You know that moment when you open a blank content calendar for a business, and you genuinely don’t know whether to start with the logo, the hashtags, the posting schedule or a little cry?
Social media marketing right now is overwhelming as all hell. And if you’re brand new to it, it feels a bit like being thrown in the deep end and told to learn a new language at the same time.
So let me show you what I’d actually do. I’ve been a digital marketing strategist and educator since 2017, I’ve taught more than 240,000 students, and what follows is the exact order I’d work through if I were hired tomorrow to build a social media presence for a business that has absolutely nothing.
And here’s the bit that surprises people… none of the first three steps involve making a single post.
The short version
Start social media marketing by researching, not posting. Look at what competitors are doing, agree what the business actually wants from social media, and check the rest of the business can cope with new customers. Only then build a strategy around the time and budget you really have, claim your handles everywhere but focus on one or two platforms, and batch your work by task rather than making one post a day.
- Study competitors internationally, plus businesses with a different model but the same audience, because that’s where the surprising ideas come from.
- Ask the client whether they’d rather have 40 new clients or 4,000 new followers in six months. The answer changes the entire plan.
- Social media won’t fix a broken website, a bad sales process or non-existent email marketing, so check those first.
- Pick one or two platforms and do them properly, rather than doing five of them badly.
- Batch by stage: one day planning, one day filming, one day editing, one day writing captions.
You can watch the whole thing below, or keep reading, both cover the same ground.
Jump to a bit of the video:
1:01 Analyse the competition
4:37 Set clear social media goals
7:35 Analyse the business as a whole
9:16 Develop a social media strategy
14:05 Secure your accounts
17:47 Outsource what you can
20:17 Optimise your workflow
Step 1: Why start by looking at the competition?
Because in an industry you don’t know well, competitors will tell you in about an hour what would otherwise take you weeks to work out. What platforms are worth being on, what content people in that world actually respond to, and where the gaps are.
But I don’t mean competitors in the narrow sense. If I’m hired by a local accounting firm, I’m not just looking at the other accountants down the road. I’d look at accounting firms internationally, because someone somewhere is doing this brilliantly and they’re not your competition at all.
And then I’d go one step further and look at businesses with a completely different model but the SAME audience. If that accounting firm wants more small business owners, I’d go and look at what marketing agencies and financial planners are posting… because those small business owners are already following them. You never know when your best idea is going to come from a really unexpected place.
Here’s what I’m actually looking for:
- Which platforms they’re on, and just as usefully, which ones they’ve ignored.
- Whether they’re running ads. The Meta Ads Library is free and shows you every ad any business is currently running. It’s a bit like being handed their homework.
- What content is performing best for them, not just what they post most often.
- Gaps where you could do something differently and actually stand out.
So back to the accountants. If I saw a direct competitor doing really well with Reels and TikToks, but completely ignoring YouTube Shorts even though that’s where people go when they’ve got a tax question at 11pm… that’s exactly where I’d dive in first.
Step 2: What should your social media goals actually be?
Whatever the business genuinely needs, which very often is not followers. Get this wrong and every decision after it is built on sand.
We fall into this trap constantly as marketers. We assume everyone wants to grow their account, get the leads, make the sales. But honestly? Plenty of businesses want social media purely for maintenance. They want something to exist so that when someone looks them up, there’s a real business there. Their actual leads come from networking, word of mouth, sales calls or ads. And that is a completely valid goal.
So part of your job here is to be an advisor, not just an executor. Help people get past the vanity metrics. The question I like to ask is:
“In six months time, would you rather have 40 new clients, or 4,000 new followers and 40,000 new views?”
It lands every time, because the honest answer is almost always the clients. And there are plenty of businesses turning over multiple six or even seven figures a year with under 10,000 followers. Once your client can see that, you can finally build a strategy that goes after the thing they actually want.
Step 3: Is the rest of the business even ready?
Check the foundations before you build anything on top of them, because marketing amplifies whatever is already there. If what’s already there is broken, you’ll just help more people find that out.
The number of times I’ve walked into a business that’s told me they need help with their social media, when the real problem was somewhere else entirely, is honestly astounding.
All the marketing in the world will not fix a bad sales process, a broken website, or an email marketing setup that doesn’t exist. So before anyone films anything, I want to know what happens after somebody clicks. Where do they land? What do they do next? Does anyone follow up with them?
If the answer to that last one is “not really”… then that’s the actual job, and social media can wait a fortnight.
Step 4: How do you build a strategy around what you actually have?
Work out what resources genuinely exist, then design the strategy to fit them. There’s no point writing a beautiful plan the client can’t afford to execute.
So I’d get properly clear on the budget, the time, and what skills are already available (theirs, mine, any other freelancers). And then I’d ask what kind of content is most likely to actually move the needle for THIS business, given all of that.
Two examples, because they land better than theory.
Say my client sells electric scooters. There’s very little point in me spending my week making carousels and static posts. Nobody is following an electric scooter company for the joy of it. So I’d go almost entirely video, Reels and TikToks, and I’d push to put real money behind paid ads and influencer partnerships. People discover a scooter on socials, buy it, and then hopefully tag the brand when they love it. That’s the model.
