Planning A Social Media Strategy
Planning a social media strategy can help you be more successful in your social media efforts.
If you think about it, it’s scarce to be successful at something by chance. Sure, it can happen, but it’s not that common.
Planning a social media strategy can help you get more done in less time, and you can create better quality content for social media.
I am constantly looking at where I can improve and what I can do to improve my strategy. I am not an expert so far, but I spend a lot of time analyzing what works. So I’m going to give you my best tips for planning a social media strategy.
Social Media Planning Example
Social Media Planning Example #1 My Business Dashboard
So many people have been asking to see my content calendar and Trello boards lately, so I thought I’d share it for a social media planning example.
I use Trello to organize all of my businesses, and it’s a huge part of my social media planning. I’m a very visual person, and it makes it easier for me to see something I’m working on visually and right in front of me. Are you the same way?
When you keep everything in one place, and you love to look at it, it makes planning your social media so much more fun.
Business planning, planning products, content, and social media are probably my favorite things to do. The more I plan, the more I see how essential planning is to the success of any business.
Since I’m working toward growing my micro-influencer status, I’ve been getting serious about my social media strategy.
The best way to grow is to test out different things and see what works. Then, find what works and do more of that. Sounds simple right? The concept is simple, but actually doing? It takes some work. You will be working anyway, so you may as well focus your efforts on planning your social media success.
Why You Need A Social Media Marketing Plan
A social media marketing plan will help you stay organized, create more content that your followers love, make more money, and help you promote more of your other content.
When you have a plan, everything goes so much smoother. Of course, social media planning is a process, but the good news is once you have your plan in place, all you have to do is follow it and re-evaluate once in a while.
Not only that, you don’t go to your keyboard and think, what am I supposed to post today? There is none of that when you have a social media marketing plan because you already know what you’re doing.
It’s much easier to have a plan and then work it than to wing it. When you do your prep work ahead of time, it makes the execution of the plan much faster.
Reserve Your Social Media Handles
I always advise my clients to reserve all of their social media handles right away on their social media accounts when starting a business. Even if you think you may never want to use that platform, reserve your handle anyway. It’s better to have your social media handle and never to use it than not to have it and wish you did.
However, there is no reason to be everywhere all the time.
Start with one platform and get consistent there.
What’s the point of having 10 different social media accounts that you only post to sporadically?
It’s tough to grow on social media in most niches when you are not posting consistently. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but your engagement probably won’t be as high. Why? Because you aren’t there much, so who are they supposed to engage with?
You can’t be everywhere at all times unless you are really good at social media planning. You can do a lot with a great plan, but you still can’t do everything on your own.
The more you grow, the more people you can hire to help you implement your social media marketing strategy.
Inch by inch, it will be a cinch, mile by mile, it’s a trial. All you can do is do what you can do and do your best at it.
Define Your Target Audience
Who is your target audience? What do they want? And most importantly, where are they?
A good social media strategy is to know your target audience, pay attention to the questions they ask, the comments they make, and give them what they want when you are working on your social media marketing plan.
Social Media Planning Example #2 Checking Out Your Target Audience
Look at what posts are performing really well. What are your followers commenting on? Look at their words and their questions. What content can you plan around those things?
Your information and your marketing aren’t about you. It’s about what you can do for your target audience.
Choose Your Favorite Platform
Tight on time? It really is best to go where your audience hangs out, but if you don’t like posting to that platform, it’s gonna be a chore.
You won’t enjoy it at all if it’s a chore. So it’s essential to choose your favorite platform where you will focus most of your effort.
Social Media Platform
After you choose your favorite social media platform, make sure that’s where your audience hangs out before creating your plan.
Social Media Planning Example #3 – Where Does Your Audience Hang Out?
Check out your competitors that have the same audience. Are they getting a lot of engagement? This may not be the best social media platform to reach your target audience if they are not.
If you post every day on Instagram and get very little engagement, perhaps your audience isn’t there.
Find out which platform they hang out on and go there and give them what they want.
Maybe you are posting on Instagram, and your audience is over on Twitter. Why stay on one platform that doesn’t grow easily for you? Go where you can grow with less effort.
