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Top tips for building an effective social media plan that'll boost results for your business.
Like it or not, working on a social media plan to create a well-rounded social presence is a crucial component for businesses and organizations’ marketing efforts.
Fostering a strong and compelling social media presence not only strengthens your brand but also enhances customer relationships, ultimately driving growth and success.
And good social content doesn’t just appear out of thin air.
It takes time, skill and resources to put together.
If you’re a marketer, you need a social media plan and an effective strategy to meet your business targets.
This guide aims to show you what a good social media plan looks like and how you can create a social media strategy template that works time and time again.
In recent years, businesses have capitalized on the popularity of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and LinkedIn to promote their brands, products, and services.
Marketing on these platforms doesn't come easy, which is why organizations need a social plan before they get started.
Let's start with the basics. An effective social plan is not just about planning out time to work on social media.
Your plan will involve setting clear objectives, figuring out how to target the right audiences, and, crucially, working on the appropriate social media platforms to meet your marketing goals.
Bonus: You'll save yourself some time in the future too.
As you craft your social media plan, it's essential to keep the importance of consistency in mind.
Chopping and changing your approach all the time is a recipe for disaster. Instead, you need to be a few steps ahead.
Having a plan means that when a curveball’s thrown, you can catch it with ease and keep going. You can be agile without compromising on your fundamental strategy.
In a nutshell, to ensure your social media strategy thrives, you can begin your planning by evaluating your business goals and pinpointing the desired outcomes of your efforts. These might include growing your audience, boosting brand awareness, or driving sales.
With these elements in place, selecting the most suitable platforms to execute your plan is crucial.
Even if you already have a presence across many social platforms, it might be worth reconsidering each of them in terms of if they are the best place to put resources.
You'll also want to consider your target demographic and the nature of your content, as these factors will influence the platforms you choose and optimize for.
Researching your target market is another important step. Understanding their preferences, habits, and needs enables you to create a tailored social media content calendar that resonates with them.
It might sound like a lot of work, but there are many benefits to consider.
To take advantage of these benefits, you'll need a tight social media marketing strategy with clear goals, a target audience, clever tactics, and the metrics you plan to track to ensure you're driving success on social media.
Let's get into the detail on how you create that winning social media marketing strategy.
To create a successful social media strategy, you first need to look to your business goals.
Your goals for social media should ladder up to your overall business goals, meaning they should support the success of the overall business.
Make a list of your primary business objectives for social media, such as increasing sales, brand awareness, generating leads, or boosting customer engagement.
Then make sure you align these goals with your overall business objectives. This is a good chance to review your goals with your leadership team to ensure they're bought in.
An effective plan will contribute to the long-term success of the business, so you'll want to make sure everybody’s on the same page.
After all, you'll want to get the credit for the success of your social initiatives!
Understanding your audience is crucial to any social media strategy.
Start with some audience research. This means gathering information from across the business on your target audience – you'll want details such as age, gender, location, and interests. This might involve speaking to colleagues in product marketing or operations. You need to get a really good understanding of who you're trying to target, and then translate that into a tailored social media plan that delights that audience.
This will also help you understand where your current social media marketing activities are falling short. For instance, you might have a lot of engagement from millennials, but if your organization wants to be selling to a Gen Z cohort, you need to think about how to get more engagement from that audience.
Utilize tools like Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, and Google Analytics to collect data about your audience's preferences and behaviors. You can also use tools like Brandwatch's Social Panels to understand what your target audience is currently enaging with.
A competitive analysis of your market and, of course, the social media channels used by your competitors is a great way to start to see what you should prioritize with your social media strategy.
Research your competitors' audiences and content to identify their strategies and where you can fill gaps and take opportunities.
Pay attention to their strengths and weaknesses to avoid common pitfalls.
For instance, if a competitor has good content, but posts infrequently, with better posting consistency you can take some of that audience’s attention.
If a competitor has strong branding but limited audience engagement then you might be able to increase audience interaction by meeting that audience where they are (elsewere).
Again, this kind of competitor analysis can be great to share with your wider organization, giving the rest of your team important intelligence on what your competition is focused on selling.
