6 Simple Steps to Designing a Social Media Marketing Plan That Actually Works!
Today, businesses must have a presence on social media to reach consumers. However, it’s not enough to simply have accounts—you must maintain those accounts, post regular updates and use them to build brand awareness and drive sales.
Whether you manage your own social media strategy or work with an agency, it’s important to create a social media marketing plan that works for your business.
A good plan helps you allocate time and resources efficiently by establishing goals, measuring performance and monitoring ROI.
At its most basic level, a social media marketing plan is just a document that outlines exactly what you will do on social media in the coming months.
Every business should have one – it’s as simple as that.
A well-executed plav will help you get the most out of your social media efforts moving forward.
Step 1: Know Your Audience
Before you can create a social media marketing plan, you must know who your audience is.
Start by creating personas based on demographics, psychographics, lifestyle and purchase behavior to give a broad overview of who your customers are and how they behave.
If your business has a complex or lengthy product or service, you must put in more effort to understand your audience.
Take the time to read reviews, talk to customers and follow people who are representative of your target audience on social media.
A good rule of thumb is to maintain a social media following that is about 85% brand-related and 15% customer-related.
By following people who are interested in your brand, you’ll increase the likelihood that they’ll engage with your content, follow you back and purchase your products.
Step 2: Set Goals
Once you know who your audience is and understand their wants and needs, you must set goals for your social media marketing efforts.
It’s important to understand the goals of each social media channel and how each one’s efforts integrate with the others.
You should have goals for each social media channel, including:
- Brand awareness
- Customer service
- Lead generation
- E-Commerce sales
- Reputation management
- Influencer outreach
- Employee recruitment and retention
Step 3: Define Your Strategies
After you’ve set your goals, you need to define strategies that fit into your overall social strategy. These strategies will help you understand how and why you’re posting on each channel.
In order to define strategies, you must first understand the differences between each social channel.
- Each channel has a different demographic, and each has a different way of measuring success.
- Some channels, like Facebook Live and Instagram Stories, are meant for one-off posts that are quickly forgotten. Others, like Twitter and LinkedIn, are designed for longer-form content.
Step 4: Lay Out Your Tactics
Now that you’ve defined your strategies, you must then lay out your tactics—the actual steps for achieving each strategy.
A good tactic should:
- Be clear
- Have a specific purpose and desired outcome
- Be measurable
- Identify what you will do and when
- Be actionable
- Suggest a process for achieving the desired outcome
Step 5: Find the Tools You Need
Once you’ve created your social media marketing plan, you’ll need to find the tools necessary to execute it.
Here are some social media management tools to consider:
Social Media Management Tool:
Hootsuite – The Hootsuite platform allows you to manage your social media accounts from one central location.
Social Media Monitoring Tool:
Sprout Social – Sprout Social allows you to monitor mentions of your brand across the internet in one convenient dashboard.
Social Media Analytics Tool:
Google Analytics – Google Analytics offers robust social media analytics that help you understand the ROI of your social media efforts.
Social Media Scheduling Tool:
Later – Later is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to quickly and easily manage your social media posting schedule.
Step 6: Determine ROI and Track Progress
Finally, you must track your progress and determine your ROI.
You should track your progress by:
- Creating a social media calendar that outlines your posting schedule
- Creating a social media content calendar to outline your content strategy
- Creating a sentiment calendar to track sentiment towards your brand
- Measuring social media sentiment
- Measuring social media ROI If you’ve done everything right, then you should be able to clearly see the impact social media has on your brand and bottom line.
Summary
Now that you know what goes into creating a social media marketing plan, it’s time to get your marketing strategy template ready!
How do you plan to use social media for your business? By following these steps, you will have a social media marketing plan that works.
From the demographics of your audience to the tactics you use, your plan will ensure that your social media efforts are well-executed.
