Create a social media plan for your business in 8 steps
Social media is an important communication channel for businesses of all sizes. If you’re not using social media, you’re missing out on the opportunity to reach a large audience pool quickly, effectively and affordably.
Establishing an effective social media plan is one of the best ways to boost your marketing strategy. But it could be challenging and overwhelming, especially for businesses with multiple social channels, products and campaigns.
Here are a few simple steps to create a constructive social media plan.
1. know your target audience
Consider all aspects of your business. It is important to understand the nature of your business to differentiate it from your competitors, what is your brand value and unique selling points (USPs)? Next, determine the right target audience for your brand.
Look at demographics and behaviors and focus on what you think will attract them on your social media pages. A few things you can consider when looking at your target audience are:
- Age group
- Gender
- Location
- Interest
- Frequently engaged
- Social media platforms
- etc.
2. choose the right platform
You can start with Facebook as it is one of the largest social media sites with billion of monthly active users and more than 6 million advertisers. Moreover, Facebook supports almost all content formats.
If your brand is targeting a younger audience, consider social platforms with a younger average age, such as Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Linked-In if your audience is more focused on professionals or businesses.
3. set platform goals
Don’t forget to identify your goals for each of your social platforms, as this will provide a measurable target to ensure your social media plans are in line with achieving those goals.
Some of the key goals include: – Increase brand awareness
- Increase engagement
- Follower growth
- Drive traffic to the website
- Generate leads/ conversions
4. choose tonality and style for your platform
Create an established and recognizable brand presence across the platform. Ensure consistency and have a cohesive brand tone, voice, and style.
Choose color palettes and fonts that are consistent with your company’s brand book and implemented across all of your social platforms. If your brand is visually oriented, create a strong visual treatment with elements that incorporate your brand identity to convey the message through image or video formats.
5. develop and use social media calendar
Keep your goals, campaigns, and posts on track with the help of the social media calendar. It makes for more organized planning and gives you an overview of your upcoming post messages and ideas.
6. create content
This is where things get a bit more fun and interesting, but could also be complicated. Aside from the basic materials that are required – image, video, and caption – there are a few things you should keep in mind when developing your social content:
Image/Video
Keep quality in check; avoid pixelated or blurry image or video content.
Make sure all social media image and video sizes are optimized
Avoid putting too much text in your image as this reduces the value to people and businesses, especially if you are running ads.
Caption
The tonality of the copy matches the brand voice (see #5)
Simple, direct and short caption style is recommended
Grammar and spelling check
7. plan your contributions
Determine the optimal time for the lifetime of your post. Social media user activity varies by brand and can be influenced by many factors. Therefore, it takes frequent observation and trial and error to ensure your content reaches your audience.
Schedule your social media post in advance using social media management tools to increase productivity, or manually depending on your workflow.
8. Monitoring & Analysis
Set aside time to monitor your social media pages on a daily basis. It’s important to make sure you’re doing all the basic social media housekeeping, such as making sure your post is live, responding to pending messages in your inbox, and interacting with your audience in the comments section.
Look at the performance of your social media channels monthly with analytics tools to analyze the metrics and see if they are in line with your goals or if there is a need to make necessary adjustments to your upcoming social media plan based on the results.
Hopefully, these 9 steps of the social media plan guide will be useful in helping you launch your own social channels and bring amazing content to the social media landscape!
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