Create a Social Media Plan

Creating a social media plan is critical to the success of your social media goals. It will ensure you are creating the right presence online by forcing you to think about what you are trying to accomplish and how you want to come across to your audience.

Identify Your Audience

The first thing you should do is identify your audience. Are you targeting individuals or other business owners? Who will buy your products and/or services? In your industry it may be obvious or it may require a little additional research such as looking at your competitors or conducting your own market research. But it is important to determine who you believe your audience is and not try to create social media posts for “everyone.”

Determine Types of Posts

Are you going to cover holidays? Are you going to be funny? Serious? Both depending on the post? Are you going to provide motivational posts for your audience from your fitness company? Are you going to create nutritional tidbit posts from your recipe company? Are you going to create detailed blog posts about trends in your industry? List out all the types of posts that you think will engage your audience into categories and how often posts within those categories should come out.

Create a Rhythm

People like predictability. Research has shown the most important thing to ensure when posting on social media is to be consistent! Therefore it is vital that when you are putting together your rhythm you put something together that you can keep up with and not miss posts. Even though your goal should eventually be to post something everyday, it is more important to be consistent so starting less often and working your way up to daily is preferred over being unpredictable. Look at the post categories you have created and determine which day of the week / month they should come out? This will help create that reproducible and predictable plan to keep your audience engaged and your content creation on track.

Fill in the Details Ahead of Time

Think through all the details of your posts. What hashtags should you include with each category of posts? What time of the day should posts come out? Is that different per social media platform (see our Cheat Sheet for Timing of Social Media Posting blog post)?

Document Your Plan

Once you have determined your plan, document it! Write it all down in detail and keep the plan up to date. We put all the information throughout this section into a document then create a calendar view showing which posts should come out on which days with links to details about those posts. All of this planning makes it much easier to look at the overall plan, see the that the rhythm makes sense and track progress towards the plan. Plus it helps keep consistency!

2. Keep Up With Your Rhythm

Create Posts Ahead of Time

We all get busy from time to time so it isn’t unrealistic to think that if you try to create posts the day of or the day before something is supposed to post that you may not be able to keep up with your plan. Use your documented social media plan to create posts weeks or months in advance. Keep track of what has been created and what needs to be done. Build a process that works for you. Block off time to create social media content for the next month or so. This way you will always have a queue of content and life’s interruptions won’t interrupt your rhythm.

Use Scheduling Tools

Once you have created a queue of content, use a tool to schedule those posts according to your Social Media Plan. Some platforms such as Facebook have their own built in tools for scheduling posts but there are also a lot of tools out there to help automate the process. We use Hootsuite but here is an article from Social Pilot titled 12 Of The Best Social Media Scheduling Tools for 2021.

3. Create Quality Content

Use Google Trends

Want to create content people actually want to digest? Google Trends is a free tool that helps you better understand what audiences are interested in and curious about in real-time. Use Google Trends to see what people are interested in learning more about within your industry and/or location. This information will help you determine what topics will best engage your target audience.

Help People

The goal of posting on social media is to engage your audience. The more they engage with your posts the more likely they are to buy your products or services. There are multiple ways to do that including making sure your posts are entertaining and easy to digest but one very important thing to keep in mind is to create content that helps people. Provide answers to questions people have about topics in your industry. Write blog entries that provide reference material related to topics people are searching about using Google Trends. Think about it: besides entertainment what do you use Social Media and searches on the internet to accomplish? Usually you are searching to learn more about something to solve a problem of yours so be that post on that solves a problem for someone else. When you solve a problem for someone they are more likely to see you as an expert in the industry.

Use Images and Videos

Humans prefer visuals. Visuals are easier to digest and remember. They are more entertaining and captivating. With the fast-paced lives many people live it is harder now more than ever to capture and retain attention spans. Web content containing visuals on average receive up to 94% more views than just words. Email marketing campaigns that include images have a higher click-through rate. Infographics increase website traffic by 12%.

4. Be Human

Be Human: Sociable, Authentic and Charming

Be Sociable

Many companies miss the point of social media platforms which is to be Social. Ensuring your company is being human on social media is incredibly important. When people use social media to reach out to businesses it is highly likely they are doing so as individuals - or human beings.

Be Authentic .. and charming

Social media is a great platform to show your genuine authentic side. Skip the polished business speech and go for a more real approach. Show your passion for your business. And add charm. Interact and engage with others and they will more than likely do the same for you and your business.

Interact with People

Interactions drive business. The more you interact with people the more chances you have to sell a product or service. Be active on social media, keep interactions personal and keep in touch with people! See our blog post titled Meaningful Interaction Pay to read more.

5. Track and Analyze

Why

It is critical to track the success of your posts to help determine what is working and what is not working. This analysis will inevitably help you make decisions on which posts to continue posting, which to stop posting and what changes to future posts you should make. Is a particular category of posts from your Social Media Plan performing better than the others? Is a particular topic performing better regardless of category? Is that video spent a lot of time creating creating more interactions than the images you were creating - was it worth the time?

Metrics to Analyze

Many social media platforms such as Facebook already have built in tools for tracking and analyzing how posts are performing. Plus there are a lot of tools out there to help including this list: 10 of the best social media analytics tools for marketers by Sprout Social. And realize there are a lot of different ways to look at the data - not just how many people clicked on something. Here are a just a few of the many different types of metrics:

Engagement Counts: count of things like Likes, Comments, Shares and Clicks on your social media posts. This lets you know that people are interested in and interacting with your content. Most social media platforms continue to place content into people’s feeds if its engagement scores are high.
Conversion Rate: rate at which visitors who after clicking on a link in your post take action such as subscribing to your newsletter or buying a product. A high conversion rate means your content is valuable and compelling to your target audience and more importantly is converting into your intended action.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): how often people click on the call-to-action link within your post. Tracking CTR will give you valuable insight into how compelling your offer is to the target audience.
Bounce Rate: percentage of page visitors who click on a link in your post only to quickly leave the page without taking an action. If your bounce rate is low it is proof that your social media campaigns are targeting the right audience.

Summary

It is crucial to manage your social media posts and content to ensure you are getting the most out of your companies social media . First you need a plan. You need to develop a Social Media Plan with details about your company’s strategy including types of posts, frequency of posts and details of posts. It is critical to create an implementable plan and Keep Up With Your Rhythm for consistency with your audience. As part of your implementation you need to Create Quality Content including images and video. Use tools such as Google Trends to determine topics that your customers are interested in. And don’t forget the point of social media platforms is to be social. Be Human, authentic and charming when interacting with people. Finally, Track and Analyze your posts to determine what is working and what is not working. Only then can you determine the right path forward.