Selecting the right platforms is probably the most crucial part of your social plan as it will allow you to reach your audience effectively.
Consider each platform's demographics and capabilities before making your decision, and don’t spread yourself too thinly by trying to cover all of them.
Of course, these platforms are changing all the time – keep up with new features and updates is important for social media managers wanting to leverage social networks to their full potential.
Once you’ve got your social media strategy together, you need to think about budget before you can make a plan.
Strategies are all well and good, but if you don’t have the resources to carry them out, then you’re going to struggle with creating an actual plan.
Consider what your priorities are – do you want to spend money on graphic design, or buy in video equipment? Or do you just need more staff? Do you have the right tools?
Once you’ve got a rough idea of the potential budget required for your social media strategy, you’ll need to get hold of the money.
Can you negotiate with your manager to improve the budget allowance for social media?
Industry benchmarks suggest that companies typically spend between 12% and 24% of their total marketing budget on social media.
This fact might be useful for a conversation with your manager if you’re encountering pushback. You can also point to competitor analysis you've done and your own successes to show how scaling your efforts could have a positive impact on the business.
For all businesses, managing resources efficiently is crucial to making the most of your social media efforts.
Here are some tips to help you optimize your approach:
Social media’s not just one person’s job anymore.
Executing a successful social media marketing strategy involves teamwork.
If you can, assemble a social media team with individuals who possess a diverse range of skills. As well as just social media managers, this might include skills such as content creation, analytics, social strategy, graphic design, and community management.
As with any other team, while working with your social media team, keep the following factors in mind:
Once you’ve got your social media strategy nailed, it’s time to make the plan.
First up, how are you going to share your content?
Social media management tools provide a convenient and efficient way to organize, schedule, and analyze your social media content across various platforms.
Spend some time researching and comparing these tools to find out which one best fits your social media goals.
Once you’ve got a social media strategy and the tools and team you need, you can then create a plan around your social media marketing goals.
List them clearly, so you have a direction for your content and campaigns and your overall social efforts.
Ideally, your goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Examples of SMART goals:
Of course, for each goal, you'll want to make sure you're going after the right audience. This will ensure that your content is tailored to resonate with your intended audience.
Now it's time to create a social media content plan, which outlines the type of content you will share, the platforms you will use, and the posting frequency.
To start thinking about content, start with your social media strategy. Especially the part where you analyzed your audience.
Focus on creating engaging content that speaks to your audience's needs and interests.
The easiest way to do this is to determine the type of content that works best for your brand (informative, entertaining, inspirational).
You can then decide on your mix of curated content, user-generated content, and original content.
It's good to experiment with your approach here – introduce something new every now and again to see how it performs.
Whatever your approach to content, make sure you maintain a consistent tone and style that reflects your brand personality.
Another key component is your engagement strategy.
Start by defining your "rules of engagement."
Detail how you will interact with your audience and respond to comments and messages.
Define your response time goals and establish guidelines to maintain a consistent voice.
Crisis planning should come into this – if you're dealing with a serious complaint, what's your approach?
Finally, outline your monitoring and measurement plan for engagement.
Decide which metrics you will track, and establish benchmarks to measure your performance.
A well-structured social media content calendar is the heart of any effective social media strategy and plan. This will help you stay organized and ensure timely posting.
Using a content calendar can help you manage resources effectively, stay ahead of holidays and events, and identify content gaps.
From there, your plan starts to create itself.
Start out with filling in important dates for your brand - new launches, updates, and other milestone dates.
In addition, make note of important dates such as holidays, events, or product launches, so you can create timely and relevant content.
Social media marketers are spoilt for choice with everything from National Popcorn Day to more serious awareness holidays to celebrate.
Of course, make sure you’ve got enough time to build up to the important events. That ensures you can bring something fresh and unique that adds to the conversation.
Once you’ve identified opportunities like this, you can start to create a posting schedule.
One way to do this is to assign each day of the week to a specific content theme or format (for example, Mondays for blog posts, Tuesdays for user-generated content, etc).
