Social media strategy can take many forms, but the most important thing to remember about a strategy is that it isn’t a one-hit-wonder (as many Christmas songs rearing their head throughout December tend to be). 

Strategies are living and breathing, and should take on new forms as a brand's goals pivot – or as the social media landscape evolves. With this in mind, there are five key areas to think about as we approach 2024, to ensure you’re staying relevant, staying exciting, and, ultimately, staying social-savvy. 

1. Dust off your existing strategy, and ensure it still packs a punch in 2024

As the saying goes, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. With a bit of chopping and changing, you can make your existing strategy documents work even harder for you in the year ahead.

It probably goes without saying, but any strategy document that’s over a year old should be revisited and reviewed. Key things to check and update include:

• Channels - Ensuring you’re present where your key audience is
• Social-first content - To avoid fatigue and bring wow-factor however you show up
• Performance – If results aren’t singing, it’s time to weave in new ideas
• KPIs - Are they up to date and reflective of what you’re doing?

Next you can take learnings and insights from the year and use them to inform your key focus areas for 2024. Explore what’s been most loved by audiences, what might have dropped off, and ensure you update your competitor review too – analysing the successes and weaknesses of competitor brands, and benchmarking your performance against theirs.

2. New strategy, who dis? Hit the ground running in 2024 with a social media strategy

Taking a whole new direction with your social media strategy – or perhaps never had one at all? Once your goals and objectives have been decided and/or updated, the rest can follow.

Channel, content and community management tactics should be developed to align with new priorities or a shift in focus. This is where end-of-year insights are particularly valuable, helping to inform your new direction by digging into what your audience really wants to see in the year ahead. 

3. Thinking of pastures new? Captivate audiences and fuel brand love with a new channel strategy

With new channels launching all the time, it can be difficult to know which are worth paying attention to – and where to focus your efforts.

This is where a channel strategy is key. This ensures not only an effective, well-thought-out launch, but should cover always-on content too – laddering back to any existing strategy to ensure the new channel doesn’t go too off-piste.

4. It’s time to plan your peak moments, and turn them into thumb-stopping campaigns

Awareness days and events are bread and butter parts of content calendars. But, to create an effective strategy, you should look beyond them and include all peak moments through the year – from product launches, to seasonal sentiment and more. 

Bringing insights in here can take your strategy to the next level. Look for previous data on what sticks throughout the year, analyse previous campaign results, and identify sentiment and shifts in audience mindset to build a complete picture of exactly how to approach your next peak moment campaign.

5. Bringing a burst of creativity, to make sure your audiences are engaged, and you are too!

And finally, have fun! 

While social strategies can feel like a functional body of work, they should inspire (and include) creativity too. Workshops or ideation sessions are a great way to give content a new lease of life, offering a space for trends to be flagged, ideas to come to fruition, and different perspectives to feed in – meaning a more inclusive and encompassing approach.

At Battenhall, a workshop will include a mixture of people from across the business to ensure all bases are covered – from project managers to social media specialists, designers, copywriters and beyond.

‍To explore how our team can help with your 2024 social media strategy, email hello@battenhall.com.