It’s hard enough to grow a business. Now imagine trying to grow it in a neighborhood that has no traffic. Social media for different niches can be the same way. Find the “neighborhood” (platform) that has your traffic and makes your life easier.
Facebook is a great place to add your social media content. I don’t want to deceive you, not every niche is perfect for Facebook, but it is very diverse for social content.
Facebook has pages, groups, people of all ages, advertising, stories, videos, marketplace, and you can even sell products directly from the platform.
It’s a very mature social media platform because it’s been around for a long time.
When working on your social media plan, Facebook can be super important to your social media strategy.
I see many businesses with zero website presence, like zero traffic, but making tons of money from Facebook.
I believe Facebook is perfect for social media marketing when you are an online service-based business.
You can do a lot of social media marketing in groups and even in direct messages (if that’s your thing, I personally don’t like DM marketing, but it works perfectly for some people).
The best type of social media marketing is what you like and what works for you.
Set Your Social Media Goal
Social media planning example #4 – Set A Social Media Goal
Before creating your social media plan, you need to know exactly what you want to accomplish.
What is it you want to accomplish? Do you want to want to increase brand awareness? Find more clients? Make more sales?
I use a great tip for myself and my clients to write down your result (your goal) and then work backward. What do you have to do to reach that goal?
A goal without a plan is just a wish, so always set your goals, and you can readjust accordingly.
Create A Growth Strategy
What are you going to do to grow your social media accounts?
If nobody is following you, no matter how great your content is, nobody will see it.
What can you do to grow? Brainstorm some growth strategies and implement them into your social media strategy. What do you brainstorm? Posts your target audience will be interested in. What are they looking for? Get inside their heads.
Social Media Influencer
Do you want help growing your presence on social media? Want to sell more products and gain more exposure?
You can hire a social media influencer to help you with your social media marketing strategy.
You pay an influencer to talk about your product. They share your product with their audience and extend your reach to their niche audience.
This is a great social media planning strategy, and influencer marketing is successful. That is why you see so many influencers promoting and marketing different products all over social media.
It’s a win/win situation for the business and the influencer.
As an influencer, you don’t have to keep inventory, you don’t make the sales, but you get paid to create a commercial.
Everybody wins. Imagine how much it would cost to put a commercial on television? So hiring an influencer can be a great cost-effective growth strategy.
What Type Of Content Do You Want To Create?
Planning out what types of content you will create in advance can help you stay focused.
Stay within your content pillars and you won’t go off onto random tangents and confuse your audience.
You can create any type of content pillars that you have chosen to represent your brand. Social media content pillars are a little different than “pillar content” on a blog. You still stay in your niche, but you give yourself a posting guideline.
Social media content pillars often are : Inspire (inspire your followers), educate (teach them something with a how-to), promote (promote your products and services) and entertain. Then, you stick to your niche content as it pertains to your social media content pillars.
When following your content pillars, you are not selling every day or giving away all of your information daily yet you are giving your followers valuable content. They can come to know what to expect from you and that will increase your know, like, and trust factor.
User-Generated Content
As I mentioned earlier in this post, you paid attention to your follower’s comments and questions, so now it’s time to create some content around that.
Not only can you use follower’s comments the help you create social media content, but you can create a blog post, video or use it for any other type of content creation that you do.
User-generated content can be some of your best-performing content because it’s exactly what your audience wants from you.
Content Marketing
Social media planning is important if you are creating content, either content for blogging or micro-blogging.
When you create a blog post and want to get more eyes on your content, content marketing is the way to do that.
Search engines bring the best traffic, but you don’t have to rely solely on SEO. You can do a lot of content marketing and add it to your social media plan by promoting your content on social media.
Shared content gives you so much exposure. Write good content and use it for planning a social media strategy.
You can repurpose that same content you create all over social media. It’s easier to take one piece of content and repurpose it than starting from scratch.
Not only that, but it helps you with marketing your content to getting more views and potential followers.
Scheduling Content In Advance
I love to schedule my content in advance. When you schedule your content ahead of time, it’s like you have your own personal assistant doing your work for you.
