Social media for businesses is undoubtedly one of the most popular and successful ways to boost a company’s visibility, reach out to a larger audience, and sell more products or services.
This, though, can only happen when companies follow a specific social media strategy, based on a social media creative brief.
Yes, because creating compelling and exciting content that resonates with your audience while feeling fresh, original, and on-point, requires a lot of strategic thinking, planning, analyzing, and measuring.
Whether you operate in the enterprise communications industry, in the retail sector, in the food and drinks arena, or in any other field, your social media creative team is going to be an essential asset for your success.
But how can they put together a creative brief that hits the nail every time you launch a new campaign on social media? Keep reading and you’ll find out how.
What Is a Social Media Creative Brief, Exactly?
Before we explore the benefits and features of a solid and concise social media brief, let’s try to better understand what this type of brief is, exactly.
When we talk about “social media creative brief” we refer to a document that contains detailed information on the specific strategy to follow ahead of the launch of a social media marketing campaign.
This brief is, essentially, the foundation of an effective, structured campaign that hugely increases the chances of success once the campaign is live.
Companies within all sectors and industries can – and should – have a social media presence and, as a consequence, they should implement social media creative briefs each time they plan a new launch.
If you’re a freelance marketer looking to get social media clients, it’s important to understand the benefits of a social media creative brief. A concise, well-thought-out brief can help increase the chances of success for a social media marketing campaign. Companies across all sectors and industries should implement social media creative briefs for new launches, as outlined in our white paper on the topic.
Whether you are about to promote a new data engineering course, a skincare range, or healthy food for pets, the right social media creative brief can help you hit your targets.
Free to use image sourced from Unsplash
The Top Benefits of Having a Solid Social Media Creative Brief
As we mentioned, the main reason why companies should put together a social media creative brief is to provide structure to a social media campaign and increase the chances of success.
However, there is much more to be gained from a concise, well-thought-out social media creative brief, as we are about to explain.
It Aligns the Entire Team
While your social media team is likely formed of a few social media marketers and a social media marketing manager, it’s very possible that these professionals will interact with members of other teams as well as, potentially, external stakeholders.
During these interactions, a unified social media creative brief can function as a solid point of reference for everyone – from social media experts to salespeople and more.
This is very important, as it helps your entire teams to get aligned and work together towards a clear and common goal.
It Provides Clarity
Writing a concise social media creative brief helps companies to identify exactly their challenges, goals, and strategies, which in turn offers a much higher level of clarity that would simply not be possible without a creative brief.
When all these aspects have been clearly established, the social media team (and any other stakeholders) will be able to get to work on the campaign in a much more structured, efficient, and productive way.
Image Sourced from Asana
It Helps You Focus on Your End Goals
One of the most crucial benefits of a social media creative brief is that it allows you to narrow down your plans and goals in order to pinpoint exactly what you are aiming to achieve through your social media marketing campaign.
Without such focus, it would be almost impossible to align your entire team and get everyone on board, which ultimately can hinder your ability to turn your social media campaign into a success.
It Allows You to Zoom in on Your Audience
With a social media creative brief, you will also be able to identify your exact target audience, which presents a series of invaluable opportunities both as you shape the rest of the brief and at the time of launching your campaign.
Knowing who your campaign is for, in fact, helps you to decide on the specific messaging that you want to create, as well as utilize a language and tone of voice that resonate with your audience. Keep in mind that your language and tone should also align with your competitors’ strategies. For instance, if you are promoting a new video conferencing tool, you may want to compare to apps like 8×8 to highlight your unique selling points.
As a result, your audience will be much more attracted to the content of your campaign, which will help you to gather more visibility and profitability.
It Keeps Your Brand Coherent and Your Messaging Consistent
A social media creative brief shouldn’t be a one-off, standalone asset that your social media team creates separately from other marketing campaigns.
It should, in fact, be fully integrated with your overall marketing strategy, as this is the only way to guarantee a coherent brand identity and consistent messaging across different channels of communication.
As you know, having a solid brand is one of the stepping stones to achieving the trust, credibility, and authoritativeness that your company needs to thrive.
Free to use image sourced from Unsplash
It Can Be Automated (and Save You Time)
If the idea of having to put together a social media creative brief every time a new launch approaches feels a bit daunting or time-consuming, then be reassured by the fact that these briefs can be automated, saving you a lot of time and resources.
After exploring various social media brief automation tools like Platform.sh, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social, it’s important to note that there are also Buffer alternatives available that offer similar features and benefits. Some popular Buffer alternatives include Later, CoSchedule, and MeetEdgar.
Tools like Platform.sh, for example, provide you with social media brief templates that you can populate with the right type of information each time and send out to your entire team at the touch of a button.
The Perfect, Concise Social Media Creative Brief: What to Include?
For a social media creative brief to be truly effective, it’s essential that you keep things concise and to the point. This means that, in just a few, short sections you’ll need to incorporate quite a lot of information that will ultimately underpin your social media content strategy.
So, what exactly should your concise social media creative brief include, then? Let’s find it out below.
