An organization's target audience, the social
networks to join, and the kind of material to create and share can all be
determined with a social media plan. It is a crucial component of your overall
marketing plan. You can improve your cadence and content with a plan in place,
examine follower engagement, and establish closer ties with your audience.
Most businesses are active on social media. However,
updating your status daily is insufficient to prosper on social media. Do you
understand your objectives and your target market? Do you comprehend the
interests of your audience and the motivations behind their desire to interact
with you? A strategic plan is necessary to provide the answers to these queries
and defeat an impromptu social presence.
How can I make a Plan for
social media?
Most marketing teams develop and hone social media
strategies every year. This probably takes place in conjunction with the team-
and business-level planning. You can make unique social media strategies for
specific launches or campaigns, which would also help your overall social media
strategy. Create a plan that produces concrete outcomes by following these
steps.
Set social objectives and KPIs:
Reviewing your overall marketing objectives and initiatives
is the first step in creating a successful social media strategy. Your social
goals should feed back into your top-level marketing goals—those goals make up
your social strategy.
Social media goals typically fall into the following categories:
• Increase share of voice
• Get new followers
• Increase traffic to your website
• Generating new leads or trial registrations
• Increase community engagement and loyalty
• Customer support request classification
Your team size will determine whether you wish to
track more or fewer targets. For instance, you might decide against offering
in-depth customer help on social media if you don't have a customer support
team member responsible for monitoring social media. Send support inquiries
instead via email or the help desk.
The next step is to match pertinent KPIs with social
goals. For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic, meaningful
KPIs include social click-through rates and referral traffic from specific
pages. Many teams mistake tracking every metric available on social media
(e.g., followers, influence score, post reach, shares, and likes). Lots of data
can be useful, but it's often easier and more efficient to trim KPIs that
directly correspond to the intended goals.
Know your audience and competitors:
Revisit your existing buyer personas to understand
better who you should target and what kind of content will drive engagement.
This may take a bit of guesswork, but you can use social media analytics tools
to identify key demographics, track interests, and gain knowledge about the
target market of your rivals.
Then, analyze the social media strategies employed
by your rivals, including their networks, content sharing preferences, and
posting frequency. You get to choose if you want a social presence on the same
networks as your rivals or to focus on channels more pertinent to your
objectives.
Select social networks:
There is a spot for each social network. You are not
required to be active on every one of them. Give top priority to the social
media platforms where your audience is most active, and your brand can be most
helpful. For instance, setting up a YouTube or Vimeo channel is useless if you
are not producing video material. (This may seem obvious, but many marketing
teams feel pressured to be everywhere just because you can.)
Consider smaller platforms that may be uniquely
relevant to your audience and market. Sites like Houzz, Goodreads, or Behance
give you a chance to build relationships with people who have specific skills
and interests.
Review prior performance
The starting of a new year or quarter is a popular
time for teams to examine marketing initiatives. If updating an existing social
media strategy, look back at what you've already attempted. Answers to the
following questions should be sought:
• Which networks should we keep funding? Which, if
any, ought must we give up?
• What content performs best – by reach, clicks,
shares, or other KPIs?
• How much time and resources have we invested in
social networks? Do the returns justify the investment?
• What should we keep or stop doing?
Standards for your brand
conversations:
While your company's goals are important, you must
also set the right tone, topics, and conversations to ensure the content
delivers the experience your audience wants.
Anyone posting your brand's content should understand
and adhere to social media guidelines to maintain a consistent voice and
quality standards.
I recommend studying
your company style guide to improve your social persona and instill factual
accuracy and precision. This includes the correct use (and spelling) of unique
terms – such as company trademarks, product names, personnel, and service
offerings.