Now say my client sells luxury stationery. Completely different, because repeat business is the whole game and people genuinely do want to follow a brand like that. So here I’d want followers, and I’d split the content roughly like this:
- 50% attraction content that inspires and informs. Ideas, tips, showing people what they could make with it.
- 30% nurture content like frequently asked questions and behind the scenes of the business.
- 20% conversion content where you straightforwardly ask people to buy.
Same marketer, same amount of effort, two completely different plans. That’s what “strategy” actually means. I’ve also written a whole guide on how to build a social media strategy with the help of AI, which will cut the planning time down enormously.
Step 5: Which platforms should a beginner focus on?
Claim your handle on every platform, then pick one or two to actually work on. Unless you’ve got a big team, doing five platforms badly beats doing two properly exactly never.
If the business is brand new, I’d head to Namechk and find a handle that’s actually free everywhere, then grab it. That doesn’t mean you’re going to post on all of them. It just means nobody else can take your name later. And while you’re in there, write a quick bio and drop a link in every single one, even the dormant ones.
Then choose your one or two by asking a really simple question: where is this audience already looking for answers?
Back to the accountants one more time. I’d put my energy into really locally specific YouTube content, both long form and Shorts, because when people have an accounting question they go to Google or YouTube. Not Instagram. I’d repurpose those Shorts over to Instagram because that costs me nothing extra… but it wouldn’t be my main focus UNLESS I started seeing genuine client enquiries landing in the DMs. Then I’d move resources over.
It’s always a bit of trial and error at the start, and that’s fine. Just start somewhere and be properly focused on it, rather than spreading yourself thin across five platforms and wondering why none of them are working.
Step 6: When should you outsource?
As soon as the plan needs a skill you haven’t got. And I promise your client will think more of you for saying so, not less.
Full disclosure – this one took me a very long time to learn, twice over.
Back when I was freelancing, suggesting that a client needed to hire someone else felt like admitting I wasn’t good enough. Like I was talking myself out of work. And then later, when my own business got big enough that I needed to hire freelancers myself, I put it off for YEARS because I was convinced it would take longer to train someone than to just do it myself. Both of those feelings are completely valid and I don’t think I’m the only one who’s had them.
But here’s the thing. I’m now the client. And if a freelancer came to me and said “I’ve seen your competitors doing this, I think it’d work brilliantly for you, but you’d want a proper Google Ads specialist for it”… I would be absolutely delighted. I’d give that person a bonus for thinking beyond their own remit. It would never once occur to me to be annoyed.
Yes, finding the right people takes ages. Yes, training them takes longer than you want it to. And then you get to the good part, where there are people on your team you trust completely, and you get to spend your time on the things only you can do.
Step 7: How do you set up a workflow that doesn’t eat your life?
Batch by task, not by post. Do all the planning in one go, all the filming in one go, all the editing in one go. Making one Reel a day from scratch is the single fastest route to burning out.
I spend a huge amount of time on this in my courses, because it’s genuinely the difference between social media being sustainable and social media being the thing you dread on a Sunday night.
Once a client and I have a strategy agreed, here’s roughly how the month runs:
- Day one: plan all the content, especially the video, and get it approved before a single thing is filmed.
- Day two: shoot or create all of the videos in one session.
- Day three: edit everything.
- Day four: write all the captions, optimise everything, send it over for final approval.
Four focused days instead of thirty scattered ones. And the real benefit isn’t just the time saved… it’s that your brain is only ever doing one type of task. Writing and filming and editing all use completely different parts of your head, and switching between them all day long is exhausting in a way that’s hard to notice until you stop doing it.
What’s changed since I filmed this
The seven steps above still hold up, and I’d work in exactly the same order today. But two things have shifted since I recorded this in 2024, and they’re worth knowing if you’re starting now.
Social platforms have properly become search engines. People don’t just scroll any more, they search. Which means in step five, when you’re picking your platforms, it’s worth thinking about what your audience would literally type into a search bar, and making content that answers those exact questions. Old advice was to post what’s trending. Newer advice is to answer what’s being asked.
AI assistants are now a discovery channel too. A real chunk of people asking “who should I hire for X” are asking ChatGPT or Claude before they ever open Instagram. That doesn’t replace anything in this list, but it does mean the business’s website and the way it describes itself matter more than they did two years ago. Social media brings people in. What they find when they go looking for you afterwards is what closes it.
And if AI in marketing is brand new to you, please don’t panic, I had no idea what most of it meant a couple of years ago either.
So where do you actually start?
Open the Meta Ads Library and go and look at three competitors. That’s it, that’s your first hour. You’ll learn more about what works in that industry than a week of reading blog posts will teach you (this one included).
Then work through the rest in order. Analyse, set the goal, check the foundations, build the plan around what you’ve got, pick your platforms, get help where you need it, and batch the work.
It doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It just has to be in the right order, and you have to resist doing all the things at once.
If you’d like the full version of all of this, more than 40,000 students have been through my signature social media marketing course and you can grab 20% off there. And once you’ve got your plan, using AI to speed up your strategy and content planning is the next thing I’d read.
Give it a whirl, and let me know which step you got stuck on. It’s almost always step two.
Originally published October 2024, updated August 2026.
