Welcome to 2022! A new year means taking some time to reflect on aspects of our lives we would like to change, improve, leave behind, or keep as is. It’s also a great opportunity to give your digital strategy the same treatment! The way people interact on various platforms has changed immensely in light of the pandemic and will continue to do so in the oft-invoked (and kind of ominous) “new normal.” That makes it all the more important to make sure that your digital strategy is up to date, in shape, and ready to meet audiences and goals in 2022.
Year in Review
Analyzing performance and implementing changes accordingly is the backbone of good digital strategy any time of the year. So take a look at what goals you set last year and what your analytics looked like. Are there any audience behaviors or preferences that you can capitalize on and incorporate into your strategy moving forward? What KPIs did you hit? How long did users spend on your website? What is your newsletter open rate? What didn’t work, and why?
This can also mean revisiting mission statements, “About” sections, values, and the general “why” of your brand to really hone in on what makes you unique. It’s crucial to understand your past in order to guide your future in the direction you want.
Understand your audience
The most crucial part of any digital strategy — or any marketing strategy, really — is the audience. And no, your audience can’t be “everyone.” Knowing your audience means choosing them, because the more specific you are about the consumers you want to reach out to, the better you can target them.
Take your audience data and create consumer personas. Get to know them (or, you know, a fictionalized version of them) so you can understand how to reach them.
Understand your lane
Brands don’t exist in a vacuum (except Hoover, maybe). Get to know your terrain and do research on your competitors — big and small. Understand where the overlap is in the Venn diagram between you and other brands like you, and definitely understand the parts that don’t overlap. What are you offering that other brands do not or cannot? Stay up to date on the trends of both your industry and your consumers.
Set goals
Now that you know what’s working, what’s not, who you’re trying to reach, and who you’re competing with, you can start to put together a vision for your path forward. Where do you need to grow? What new platforms do you want to incorporate? How can you better engage with your audience?
Setting goals can be overwhelming because there are endless directions and potentials for growth. So don’t forget to keep it SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic/relevant, and timely.
Time to strategize
Strategizing how you will meet your goals includes setting KPIs (key performance indicators) and benchmarks, breaking down which platforms you’ll be using (and how much time/money will be devoted to each one), brainstorming or at least plotting out campaigns, and budgeting.
Strategizing does not mean going full blast with every option possible. It’s selectively deploying campaigns on specific platforms at specific times to best meet your audience where they’re at. If you have way more followers on Instagram than on Twitter, exert your effort and budget accordingly.
Break it down
As with any project, breaking things up into small attainable benchmarks is key. The GSOT approach — Goals, Strategy, Objective, Tactic — is a great approach to creating small, easy steps in service of your overarching vision. In the same way that strategy helps you understand how to attain your goal, objectives are the even more tangible and specific aspects of a strategy, whether it’s a certain growth percentage or a specific number of followers desired by the end of the year. From there, you can devise your tactics, which are the actual tasks that help you reach your goal.
Content strategy
Now we get to the fun part: content! Once again, research is the most valuable part of the process. Check out what kind of visuals are en vogue, watch what’s going viral, and learn how people respond to competitors’ content.
Create a striking and unique brand voice (both visual and text-based) that can guide your content. If your brand was a person, what would they be like? What is this persona’s relationship to your consumer? Their favorite funny teacher? Their cool aunt?
As you’re creating content, the content calendar Is your best friend. A microcosm of the broader digital strategy timeline, the content calendar helps keep posts intentional, allows for planning for holiday content, and of course keeps the team on the same page.
Enact!
So you’ve got your tactics, objectives, and content strategy ready to go according to your timeline. It’s time to jump in and enact the plan. Schedule the posts. Send the email blasts. Host the Zoom panels. Deploy the sponsored ads.
Digital strategy will vary depending on your industry and brand, but the basics are the same across the board. Know your goals. Know your audience. Look at the data. Adjust accordingly. And, of course, make sure that you’re in open communication with your team. Here’s to an effective strategy in 2022!
About the author.
Sam Mani writes about work, creativity, wellness, and equity — when she’s not cooking, binging television, or annoying her cat.
