How to Build a Social Strategy To Drive Engagement

Our latest episode features Katie Marylander, the Director of Global Social Marketing for camera and video software company GoPro. From cameras to apps to accessories, the company has made its mark on adventure-goers and film enthusiasts looking to capture life as it happens. Katie manages the social strategy for the brand and is responsible for helping bring the GoPro community’s content to life. Looking over more than 70 regional accounts, Katie is well-versed in figuring out what content and strategies work best, and then put them into action.

Watch Katie’s episode, and read on for tips that will help you create a social media strategy for your business.

1. Post content regularly to your feed.

If you want to grow your business or online presence, post frequently and consistently to keep your fans engaged and your brand top of mind. Katie keeps the GoPro community excited by regularly posting a mix of content each week, from product launches to epic footage from around the world.

“One of the simplest pieces of advice I can give is to have a regular beat of content being published,” Katie says. “Publishing with a regular cadence can keep your community really engaged, which helps the algorithm keep your content leveling to the top of people's feeds. And then the more often they're engaging with it, the more often it's at the top of theirs.”

Katie keeps track of all upcoming content by scheduling posts in advance using a content calendar. This way, she can stay organized and focus on keeping track of content performance.

Take a free course from Facebook Blueprint to learn how to build a content calendar.

2. Have a clear goal on social — and stick with it.

Deciding what goals you want to achieve through your content is an important place to start, as it can help you build a strategy for posting content and engaging with customers. Knowing that GoPro sells cameras, Katie built her social strategy around user-generated content (UGC).

“At GoPro, UGC drives our strategy,” Katie says. “It's where most of our content comes from, and can be anything that a user captures authentically that we didn't pay for or produce ourselves. Our followers can just take our product and capture the content that they want.”

If a customer posts about your business, your products or your customer service, you can build a relationship with that customer by requesting permission to repost their content.

If you’re highlighting specific people in your caption or comment, don’t forget to mention them by adding their username in your post. This way, they’ll be notified and see the tag. Then, you can repost content to your stories, feed or even archive them in your Saved tab.

Take a free course from Facebook Blueprint to learn how to establish relationships with your customers, or read on for more tips on how to set up a creative plan for Instagram.

3. Aim for one action from a consumer.

You may find that certain posts receive more likes, while others receive more comments; this is normal. When thinking about your feed as a whole, each piece of content can offer something different to your customers on the other side. Katie and her team found that video content was reaching more people, but it wasn’t receiving as many likes as a photo post.

“We have a theory that you get one action out of a consumer,” Katie says. “So the one action might be a view, it might be a comment, it might be a like. If you post a video and you're like, ‘I only got 50 likes,’ you might've gotten 500 views and we're still going to count that, because that counts as the action that they engaged with you.”

Katie can learn about how each piece of content is performing through Instagram Insights, which provide metrics on all of your content from the last seven days. When a post or story is liked, commented on or saved frequently, it could also perform well as an ad. You can then use the Promote feature on Instagram to get content that your audience loves to a new, larger group of people.

Take a free course from Facebook Blueprint to learn tips on how to drive customer engagement through content, or read more about how Instagram Insights can help achieve business goals.

If Katie’s story inspired you, take your social skills to the next level with our social media marketing course, created in partnership with online course provider Coursera. You’ll receive a shareable certificate upon completion. Catch the rest of the Social Skills episodes on Facebook Watch.