Social media. We all use it, we all know what it is, but when it comes to using it as part of a digital marketing plan, many struggle to utilize it correctly. Not sure where to start? A social media creative brief is the perfect place to begin.
Thinking through strategic details can assist in helping your creative team effectively and efficiently create content that helps achieve campaign goals and attract the right audience to call them into action.
Let’s take a look at a few items to consider including in your brief.
1. Campaign Context
Are you seeking to solve a problem for you audience or brand, or are you reinforcing a branded message? Your campaign should reinforce this goal.
2. Strategic Marketing Goal
Now that you’ve identified the context, cut through a crowded social landscape and bring context into focus with a strategic goal. Campaigns should include objectives that are connected to an actionable and measurable tactic.
3. Target Audience
Understanding how your ideal audience works is one of the most important factors of your campaign. Consider what platforms work best for each personality type and use that info to communicate with them. For example, if it’s important to reach the C-Suite, Facebook and TikTok are not likely to get you there.
4. Campaign Strategy
When thinking of your campaign, what big idea comes to mind? Formulate a strategic statement that clearly outlines how to get your audience engaged in meaningful action. Think who, what, when, where and how.
5. Utilizing the Proper Social Media Channels
Your brand might utilize several social channels. Does using all of them make sense for your campaign? Does each channel reach the correct audience? After you’ve identified which channels to prioritize, what’s the best tactic to use on each platform to achieve your goal? Tactics may need to be customized from channel to channel.
6. Content Pillars and Theme
Your campaign has a message but what does it look like? How does it sound? These concepts should help create and unify an on-brand campaign theme. Social media thrives on dynamic visuals but don’t forget some fantastic copy to bring your theme to life. Current digital trends show that motion-based content gets 49% more engagement than just a photo.
7. Social Publishing Schedule
Now that you’re looking great, use a publishing schedule to think ahead. Research what days and times your audience is most likely to be surfing each channel. Maybe your audience is very active on Twitter multiple times each week at high noon, maybe they don’t like so many branded posts popping up on Facebook. Use that intel to pre-schedule posts through your campaign’s lifespan. Many great sites are available to help pre-schedule posts.
8. Community Activation + Management
So you’ve got their attention. How can you keep them coming back? Think of ways to keep your audience engaged and interacting with your brand. Perhaps you have a limited release product. Can you tease with a promo code or gamification? Maybe you just want to generate engagement. Asking a well-branded question each week could work on the right channel.
9. Paid Social Content
A large campaign goal could see enhanced ROI by adding paid media into the mix. Consider a budget that’s separate from the creative spend. If you choose this route, think about which 1-2 platforms might be most effective at reaching your audience and plan a spend with dynamic content for those channels.
Realize that while a paid campaign temporarily attracts more followers and engagement, organic analytics may appear to fall off when paid media is no longer needed.
10. Projected Timeline. Let’s do this.
Kudos to your team for thinking through logistics and crafting the right pieces. Now let’s plan to roll this puppy out. Create a timeline filled with important milestones to stay on target. identify someone to manage and track it.
Maybe all of this sounds great but you’re still not confident about creating a campaign. No worries, TMC is always here to assist with as much, or as little, social media strategy, content creation, and platform management as your heart desires.
