This is What’s Missing From Your Social Strategy
Why the deck outlining what to post and where... isn’t really working.
Whatever happened to the meaning of “strategy” in social media?
Maybe you've noticed this, too:
In the race to keep up, marketers began chasing virality and vanity metrics. Many practitioners lost sight of the art of strategy development… or never really learned how to apply it to social media in the first place. Even as social matured as a marketing channel, “strategy” became reduced to instructions for “what to do and when,” splintered across a dozen platforms and channels.
So now when a potential client sends me the “strategy deck” they already paid someone else to create, I have to find a nice way to break it to them:
“This is a list of best practices for each platform. It’s a channel strategy and a posting plan, but it’s not a social strategy.”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with having an execution plan. You do in fact need one. The problem is when the “channel strategy” is built without an actual social strategy as its foundation.
In today’s newsletter I’m going to clear up the difference.
We’ll cover:
- Why most channel strategies and posting plans fail
- The difference between an actual social strategy and a channel strategy
- How to develop a social strategy that serves your goals above the platform’s
Why you should resist the urge to zoom in
When we’re chasing better social media results, our first impulse is to zoom in.
And of course. We’re flooded with LinkedIn gurus and Instagram coaches drawing our attention to the daily minutiae of gaming the algorithms. Not to mention all the “social-first” proponents singing the praises of digital-native campaigns.
But the problem is, we’re skipping a step.
When you go straight to channel strategy without first defining your big-picture social strategy, there are consequences:
- Your content serves the platform, not your own goals. You’re at the whims of the algorithms — posting to “be visible” or “raise awareness” — but you haven’t clearly defined what you want people to feel, believe, and do.
- You lose control of your brand’s perception.
Chasing “what works” can be rewarding in the short term, but in the long run, disjointed creative and all-over-the-map messaging can damage your credibility.
- Leadership loses faith in social media.
Reports full of vanity metrics fall flat. When leaders can’t see how social drives revenue, reputation, or recruitment, budgets wind up on the chopping block.
So what's the alternative?
Fly up to 30,000 feet instead
I was a baby strategist at The Richards Group when I began to truly grasp the difference between channel strategy and social strategy.
Listening to my colleagues present at our weekly meetings, I heard very little platform-specific jargon. Clicks, views or retweets were brought up only towards the end of their strategy decks. Instead, the emphasis was on people. What the audience cared about. What they needed to believe. And how the brand could meet them there.
They weren’t zoomed in. They were flying 30,000 feet high.
By comparison, many attempts at strategy start down at 10,000 feet, and stay there. What channels should we be on? What kind of content should we post? How often?
Those ticky-tack decisions can only take your brand so far. If the truest north star in your channel strategy is, “because that’s what works right now,” you’ll always be chasing the next trend — never gaining real traction as a leading org in your category. All the posting in the world won’t help, because your tactics are disconnected from the mission.
That’s why before you can fix what’s not working, you need to zoom out and look at your 30,000-foot social strategy.
What the heck even is a social strategy?
Your social strategy defines the why and the direction, helping your entire org understand why social media is resourced and prioritized, and what it’s meant to achieve.
It includes:
- The role of social — how exactly it supports revenue, recruitment, or reputation
- Audience insight — what they care about, what motivates them
- Big-picture goals — what you want people to believe, feel, think, and do
- Broad strategies — what you need to do to achieve those goals
- High-level tactics — the specific action steps that advance each strategy
- Measures of success — tied to tangible outcomes, not just vanity metrics
Okay, so what exactly is a channel strategy?
Your channel strategy defines the channel-specific, tactical expression of that deeper social strategy — how your brand shows up day-to-day across platforms.
It typically includes:
- Channel roles — the unique benefits and risks of being on each platform
- Audience behaviors – who you speak to on each platform and how they engage
- Creative approaches — what formats and which content pillars you’ll prioritize
- Content standards — specific visual & copy guidelines, word counts, etc.
- Cadence and scheduling — when and how often to post
- Performance metrics — what to track that ladders up to your bigger goals
How many ‘but whys’ does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?
Even once you know the difference, it’s easy to confuse goals and tactics for strategies (and your social strategy includes all three).
I remember when the subtle differences really crystallized for me. I was drafting a strategic framework for The Salvation Army, and had written “Increase positive sentiment about TSA” as a goal. Talking it through with my boss John Keehler, I saw how that wasn’t actually the end game. It was just one high-level strategy supporting our ultimate goal of increasing donations.
Many years and many dozens of strategies later, teasing apart the how and the why is still an essential part of my process.
Though by now I often nail it on the first draft, choosing the right words for every piece of the puzzle can still take some grappling.
And my framework for that is simple:
- Identify your audience segments. Get specific about who you need to reach and what each group needs to know, feel, or do before they’ll take action.
- Define roles and goals for social. How exactly does social media connect to marketing, recruitment, or even public service needs for your organization?
- Keep asking “but why?” Question every “goal” again and again, peeling back layers until you get to the heart of it — the deeper motivation.
- Use conversational language. No jargon. It should sound less like ticky-tack platform best practices, and more like a rally cry that anyone can understand.
- Bring in thought partners. Other people might see things you don’t, so even if you’re a one-person team, talk it through with someone before it’s considered final. (Forward them this email so they understand the assignment.)
What your channel strategy can’t see
A zoomed-in channel strategy says:
“We need to grow followers on Instagram.”
So the team spends weeks testing Reels formats, swapping hashtags, and posting more often. Maybe they even go viral once or twice. But since the creative and messaging aren’t aligned, any new followers are unlikely to represent the brand’s ideal audience.
A zoomed-out strategy starts somewhere else:
“Our audience needs to believe we understand their daily challenges.”
From there, the focus shifts: talk to clients, learn what those challenges really look like, and create content that speaks to that reality. The posts may be fewer and travel less far, but they earn trust — and the percentage who choose to follow is higher.
When you start at 30,000 feet, you see the whole landscape of possibilities — not just the field in front of you.
The brain follows the brief. If your starting point is “how do we get more engagement?” you’ll keep solving for activity. If your starting point is “what needs to change for our audience to act?” you’ll start using social as a true lever for growth.
So before you fix your content calendar, fix your gaze.
Keep asking “but why” until you reach cruising altitude.
That’s where all the potential pathways come to light.
Until next time,
