Social Strategy

Use to set a brand's overall social media strategy — which channels to focus on (and which to ignore), what to achieve, the angle to win, and a realistic operating cadence. The top-level plan that sits above content pillars and the calendar. Run when the user says "social strategy," "social media strategy," "which platforms should I be on," "what's my plan," "should I be on TikTok/LinkedIn," or is starting or resetting their social presence. Reads brand-profile, audience-research, and content-pillars first. Makes real choices and trade-offs — especially what NOT to do — ties goals to the business not vanity metrics, and is honest that WoopSocial has no analytics (measurement is the platforms' native analytics). Produces a social-strategy.md. It names the objective; to turn it into SMART targets, KPIs, and North Star metrics, use goals-and-kpis. Works for any business.

This is the top-level plan: which channels, what for, how to win, and at what cadence. It sits above content-pillars (what themes) and batch-content-plan (what posts) and tells them where to point. Everything downstream inherits the choices made here.

The core idea, and what separates strategy from a to-do list:

Strategy is choices and trade-offs — above all, what not to do. "Be on every platform, post consistently, engage your audience" is not a strategy; it's a list of platitudes that spreads a brand thin and wins nowhere. A real strategy picks the few channels where the audience is and the brand can win, deliberately drops the rest, and commits to one clear objective and a differentiated angle.

When to use this

• Starting a social presence from scratch, or resetting a scattered one.
• Deciding which platforms to be on (and which to quit).
• Before content-pillars / batch-content-plan, to set the objective and channels they serve.

When NOT to use it: if a current social-strategy.md exists and is sound, load it and move on unless the user wants to revisit.

Step 0 — Read the foundation first

Load brand-profile.md, audience-research (audience.md), and content-pillars if present. Strategy is downstream of who you are, who you're for, and what you talk about — without those it's guesswork. Run the missing ones first where it matters.

Step 1 — Set one primary objective (tied to the business)

Pick one primary objective social must serve right now — awareness, audience growth, community, authority/positioning, leads, or sales — chosen from what the business actually needs (a pre-launch startup needs awareness/audience; an established one needs leads/sales). Add at most one secondary. Define a meaningful metric, not a vanity one, and be honest about measurement (see references/goals-and-measurement.md). To cascade the objective into SMART targets, per-channel North Stars, and action thresholds, hand off to goals-and-kpis — this skill names the objective; that one sets the numbers.

Step 2 — Select channels (focus, don't spread)

The central decision. Score each candidate platform on four dimensions (see references/channel-selection.md):

1. Audience presence — is the target audience actually there? (from audience.md)
2. Format fit — does the brand's natural content strength suit it? (don't lead with TikTok if the brand won't make video)
3. Goal fit — does the platform serve the objective?
4. Capacity fit — can the brand sustain quality there?

Pick the 1–3 that win on all four. Name what you're deliberately dropping (or running as repurpose-only maintenance). Most brands should start with one primary channel.

Step 3 — Define the strategic wedge

How does this brand win on its chosen channels, given everyone else? The wedge comes from the brand's POV and positioning — a differentiated angle, a distinctive format, a consistent stance — not "post good content" (that's table stakes, not a wedge). See references/operating-model.md.

Step 4 — Set the operating model

A strategy you can't sustain is a wish. Define (see references/operating-model.md):

• Cadence per chosen channel — realistic, matched to capacity; consistency over volume.
• The content engine — how foundation → pillars → plan → produce → repurpose → schedule fit together.
• Phasing — Phase 1 nail one channel; expand only once it works. Don't launch everywhere.
• Capacity/roles — who makes and who engages, and how much time.

Step 5 — Write the artifact

Produce social-strategy.md: the objective + metric, the chosen channels (and the dropped ones, with reasons), the wedge, the operating model and phasing. Summarize back and invite edits. content-pillars and batch-content-plan read this to stay aligned.

Quality bar — self-check

• Is there one clear objective, tied to the business (not "grow followers" for its own sake)?
• Are channels chosen by the fit framework, with the dropped ones named? (Not "all of them.")
• Is there a real wedge — a differentiated way to win, from the brand's POV?
• Is the operating model sustainable and phased (start focused, then expand)?
• Is measurement honest — meaningful metrics, read from the platforms' native analytics, and no analytics promised that WoopSocial doesn't have?
• Would following this make the brand choose — or just do everything everywhere?

If the "strategy" doesn't say no to anything, it isn't one.

Edge cases

• "We should be on every platform" → push back: focus beats spread; pick where the audience is and the brand can win; name what to drop or run as maintenance.
• Wrong-format pressure (wants TikTok but won't/can't make video) → match channels to the brand's real content strengths, or plan to build the capability first.
• No clear business goal → help define one from the brand's stage; a strategy without an objective optimizes nothing.
• Already spread thin across 6 platforms → recommend consolidating to the 1–2 that work; it's often a subtraction strategy.
• B2B vs B2C → channel and goal differ sharply (LinkedIn/X authority+leads vs IG/TikTok awareness); use the audience profile.
• Measurement expectations → be clear WoopSocial publishes; measurement is the platforms' native analytics (read manually) — don't promise dashboards.

Related skills

• brand-profile, audience-research, content-pillars — read first; supply the inputs.
• goals-and-kpis — turns this strategy's objective into SMART targets, per-channel North Stars, and thresholds ("set our goals/KPIs" requests route there).
• content-pillars — the themes that serve this strategy.
• batch-content-plan — turns the strategy + pillars into a calendar.
• cross-platform-repurposing — makes a focused multi-channel strategy sustainable.
• The platform-growth skills (instagram-growth, linkedin-growth, …) — execute per channel.

References

• references/channel-selection.md — the channel-fit framework and platform strengths.
• references/goals-and-measurement.md — objectives, meaningful vs vanity metrics, honest measurement.
• references/operating-model.md — the content engine, cadence, phasing, the wedge in practice.
• references/examples.md — worked strategies (with real trade-offs) across business types.