Social Media Playbook: A Guide for Your Organization

Social media is almost always challenging for brands – doesn’t matter if it’s a nascent YC-backed startup or a household SaaS name.

Challenges may differ, but rest assured, they’ll be there.

At the surface level, we all know why: Overwhelming competition, attention spans getting shorter and managing the occasional negative feedback.

But there’s more than meets the eye: Staying on top of trends, addressing divisive topics, keeping up with algorithm changes, and of course, growing your audience by adding value rather than noise.

These are also the reasons that justify the existence of social media playbooks, which serve as roadmaps for the increasingly diverse, intricate social media landscapes.

And yet, there’s still confusion around what a social media playbook is and the role it should play.

Some companies see it as a generalistic set of guidelines, while others let it collect dust on company wikis that very few (and far between) consult.

With this in mind, we are here to share a simple guide to social media playbooks, which includes:

• A definition of the social media playbook for 2024.
• The difference between a social media playbook and social media guidelines.
• What to include in a social media playbook.
• Examples of social media playbooks.
• How to create a social media playbook (and who should create it).

As with most of the content we publish in this blog, the goal is to help your brand thrive on socials with actionable advice – so let’s jump right in.

What is a social media playbook?

A social media playbook is a comprehensive document that encapsulates a brand’s approach to social media.

As such, it includes foundational strategy elements and action plans like:

• Audience targeting and content distribution strategies.
• Content creation and formatting practices.
• Community management tactics.
• Crisis communication protocols.
• Data analytics frameworks.

The playbook can include more elements depending on the company’s social media maturity level, such as content examples, banned terms, and descriptions of processes and workflows used by the social media team.

While strategic, a playbook is also a dynamic entity that considers algorithm changes, trends, and regulations to ensure that the brand’s approach to social media remains fresh and up-to-date.

What’s the difference between a social media playbook and social media guidelines?

The main differences between a social media playbook and guidelines are scope and purpose.

Scope-wise, the playbook is comprehensive: It covers strategies, tactics, actions and examples, serving as a roadmap for all things social media (from organic posting and paid campaigns to measuring performance and engaging with the audience).

On the other hand, guidelines are designed to ensure brand alignment, professionalism, and legal compliance.

In other words, they focus on behavioral expectations to guide individual actions on social media.

Aside from this, there are other minor differences in structure, target audience, and frequency of updates.

For instance, the social media playbook targets marketing teams and those directly involved in social media, while guidelines are intended for every employee within an organization.

Structure-wise, the playbook is more detailed, covers more ground, and may rely on jargon and acronyms that a marketer understands.

Guidelines are shorter, accessible, and easy to understand by anyone (with or without social media expertise).

What to include in a social media playbook?

Any social media playbook should include a series of key components.

Depending on a series of factors, it might be important to include more, but the ones that can’t be missed are:

• Goals and objectives: Both general/overarching goals and specific ones.
• Target audience personas: State the ideal target audiences along with their interests, pain points, preferred social platforms, and demographics.
• Channels and channel strategy: The social platforms for your brand, and the strategy for each platform, including content formats, posting frequency, and advertising options.
• Content strategy and calendar: Start with your content pillars, storytelling approach, themes, and formats. Include the content calendar with dates, stakeholders, and process steps.
• Voice and tone guidelines: Specify what your brand is in terms of personality, values, and style. Add examples of the language and messaging you wish to see in different situations.
• Community management: Outline how you engage with the community, respond to comments, and manage user-generated content.
• Paid advertising and influencer collabs: Specify strategy, budget, formats, targeting, and copy guidelines for paid and influencer campaigns.
• Analytics and reporting: Define the KPIs, tools, and stakeholders involved in how you measure your strategy, channel, and campaign performance.
• Crisis communication plan: Add a plan that outlines how to identify potential crises, escalation and response protocols, roles, and channels.
• Legal and compliance section: Make sure to detail what it takes to comply with platform policies, data privacy regulations, and – if you want to go the whole nine yards – copyright laws, and industry-specific regulation.
• Training and onboarding: Provide resources to train and onboard new hires.

In addition, this information will help you structure a social media playbook from the ground up.

Examples of social media playbooks

As you can guess, most real-life social media playbooks are an internal company resource, but there are a few public-facing ones that serve as examples of what you should strive for.

Among the ones we reviewed, there are three that caught our attention, including:

• Nissan social media playbook: Short, but useful. It doesn’t cover all the aspects we mentioned above but is an easy introduction for those building a playbook from scratch.
• Wichita State University playbook: Probably the best public-facing playbook out there. Clear, consistent, detailed – all you can ask for in a playbook.
• Volvo Construction Equipment playbook: While static (it’s a PDF document), it shows how to present important information in an accessible way. In it, you’ll find advice on how to engage with audiences, manage a crisis, and drive traffic to your social channels.

Differentiating social media policy from social media strategy

It’s important to clarify that a social media policy and a social media strategy are not the same.

While the policy refers to the set of guidelines and rules for how employees should conduct themselves online, the social media strategy represents the plan that outlines how a company will use social media to achieve its marketing and business goals.

It includes objectives, target audience, content planning, and metrics for measuring success. It’s about leveraging social media to drive engagement and growth!

Both go hand in hand, but the policy is more or less evergreen, and the strategy might change on a quarterly or yearly basis.

How to create a social media playbook

We already covered what to include in a playbook, so we won’t be repeating the same here.

Instead, we’ll focus on the questions that most brands ask when creating a social media playbook for the first time:

• Who should do it?
• How to get started?

The question of who should do it is perhaps the trickiest one, particularly when a brand’s social maturity level is low.

In this case, brands will be tempted to outsource the work to an agency. This is not a bad thing in itself, but it may lead to average results.

Since the playbook includes foundational aspects related to strategy and brand identity, it’s fundamental that the brand gets invested and involved.

An agency can certainly help with their experience and expertise, but outsourcing the entire scope of work is not the best approach.

In short: A social media playbook should be created by the brand, and involve an agency that can:

• Provide the expertise the brand may lack.
• Offer an objective review of the result.

As for how to get started: Armed with the resources we provided in this article – items, examples, definitions – we trust you are ready to draft your social media playbook.

And if you need extra advice, you can always contact us and let us know what’s missing 🙂.