Do you actually need a social media strategy?
why the 'no strategy' myth is misleading small businesses
the tl;dr: You can't grow on social media without a strategy, I’ve tried and failed at it. What people call 'no strategy' is usually just a strategy that isn't written down. Here's what a social media strategy actually is, why the 60-page doc exists, and what small businesses really need.
I saw a LinkedIn post recently, someone hits 5k new followers, and she credits it to 'just posting,’ and literally says she has no strategy - it comes off as strategy is optional.
But I want to gently push back on that. because the advice sounds freeing but it's actually a bit misleading, especially if you're a small business owner trying to work out what to do next.
what people think a social media strategy is
When most people hear the word 'strategy', they picture a 70-page deck. slides, brand pillars, a competitor audit, a content matrix, the works. that's what an agency or a freelancer delivers to a brand so they can really capture the essence of it.
But that document is the deliverable. It isn't the strategy itself.
what a social media strategy actually is
A strategy is the thinking behind your content. it's the answers to three simple questions:
who are you talking to?
what are you talking about?
how often and where are you showing up?
That's audience, content pillars and cadence. Add those together and you've got a working social media strategy. No fancy deck required.
why the 'no strategy' post proves my point
When I actually broke down what this poster said, she had all of it:
She knew how often she wanted to post and stuck to the schedule. That's cadence.
She knew what she wanted to talk about. Her writing, her role, her positioning around AI. That's content pillars.
She knew who she was talking to and where to find them. That's audience.
Cadence plus pillars plus audience equals a strategy. She had one. It just wasn't sitting in a 60-page document. And maybe the post was to get conversation flowing, and honestly? I think it works, because I haven’t stopped thinking about it since - maybe it was the equivalent as LinkedIn ragebait.
when you're the strategy
If you're running your own account, you don't need a big written doc because you are the strategy. You know the product. You know who you want to talk to. You know the positioning because you live it.
That isn't the absence of strategy. That's strategy so internalised it doesn't need writing down.
when the 60-page doc does matter
To be clear, the big strategy document isn't pointless. It exists for a reason.
Especially when you've got an agency, multiple team members and whole departments working on one client, you need a written strategy so everyone's on the same page. It's there for alignment across humans.
Or if you’re like me and love to go off on a tangent or are pulling out your hair thinking “what on earth do i post?!” a strategy doc would absolutely keep you on track.
But when it's literally just you, your tone of voice, your page and your face, you don't necessarily need it written down, if that works for you. You still have a strategy though. It just lives in your head.
the real takeaway for small business owners
Strategy isn't dead. It just isn't always a deck.
If you're posting and it's working, you already have a strategy.
If you're posting and it isn't working, the fix is usually clarifying your audience, pillars or cadence. Not throwing more content at the wall.
A strategy is the thinking. The document is just where the thinking gets stored so other people can execute it.
FAQs
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Not necessarily. If you're the only one posting and you're clear on your audience, content pillars and cadence, that thinking counts as your strategy. Writing it down helps if you're bringing anyone else in or if you keep forgetting what you're meant to be posting about.
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Just three things: who you're talking to, what you're talking about, and how often and where you're posting. Once you can answer all three clearly, you've got a strategy.
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When you've got a team involved, when you're onboarding an agency or freelancer (and a lot of the time, they’ll be the ones to provide it!) or when your business is scaling and you need everyone aligned. That's when the written doc earns its keep.