A Bit About Your Brand
Just because your social media team works for you, it doesn’t necessarily mean that every single member of the team knows enough about your company.
For example, how about that new team leader that you have very recently hired? Or an older recruit who might have come back after a sabbatical or medical leave?
If you want everyone to work towards the same goals, and represent your brand in the same, consistent way, then you will need to start your creative brief with a blurb about your company.
Make it very snappy and, if possible, try to use figures and numbers that can catch the reader’s attention. You could format the content as an infographic, or write a slightly longer paragraph that reads more like a story – the choice is entirely yours.
Your Target Audience
The second, crucial element of your social media brief is, of course, your audience. Knowing exactly who your campaign is trying to attract is instrumental to figuring out how to attract them, and why.
For example, if your social media campaign intends to promote your new and innovative hybrid working solutions, you will likely need to target a very specific audience, such as digital nomads and remote professionals.
Similarly, if you are selling activewear for amateur athletes you will want to narrow down your audience to the specific customers who have an active interest in practicing sports and exercising on a regular basis.
Your Goals and Objectives
Now that you have briefly told your brand’s story and identified your target customers, it’s time to consider what you want to accomplish with your social media campaign.
Do you want to grow your Instagram following? Are you looking to enter a new market? Target a different demographic? Or, perhaps, you are trying to exceed your last quarter’s great sales results.
Whatever your goals are, you should state them clearly in your social media creative brief.
The best way to create the goals section of your social media creative brief is to make your goals ‘smart’.
How? Simply follow these guidelines.
S: Specific. First of all, your goals should be VERY specific. Yes, you are writing a concise brief, but you should still single out exactly what that brief is going to help you achieve. Try to steer clear from vague and generic language such as “Improve sales” or “Grow social media following” and opt for much more specific goals, like “Boost sales by 5% in the next quarter” or “Grow social media following by 10% in the next four weeks”.
M: Measurable. Following on from the previous point, it’s also important that your goals should be easy to measure. After all, how can you determine whether or not a campaign was successful, if you can’t measure its impact on your business? So, work out a way to gather, store, and analyze data, and make sure that you keep re-assessing your campaign based on your most recent findings.
A: Attainable. You might be tempted to go all in and set yourself crazy ambitious goals, but the truth is that it’s best to start simple and go steady. Does your Instagram account currently have 10,000 followers? Good, then an attainable goal could be to try and grow it until it reaches 15,000, instead of, for example, 50,000.
R: Relevant. Looking at what your competitors do in terms of social media can be useful – but don’t make an obsession out of it. At the end of the day, your goals and results are yours alone, and they should be meaningful and relevant to your brand.
T: Time-bound. Just as your campaign will (in all likelihood) have a set launch date, so should your campaign goals and expected results. After all, if you launch a social media campaign at Christmas, you probably won’t be interested in waiting until the following summer to see some results, right?
Image Sourced from Blog Hubspot
Your Language and Tone of Voice
Something else that your social media brief should include is the type of language and tone of voice to use throughout your campaign.
While this is a crucial aspect, it sometimes gets neglected – to the detriment of the campaign itself.
For example, if your campaign is promoting a new workflow orchestration tool (click here if you are wondering: “what is workflow orchestration”?), you will certainly need to use a different language compared to a company who intends to launch a series of all-inclusive vacation packages.
Therefore, make sure that you invest some time into coming up with the right language and voice for your campaign, write it in your brief clearly and concisely, and ensure that everyone involved in the campaign is fully on board with using it across all touchpoints.
Insights from Your Older (and Successful) Social Media Campaigns
This last section is important but, admittedly, optional. If you choose to include it, remember to keep it short and only highlight the essential points.
If this is not your first social media campaign, it might be useful to look back at some of the most successful ones and identify what worked particularly well.
Was it the fact that you nailed your target audience? Or, perhaps, your language and messaging were on point? Did you come up with a fun, cool strategy to drive more social media engagement?
Whatever it was, it can be helpful to include it at the end of your social media creative brief so that your entire team can draw on it for ideas and inspiration.
If you’re a freelance marketer looking to get social media clients, it’s important to understand the benefits of a social media creative brief. A concise, well-thought-out brief can help increase the chances of success for a social media marketing campaign. Companies across all sectors and industries should implement social media creative briefs for new launches. So, if you’re looking to attract clients who are planning to launch a social media marketing campaign, it’s worth highlighting the benefits of a solid social media creative brief in the introduction.
Image Sourced from Sprout Social
Write Concise and Compelling Social Media Creative Briefs, Every Time
Social media content is one of the most powerful and effective ways to promote your company’s products or services. In order for your content to truly work for you, you need to use a social media creative brief.
With this type of brief, you will be able to identify a series of crucial aspects of an upcoming social media campaign – such as your target audience, your objectives, and your overall messaging – that, ultimately, allow your campaign to hit the mark.
In our guide, we illustrated what a social media creative brief is, why it’s beneficial, and how you can create one – in a concise and compelling way.
Are you ready to turn your next social media campaign into a triumph?
