What Really Goes Into a Social Media Strategy

Before you post one more piece of content, stop and ask yourself these 12 questions.

In this episode, Ruthie Sterrett breaks down the real foundations of a social media strategy that works in 2025. Forget the endless “shoulds” you hear from online gurus—post more, use hashtags, jump on trends—this is about building a strategy that aligns with your business goals and makes social media feel manageable again.

You’ll walk away with clarity around what kind of content to create (personal vs business-focused), how often to post, which platforms to prioritize, and what type of engagement plan actually works for busy founders. Ruthie shares the same questions she uses in strategy sessions with clients to cut through the overwhelm and create a system that supports growth without burning you out.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re shouting into the void on Instagram, exhausted by the “shoulds,” or questioning if going viral even matters, this conversation will help you breathe again. You’ll learn how to make intentional choices about your content and build a strategy that supports both your business and your life.

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and follow along over on Instagram!
@ruthie.sterrett
@theconsistencycorner

Transcript

Ruthie Sterrett (00:01.73)

Before you post one more piece of content, I want you to ask yourself these 12 questions. How much personal content do you actually want to share? Do you want more influencer style content or business focused content? Are you building a personal brand, a company brand or both? How often do you really need to post to stay consistent? What are you sharing in stories? Is it connecting? Reels, carousels, static posts, which one should you prioritize?

And how does your audience actually want to hear from you on social media? What content are they looking for? Does going viral even matter for my business goals or just my ego? 

Ruthie Sterrett (00:53.538)

Ruthie Sterrett (01:01.006)

What's my plan for engagement? And why does it feel like I'm talking to a brick wall over here? Do I need a sustainable engagement strategy? Should I be using MiniChat? Which platform should I even be focusing on? And the big one, why does this feel so hard and how can I make it easier? These are the exact questions that we actually work through in strategy sessions with our clients. And today on the podcast, we are gonna be talking about

The buzzword, strategy. Social media, strategy. Listen, as an expert in your industry, I'm sure you can relate that there are buzzwords that get kind of like tossed around, that people say to make it sound like they know what they're talking about, but they say it with so much fluff that you know as the expert they don't actually know what they're talking about, or they just don't share.

more details. And for me, that word is strategy. And let me tell you, I probably say social media strategy 6,000 times a week. But what I want to talk about today is what actually goes into a social media strategy. You know you need one, but how do you actually create one? And on Instagram, you'll hear coaches, content creators, the gurus say, you need a social media strategy. But again, like they don't tell you what goes into it or

how to create it. And we all know that what worked six months ago, a year ago, heck, maybe even what worked last week, might not be working anymore. And so as a founder, I know that this drives you nuts because you want to be strategic. You want to be intentional. You don't want vague advice and you are struggling listening to conflicting creators telling you different things. You really want some clarity and you know,

exactly what to consider, you want to know exactly what to consider so you can make social media work for you. Hello, if we haven't met before, I'm Ruthie, the founder of the Consistency Corner and welcome back to the Consistency Corner podcast. We help founders and CEOs of brands that serve moms stop spinning their wheels on social media, get it off their to-do list, and get strategic about their content to amplify their message in front of the right audience. And today I'm pulling back the curtain

Ruthie Sterrett (03:24.79)

on what really goes into an effective social media strategy, not just post more or copy an influencer's styles like template or framework, and definitely not just plugging prompts into chat GPT and hoping for the best. I'm gonna walk you through a framework of questions that actually shape the strategy and why answering those questions is your key to unlocking the strategy that's going to work for you because it's not a one size fits all thing.

So you can start thinking about your content in a way that feels intentional and not overwhelming. So let's start here. The shoulds. If you have ever felt buried under a pile of shoulds when it comes to mom life, business owner life, social media, being a woman in 2025, you get it. You should post five times a week. You should eat 7,000 grams of protein. You should...

You're able to lift your body weight in cottage cheese. You should be wearing that weighted vest. You should be showing up on stories, but you should also be on LinkedIn. and you should be doing collaboration posts. You should be using carousels. You should be using hashtags. You shouldn't be using hashtags. Like, it's so much. And I listed like a fraction of the shoulds that I could have thrown out there that we see on Instagram day after day. And the shoulds pile up like laundry.

And before you know it, the mental load of social media feels just as heavy as the mental load of motherhood and all the other things that you're balancing. And it's exhausting. So when I sit down with my clients, I don't start with the latest trends. We start with questions. Because the answers to those questions are what actually shape the strategy that is aligned and customized for their business. I actually have 12 questions. I kind of...

ran through them rapid fire at the beginning of this episode, but I want to dive deeper into a few today so that you can start thinking about how layered this really is and take some time to reflect on the strategy for your own business. So number one, how much personal content do you want to share and how much should be business focused? There's no right answer to this. This is different for everybody, what you're comfortable with, what your family's comfortable with, what your audience is connecting with and engaging with, and it's a

Ruthie Sterrett (05:51.47)

like a needle or a mark that can be constantly moving and that's okay, but just to be thinking about that. Listen, I do want to remind you real quick, social media, it's social first, media second. People do come to these apps to connect. They come to feel something. They come to be entertained. They don't come to be sold to. If we want to be sold to, like we can go on Amazon or we can go to the mall.

