikTok are usually only read when the accompanying video specifically calls viewers to read them. Instead, put the majority of your energy into the videos you post. TikTok allows for videos up to 10 minutes long, but we recommend beginning with just 45-second clips.
Always be mindful of who your target audience is and what platforms they use. Pew Research Center has incredibly insightful charts and statistics about the demographics of each major social media platform. Remember, your audience could change depending on what your campaign is. For example, if your organization provides veterinary services to low-income seniors and you’re launching a campaign with the hope of increasing the number of clients, your target audience would be pet-owning seniors and you’d likely want to focus on Facebook. If you’re hoping for more donations from young people, then you’d instead want to focus on TikTok or Instagram.
A quick note on hashtags
Hashtags are used as a categorization and tracking tool so the algorithm knows who to show your content to. This is also an important piece of how platforms can feature “trending topics.” X and Instagram are where hashtags are most effective, and it is best to use between three to five on Instagram posts and no more than two on X. Still, it doesn’t hurt to use branded hashtags on Facebook and LinkedIn–e.g. #ScatenaDanielsCommunications–even though neither platform tracks hashtags as efficiently as X and Instagram.
General Advice for All Platforms
Though every platform is different and you should prioritize making unique content for each, there are some rules of thumb that you can follow as you are starting an organic social media strategy for the first time.
Frequency of Posts
In general, you’ll want to plan to post two to three times a week on each platform. That is a good number that allows you to produce high-quality content regularly without becoming overwhelming.
Content Planning
Make use of content calendars to plan out what, when, and where you will post. You can use social media management tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social, each of which has paid and free account options. You can also use free templates on Google Docs and Google Sheets that will make it much easier to keep a schedule of posts together. Whether you use Google tools or social media management software, having a calendar allows you to plan what goes out and on which platforms, all while drafting and storing your content ahead of time. And make no mistake–you should absolutely draft your content ahead of time, don’t ideate, create, and post all in one day.
Content Creation
For creating your posts, there are a slew of free and premium tools that will really upgrade your content. Canva has become an incredible tool for quickly creating professional-level graphics without the need for the in-depth training needed to master Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. Canva also has beginner-friendly video editing tools. CapCut–which is particularly useful when you want to get in on a popular meme format–is also a great option.
Advice on Generative Artificial Intelligence and Social Media
If you’re running an organic social media strategy on your own, you might feel inclined to leverage generative artificial intelligence tools to draft posts. This is totally fine, so long as you use it correctly. Above all else, avoid copying and pasting whatever your chosen AI tool gives back to you. People are much more savvy to AI-generated content than you may think. You don’t want to gain a reputation as a brand that relies solely on AI for branded content.
Instead, use generative AI as a sounding board and as inspiration. If you use the prompt “Write me a LinkedIn post for Coca-Cola’s new vanilla flavor,” put your own spin on whatever is generated. Yes, that will take more time than just copying and pasting what is given. But, this will still be faster than coming up with posts completely from scratch and will result in more natural-sounding, engaging posts.
We know launching a new organic social media strategy can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re doing it alone. If you follow our guide, though, we promise you can manage it without falling behind. We won’t blame you if you feel like you need some help–in fact, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line if you want us to take a look at revamping your social media presence.