Making a social media plan for your company could seem difficult. Integrating all of the platforms into your social media plan can be challenging because there are so many of them, and system features are constantly being updated and changed with each one. Then what content do you post on each of them?
This can make it even more challenging if you don’t have a full-time team of social media specialists. However, the key to your success is having a clear strategy that works with the objectives and resources of your business.
By the time you’ve finished reading our blog, you’ll know how to create a social media plan that will increase traffic and allay any fears you might have when you visit Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or TikTok.
A social media plan provides a guide for your team (or you) to remain consistent, on track and target your desired audience. It can be used to start a rebrand, boost awareness or create interest around a promotion.
What is a social media strategy?
Your strategy is a road map for how you want to produce, publish, and interact with the material you share on social media. Your social media content policies, campaigns, posting schedule, creative planning, and engagement strategy are all incorporated, which helps to market your company and brand.
Your social media strategy will be influenced by your brand’s voice and positioning, target audience demographics, and social media platform restrictions. These elements are crucial to consider when creating your strategy since they will effectively enable your message to reach the appropriate audiences.
This could be utilised to rebrand, increase brand recognition, or create hype around promotion as an example.
Why a social media strategy is necessary
Social media marketers’ primary difficulties are:
· reaching their target audience
· calculating return on investment
· Determining when company objectives have been met.
Creating a social media plan can assist in overcoming these obstacles and more!
A plan will also allow you to set objectives, monitor progress, and change your benchmarks over time. With a starting point, you can measure what is working and how to change your behaviour to meet your goals. It also means there is absolute clarity on all of this between different team members – which is especially important if the social media activity isn’t being undertaken by the business owner personally.
It avoids ambiguity over your social media activity and what it is trying to achieve.
Many a time, we’ve been talking to clients, and it comes to light that the in-house person undertaking the social media has a different view of what they are trying to achieve with social to what the business owner wants from it!
Monitor and track your progress
When you have a social media plan, clear expectations and objectives are established for your company’s social media marketing initiatives.
Creating a social media plan guides your team to ensure your marketing remains consistent, focused and targeted to the desired audience.
It is not sufficient to have a goal for your company’s social media marketing; you also need to monitor your success.
Key performance indicators should be included in a social media strategy so you may track your company’s progress toward its social media goals.
It is essential to track social media analytics and compare your business’s current results to the sector average, other firms, and prior accomplishments.
You can identify social media marketing strategies that need to be improved to meet your marketing objectives by comparing your performance to benchmarks.
In addition, setting expectations for your entire staff with a social media plan may keep everyone on the same page regarding what they should and shouldn’t do on your social media platforms.
Seven steps to developing a social media plan
1. Decide who your target market is.
Discover your demographic. Knowing your audience allows you to create specific advertising that meets their needs.
Begin by outlining the main characteristics of the audience you’re attempting to reach, such as gender, age, income, occupation, hobbies and interests, etc.
2. Start a blog.
The foundation of a successful social strategy is new and pertinent content. This means producing regular, fresh and high-calibre content. Make a list of frequently asked questions and commit to answering each one in at least one new blog article each week.
Your material can reach a wider audience by including blogging in your social media strategy. For example, write a social media post with a suggestion for your followers and a link to an earlier blog entry where you elaborate on this. The increased traffic from this social media post will make it simpler for your readers to share this blog post with their followers, extending the site’s reach.
3. Produce educational material.
Make downloadable materials, like checklists, booklets, infographics, and videos, that all cater to the wants and needs of your customers. People are more likely to share helpful content on social media, which broadens your audience if you create it.
4. Concentrate on a few main channels.
Learning the rules of engagement for several networks at once can be overwhelming. So instead, start small and investigate critical networks to find where your target audience hangs out.
Concentrate your efforts on creating, maintaining, and growing a community on the social networks where your target audience is active.
5. Create social media plan to serve as a guide.
Since social media is not a precise science, not every business or industry can benefit from it.
A posting and interaction schedule on your social plan helps you post frequently and keeps your staff on task.
It’s essential to create a logical plan. You want a plan that will be simple for you to follow and for your team to adopt.
Set expectations for how frequently you will post and engage with others as part of your plan, and hold yourself responsible for adhering to this plan.
6. Track your outcomes.
Start examining how much traffic your social media accounts send to your blogs or website. There are numerous metrics to monitor on all social media platforms.
Once aware of post-performance/traffic, set goals for key metrics and keep track of progress.
Make sure to pick measures that are simple to collect when gauging your success—if it takes too much time, you’re more likely to give up! For example, a few simple metrics are the number of interactions, new fans and followers, and website visitors through social media.
7. Adapt your strategy.
A social media plan guides your team to stay on target and be pertinent to your target market, but it also needs to be flexible to new information and insight.
Track social media metrics and compare your business’s current standing to industry standards, competitors, and your past efforts by measuring your social media strategy. Then, compare performance to benchmarks to spot social media marketing strategies that should be improved to reach goals.
Social media requires ongoing effort. Building your brand, gaining followers, and seeing the fruits of your labour will take time. So start experimenting and find the right mix of information, platforms, and content that appeals to your target market.
How can Growth by Design help you with your social media strategy?
Despite the apparent opportunity, many small businesses find social media a chore and a challenge.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Need to know what to post and what is of interest to people?
Lacking time and resources to put into social media?
Need clarification on how to measure value and return from it?
Uncertainty on whether to use Facebook ads, LinkedIn, or other paid advertising options?
Need to learn how to use the social community to fuel business growth?
Winning on social media for small businesses shouldn’t be that hard, and at Growth by Design we are here to change, improve and grow your business.
Our expert social media team will help you focus on what needs to happen!
Contact us today to see how we can elevate your social media from satisfactory to spectacular!!