While we might buy things on social media, that's not what we're picking up our phone for. I don't know about you, but I don't ever pick up my phone and think, I want to buy some things today. Now, do I buy things from my phone? Sure. But when I'm opening the Instagram app, I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about being entertained. I'm thinking about connecting with people on a human level. I'm thinking about feeling something other than overwhelm. Okay, question two. How often do you really need to post?

without burning yourself out. At what intensity can you be consistent? Because intensity does matter and consistency matters. So what's that balance for you? The next one is which platform deserves your energy? Because you don't have to be everywhere. You need to pick one that you can be consistent with first. And where that decision kind of comes from, or what I use as kind of a guideline for that decision is,

Number one, where do you like to hang out? And number two, where's your audience hanging out? And when she's hanging out there, what does she want from that platform and can you deliver it? And then finally, what does engagement look like for you? Remember we went back to social media is social. So are we doing outreach? Are we following up and responding to comments? Are we in the DMs? Are we using a tool like MiniChat? Are we?

pulling back the curtain and sharing in stories. There's no right answer, but thinking about all of those things and having an answer for you is what guides your strategy and helps you kind of repel some of the shoulds because you've thought about it and you've figured out what makes sense for your business. And here's the thing that nobody wants to say out loud. Even if you think you have a strategy,

Ruthie Sterrett (08:11.114)

or you have a strategy that worked two or three years ago or even six months ago, it might not be working anymore because the thing about strategy is it's like a moving needle. It's like an airplane that is flying one direction and then some wind comes along and it's gotta adjust and course correct and go back over here. And then there's a storm and so it's gotta go a different direction to get to its final destination. It's ever evolving.

And we need to be asking these questions and reflecting on this stuff regularly because the strategy needs to evolve. Now, a note on AI. Can it make things easier? Absolutely. But here's the thing about using AI as your strategist. It's going to give you copy paste content that it's giving other people in your industry. And unless you've trained it really, really well and put in a ton of information upfront,

it's not gonna be customized to you. You can absolutely use it as an assistant. You could absolutely use it to brainstorm, but don't think that it can just give you a fully validated strategy, especially without you giving it enough input to come up with that. And that's why oftentimes with AI content, we see the same patterns over and again, there are AI tells, there are things that

sound good on paper because AI knows how to frame it in a way that sounds really good, but then when you actually implement the strategy it falls flat and it doesn't get you results because it wasn't a human talking to you about what would work, it was a robot right? Side note, I actually just saw as I'm recording this episode I saw a piece of content on Instagram

last week that said like 49 % of all traffic on the internet right now is bots or like AI created content, bots engaging and that by like, I don't know what it was sometime in the next 10 years, maybe last, five years, like 90 % of the traffic and the content on the internet would be AI generated and would be bots.

Ruthie Sterrett (10:34.638)

I don't know about you, that made me feel kind of awful. And we know that AI is moving so fast and things are changing rapidly. Like as I record this episode in the fall of 2025, what I'm saying in three months might not even be relevant. But right now we know humaneness matters. Showing up with your face, showing up with your voice, that cannot be replicated by a robot. So keep that in mind.

And if you are thinking like, okay, Ruthie, I hear you. I need to revisit my social media strategy. I need to consider all of these things. Now is a great time to do it as we're in Q4. I'm thinking about what I'm gonna prioritize and plan for 2026. These are all things to consider right now. And something that I'd love to have a conversation with you about, this stuff like really lights me up.

talking about social media strategy and really digging into the nuance of your unique situation, your audience, your customer journey, your message, and figuring out how to make it work for you. So I am inviting you to book a strategy session where we talk through all of this together and I will actually map out a strategy based on your answers and along with that strategy that I'm gonna map out and hand deliver to you to use and implement or hand over to your team.

to implement, you get a custom GPT, which we build for all of our retainer clients that is programmed with their unique brand voice and our strategic social media insights. So, link is in the show notes to book a strategy session if you're interested in that. If you have questions, don't hesitate to send me a DM on Instagram. I'm over at Ruthie.StareIt.

right now. I'm happy to hang out and answer any questions you have and would love to hear from you about what social media strategy questions trip you up. What do you struggle with? What's keeping you up at night when it comes to your social media strategy? Let me know and maybe we'll do another episode on this in 2026 and talk about strategy for next year that you could be leaning into or the questions that

Ruthie Sterrett (12:51.298)

you know, maybe as a collective, as a community, we're all kind of trying to figure out for ourselves on our strategy. But remember, you don't need another list of shoulds. You need a partner in your corner who can help you map out a plan that actually works for your business. And I'm here to be that partner for you. I'm already in your corner cheering you on. I'm so appreciate you being here on the Consistency Corner podcast, and we'll see you in the next episode.