Include the date, time, platform, and a brief description of each post on your content calendar, and you’re ready to distribute it to your social team to start creating content.
Note: If your social media management platform allows, make sure to tag your posts appropriately so you can measure different kinds of content based on their individual goals.
For example, tag user generated content in your platform to see how it compares to your original content.
Once you’ve got a social media strategy, you just need to stay organized and on top of it.
A vital part of this is establishing KPIs to measure the success of your social media marketing strategy.
Focus on the following social media metrics:
By tracking KPIs consistently, you can refine your content strategy and social media content calendar, make data-driven decisions, and improve the overall effectiveness of your social media marketing plan.
Once you’ve got going with a social media plan and regular schedule, you might want to go further with your social media strategy.
Working to build your social media presence is a big part of this.
Focus on maintaining a consistent brand voice across all social media channels and ensure your social media pages reflect your brand's personality, visuals, and values.
For consistency, consider the following on your social media accounts:
Once you’ve got consistent with your branding, it's time to be consistent with your content.
Your content needs to be strong and mixed to attract followers and maintain their interest. But it also needs to be recognizable.
Make sure to stay on brand, so people know who they’re talking to.
A good way to do this is to have clear tone of voice and style guidelines in a central place.
When a new team member is onboarded they should be trained in this guidance to ensure there isn't a sudden and unexplained change in the look or feel of your posts.
For your social media campaigns to be successful, they need to resonate with your target audience by offering value, entertainment, or information.
To create high quality content, consider incorporating the following into your social media campaigns:
To encourage wider reach and increased engagement, use hashtags, mentions, and location tags appropriately.
Supplement your organic growth with social media ads to reach a broader audience.
A social media platform will often provide sophisticated targeting and analytics tools to ensure you get the most return on investment (ROI) for your social ad spend.
Keep these tips in mind when creating your social ads:
It's a good idea to regularly conduct a social media audit to see what's working.
An audit helps you gauge the effectiveness of your social media marketing strategy and ensures that your accounts are aligned.
This will provide you with a good idea of what's working, what's not, and where improvements can be made.
Begin by making a list of all your social media profiles and recent social media posts and analyzing the following:
Comparing these factors across multiple platforms can help you identify areas in your marketing strategy that need strengthening.
Once you've completed your social media audit, it's time to gather some data and see if the key performance indicators (KPIs) you set for your social strategy align with what you’re getting back.
As we noted above, some important metrics to track might include:
Create a spreadsheet or use Brandwatch's comprehensive social media analytics tool to track these metrics and gain insights into your audience's preferences and behaviors.
To develop an effective social media plan, use insights derived from your audit and measurement to adjust your approach.
For example, if your content on one platform receives significantly more engagement than on another, consider doubling down on the more successful platform.
Or maybe you need to be reevaluating the type of content you share on the less successful one.
Adjusting your plan isn't a sign of weakness – it's about being agile so you can achieve your goals.
A few ways to adjust your strategy may include:
Take your social strategy to the next level with the following ideas.
To enhance your social media marketing efforts, you can use social media listening, otherwise known as social listening.
This is one of the more advanced social media strategies that allows you to get a holistic picture of your brand's presence and your target audience's activity across all social media networks.
This process can involve monitoring what's being said about your brand, competitors, and industry trends across various online sources, including social media channels.
By doing so, you'll be able to gather valuable insights into conversations and trends, and be able to adjust your plans accordingly.
There's truly a whole world of insight to explore here.
To get started, you can use tools like Brandwatch Consumer Research to track and analyze social media conversations.
Here's a quick step-by-step guide to social media listening:
To effectively generate leads using social media marketing, consider employing these innovative approaches:
Marketers with social media strategies that involve generating leads should measure results carefully to show the ROI of these initiatives.
To ensure continuous growth and improvement in your marketing efforts, it’s always a good idea to keep on top of industry developments and insights from other social media marketing experts.
Reading widely and attending conferences and events will provide valuable insights, tips, and best practices on how to constantly be updating and improving your social media plan. Reading Brandwatch content is a great first step!
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