Social Media & Channel Strategy Services
Social media and channel strategy work identifies where your audience actually discovers solutions and builds presence that matches their behavior. Your team maintains profiles on six platforms. Most generate no meaningful results. Resources get distributed across channels based on assumptions about where you should be, not analysis of where your audience actually looks for information.
Channel strategy fails when platform selection lacks discovery intelligence. Teams launch social profiles because competitors have them. Content gets distributed to platforms that generate activity but no actual discovery. Budget flows to channels based on what marketing leadership understands rather than where target audiences begin their research journey. Each platform requires resources but most provide no path to actual business outcomes.
This work identifies which platforms matter for your audience's discovery behavior and builds channel strategy that concentrates resources where they create actual impact. The work takes 90 days. Knowledge transfers to your team at every phase.
Why Social Media & Channel Strategy Matters Now
The retrieval layer changed how platform strategy works. Your audience discovers you through AI systems that pull from specific platform sources. ChatGPT indexes certain platforms. Perplexity surfaces others. Claude references different sources. Google AI Overviews prioritize established domains. Each AI system has different platform preferences for sourcing information.
Traditional channel strategy optimized for direct platform engagement. You built LinkedIn presence to reach professionals directly. You created Instagram content for visual engagement. You maintained Twitter for real-time conversation. The assumption was that people discovered you by browsing those platforms.
AI discovery works differently. Someone asks ChatGPT for solution recommendations. The system synthesizes an answer from sources across platforms. If your strongest content lives on platforms that system doesn't index well, you're invisible in that discovery moment. If you're investing heavily in platforms that feed into AI systems your audience doesn't use, you're wasting resources.
Social media and channel strategy in the retrieval layer means different work than traditional channel planning. We identify which platforms your audience uses for discovery, which AI systems they rely on for research, and which platform investments actually contribute to discoverability versus just generating vanity metrics.
How This Work Differs From Traditional Channel Strategy
Traditional channel strategy produces platform recommendations and content calendars. Agencies audit your current presence, benchmark against competitors, recommend which platforms to add. The output assumes more platform presence creates better results. Most companies discover this is not true.
Social media and channel strategy work produces discovery-validated channel selection. We identify where your audience actually begins research, which platforms contribute to AI training data for systems they use, and where content investment creates retrievability versus just activity. By the time strategy development finishes, you know which platforms deserve resources and which ones waste budget.
The difference matters in resource allocation. Traditional strategy spreads your team across multiple platforms maintaining presence. Discovery-driven strategy concentrates resources on platforms that actually affect how your audience finds solutions. When budget is limited, you need to know which three platforms matter more than which seven platforms you could theoretically maintain.
Traditional approaches also optimize for engagement metrics. They track followers, likes, shares, comments. These metrics measure activity but not discovery. Someone can engage heavily with your content and never convert because they discovered you through entertainment, not solution research. Someone else can see your content once in an AI synthesis and convert immediately because they found you during actual buying research.
Social media and channel strategy optimizes for discovery behavior. We track which platforms contribute to AI citations, which channels surface in actual customer research journeys, and which presence investments correlate with business outcomes versus just generating activity data.
The Real Problem: Platform Presence Without Discovery Intelligence
Most companies build channel strategy from competitor benchmarking. They see competitors on LinkedIn, they build LinkedIn presence. They notice industry leaders using Instagram, they invest in Instagram content. The assumption is that platform presence where competitors exist must be strategically sound.
This misses the actual question. Where does your specific audience discover solutions? Not where do people in your industry hang out. Not where does content get engagement. Where do the people who actually buy solutions like yours begin their research process?
These are different questions with different answers. Your competitors might maintain Instagram presence because their marketing team likes visual content, not because their customers discover solutions there. Industry leaders might invest in Twitter because their CEO enjoys the platform, not because it contributes to actual pipeline.
Platform strategy without discovery intelligence wastes resources on presence that generates metrics but not outcomes. Your team creates content for platforms your audience doesn't use for solution research. Your budget flows to channels that AI systems don't index for the queries that matter. Your measurement tracks activity on platforms that contribute nothing to how customers actually find and evaluate you.
