Social content strategy

What a social content strategy is

A social content strategy is a written decision about which social platforms your business will use, which it will stop using, and what each surviving account is for. It names the audience on each one, the kinds of post that go there, how often, and who writes them. It is three or four pages, and most of the value sits in the part that says no.

It is the social-only version of channel strategy, which makes the same decision across everything: the blog, email, social, video, print, events. If you are weighing social against email and a newsletter, you want the broader piece. If you have already decided social matters and the question is which platforms and what on each, this is the one.

It is not a plan of posts with dates on it. That is a social calendar, and it comes afterwards, because there is no point scheduling a fortnight of posts onto an account that should be closed.

Who this is for

A business running four or five accounts badly. There is usually a Facebook page updated most weeks, an Instagram account with eleven posts and a gap since last summer, an X account nobody has logged into in two years, a LinkedIn company page that reposts the blog, and a TikTok somebody set up during a quiet month. Between them they consume an hour or two a week and produce nothing anyone can point to.

The second case is a business about to start and sensibly unwilling to start on five platforms at once. The third is a business where one platform clearly works and the owner wants to know whether to double the effort there or spread it.

You do not need this if you already know which platform matters and simply need the posts written. Where that platform is LinkedIn, go straight to the posts themselves. Where it is anything else, go to social copywriting. Paying me to confirm a decision you have already made is not a good use of the money.

What gets looked at

• Your accounts as they stand. Every account, its follower count, the date of the last post, what has been posted over the last year, and what got a response. Including the accounts you had forgotten exist.
• Where your buyers are. Not where the population is, but where the people who actually pay you spend time in a professional or buying frame of mind. A trade supplier and a bakery are not on the same platforms, whatever the general figures say.
• What each platform rewards. Every platform chooses what to show, and each one favours something different: video on some, conversation on others, personal accounts over company pages almost everywhere. Reach follows those preferences, and a plan that ignores them wastes the posting.
• The hours you really have. The honest number, from the person who will do it. Two platforms done properly beat five done occasionally, every time.
• What to do with what you close. An abandoned account is worse than no account. Each one gets a decision: delete, archive with a final post pointing elsewhere, or keep as a placeholder with a complete profile and nothing else.

What you get

The decision. Two or three pages naming the platforms you keep, the platforms you close, and the reasoning for each in language you can repeat to a business partner who disagrees. The closures are the part people argue with, so they carry the most evidence.

A page per surviving platform. Who is on it, what that account is for, the kinds of post that suit it, the realistic frequency, who writes and who approves, and what a post there should never do.

The wind-down note. For each account being closed, the exact steps and the final post, so nobody is left with a page that says the business stopped caring in March.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A three-branch Ontario flooring company has five accounts. Facebook has two thousand followers and most of the enquiries. Instagram has four hundred and the best photographs in the business sitting unused on installers' phones. LinkedIn is a company page posting links. There is an X account from 2019 and a YouTube channel with one video.

The decision keeps two. Facebook stays, because that is where the domestic customers are and where the enquiries already arrive. Instagram stays and gets more, because finished floors photograph well and the raw material is free. LinkedIn moves from the company page to the owner's personal account, because the commercial contracts come through people rather than pages. X is deleted. YouTube keeps its profile and its one video, and nothing more is promised. The hours freed by closing two accounts go into three posts a week on Instagram instead of one a month. Five accounts become two and a half, one page each, one number tracked: enquiries naming a platform.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Which accounts exist, who has been posting, what you think is working, and how much time there genuinely is each week. No charge.
2. Access. Viewer access to each account, so I can read the last year rather than take your word for it, plus anything you know about where enquiries come from.
3. The work. Five to eight working days. Most of it is reading a year of posts on accounts nobody has looked at in order.
4. The argument. A call of about an hour on the draft. Closing an account is an emotional decision and it is better argued out loud than by email.
5. Delivery. The final document, in a format you can edit, with the wind-down note as a separate page for whoever will do it.

What it costs

A social content strategy is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because two accounts and eight accounts are not the same amount of reading. Where the question is broader than social, the whole content plan may be the better buy, and I will say so rather than sell you the narrower piece. The pricing page shows the four ways of working. The number is agreed in writing before anything starts.

What happens next

Once the platforms are settled, the work is posting on them, which is captions and posts written per platform, or posts from a personal account where the strategy pointed that way. The accounts you keep usually need their bios rewritten, since they were filled in years ago and the business has changed: that is profile and bio copy. And the frequency you agreed needs dates against it, which is the social calendar. This decision is complete work on its own, and nothing further is assumed.