The 90-Day Deployment Sprint: Building Discovery-Driven Channel Strategy
We identify where your audience discovers solutions and build platform strategy that concentrates resources on channels that affect actual business outcomes. Complete system documentation transfers to your team at every phase.
Days 1-30: Discovery Intelligence & Platform Audit
We analyze where your audience actually discovers solutions through customer interviews, research journey mapping, and AI system behavior analysis. This includes identifying which platforms they use for initial research, which AI tools they rely on for recommendations, what content formats influence their evaluation process, and where they validate claims before making decisions. We audit your current platform presence to establish which channels generate discovery versus just activity metrics. By day 30, you have documented discovery intelligence showing which platforms matter for your audience and analysis of which current investments contribute to actual discoverability.
Days 31-60: Channel Selection & Strategy Development
We build platform strategy based on discovery intelligence, not industry assumptions. This includes selecting which platforms deserve continued investment, identifying which channels to abandon despite competitor presence, establishing content strategies for platforms that affect AI system sourcing, and developing presence on platforms your audience uses for research that you currently ignore. The strategy concentrates resources on channels with discovery impact. By day 60, your team has channel selection framework validated against actual audience behavior and platform strategies for each channel that contributes to business outcomes.
Days 61-90: Implementation Planning & Performance Framework
We develop implementation roadmap for platform strategy changes and establish measurement frameworks that track discovery impact rather than vanity metrics. This includes resource reallocation plans for teams currently spread across too many platforms, content migration strategies for moving resources to higher-impact channels, tracking systems that measure platform contribution to actual customer acquisition, and frameworks for evaluating new platform opportunities based on discovery intelligence rather than trend following. By day 90, your team has implementation plan for optimized channel strategy and measurement systems that validate platform investments against business outcomes.
Sustainable Growth: Beyond the Sprint
The 90-day sprint establishes which platforms matter for your audience and transfers complete channel strategy documentation to your team. What happens next depends on your market dynamics.
Some clients continue with fractional CMO engagement as they expand into new audience segments or geographic markets where discovery patterns differ from their core market. Platform strategy that works for one audience may not work for another, requiring ongoing intelligence gathering. Others execute channel strategy internally with the frameworks we built and adapt as platform ecosystems evolve. In specific cases, the discovery work reveals significant shifts happening in how audiences research solutions, requiring deeper strategic work to understand emerging discovery patterns before they fully materialize.
The path forward depends on whether your audience discovery behavior stays stable or whether market evolution requires ongoing platform intelligence.
Field Notes: When Platform Content Misses Discovery Intent
A luxury beachfront resort in Costa Rica maintained strong social media presence showcasing property aesthetics, dining experiences, and activities. Their Instagram and Facebook content generated high engagement. Booking attribution showed minimal impact from their social investment.
The diagnosis revealed intent mismatch. Discovery intelligence showed their target audience researched Costa Rica luxury travel through AI tools and travel forums asking questions about safety, not just browsing beautiful resort photos. Queries like "is Costa Rica safe for families" and "safest luxury resorts Costa Rica" drove actual booking research. Their platform content ignored these concerns entirely, focusing only on amenity showcasing.
We rebuilt their channel strategy around the questions their audience actually asked during discovery. This included creating content that positioned them as expert source on Costa Rica safety for luxury travelers, establishing presence on platforms that fed AI systems their customers used for research, and developing resources that addressed safety concerns alongside luxury positioning. The content strategy shifted from aesthetic showcase to authoritative guidance on safe luxury travel.
The deployment took 90 days. Five months after implementation, their booking inquiries had increased significantly and AI systems began citing them as knowledgeable source for safe luxury Costa Rica travel. Not from better photography or increased social presence, but from platform strategy that matched the actual questions driving their customers' discovery behavior.
About Plate Lunch Collective
Plate Lunch Collective is a digital marketing consultancy founded by Hayden Bond in 2025, built on 20 years of technical SEO experience. We work with growth-stage brands across North America, Central America, Canada, and the Caribbean to optimize for the retrieval layer.