You can plan a week, a month ahead, or even six months ahead. You can always move your content around.
There are so many content scheduling tools out there you can use for free or pay; Canva, Tailwind, Facebook Business Suite, and Pinterest are just a few.
You can create your entire strategy and plan it all ahead of time.
Planning a social media strategy is helpful because you don’t have to be chained to your computer. Instead, a scheduler can do the work for you.
My Favorite Scheduling Tool
I recommend Facebook Business Suite to anyone who will listen. I’m not an affiliate, and I don’t get paid for anyone who uses it. However, I love to use it because it’s awesome (and free).
You can use it to schedule your posts on Facebook and Instagram.
It helps you keep track of how your content is performing, and it helps you repurpose your content across both platforms in the best way possible.
Use A Social Media Calendar
A good social media calendar can help you when you are planning your social media strategy.
You can use special dates and create fun content around them.
A social media calendar can help you stay organized. The more organized you are, the easier everything becomes.
Put in all the important dates for the year, such as Grandparents Day, Women’s Day, National T-Shirt day, etc. Bonus points for any important dates that align perfectly with your business. Important dates can be a great way to create a social media plan. Facebook Business Suite lets you know in advance what important dates are coming up right inside your dashboard.
You will never run out of content when you have specific dates and content ideas planned out in advance.
Give Your Strategy Some Time
You may think you don’t like one strategy, but you might have to give it a little time. Test out different options, different features, and something you loathe could end up being your favorite marketing strategy.
Not only can you give it time, but you can test out different features that the different social media platforms offer.
Maybe you don’t like being on video, but you know that Instagram is super hot for reels. So why not create videos from images for reels?
You don’t have to be in your video; you can still create a video without your face in the frame. You can show other things on video besides you. Experiment, try different things, see what you like.
Social media has been around for a while now, but it’s still evolving, and there are new trends every day.
Find out what you like and make it your own.
You offer something unique, a unique perspective, something no one else has, so find a way to showcase it that works for you.
Conduct A Social Media Planning Audit
Not only can you audit your social media content to see what works best, but you can also audit your planning too.
Once you have your have all your social media planning in place, see what you can improve.
Is there anything that you’re not wild about? Then, could you find a way to make it easier to do?
There are always more streamlined ways to do things.
Save Yourself Time
Sometimes you get so busy and ignore those little things that really annoy you because you don’t have time to fix them. I do it too.
But if you set aside a specific time and date to fix those issues, you can save yourself so much time. It actually wastes more time to let the little things go.
One thing may only cost you one minute a day, but if you have 10 different things that you do each day, you’re wasting 10 minutes a day, 50 minutes a week, and over 200 minutes (over 3 hours) a month!
I think you could find a better use of those three hours than wasting them on something you don’t think you have time to fix, right? It all adds up. Planning your social media strategy is meant to save you time.
We Covered A Lot Of Information So Let’s Recap:
- Why You Need A Social Media Plan
- Reserve All Of Your Social Media Handles & Accounts Everywhere
- Define Your Target Audience
- Set Your Social Media Goal or Goals
- Create A Growth Strategy
- Decide On Your Content
- Schedule In Advance
- Give Your Strategy Some Time
- Perform Regular Social Media Audits
So there you have it, 9 Tips For Planning A Social Media Strategy – With Examples.
Planning is my jam. I’m a mom, and I love running my own business. I have a house to run as well as a business. So I’m always looking for the most effective and efficient ways to do things.
We can get so much more things done and have time to have a life when we create a plan that helps us do that.
I hope this post gave you some ideas for planning a social media strategy.
I’m learning and growing too, and business is like a science experiment.
You always try things, see what works and do more of that.
Business plans are just like recipes. Season them a little with different things, see what makes it better and update the recipe.
Do you have any tips or comments about planning a social media strategy? Let me know in the comments. I would love to hear from you.
Deanna
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“Conduct A Social Media Planning Audit” si always an impressive point to follow! This list is really impressive. I am going to share the post on my social media pages to see my friends and followers. Please keep posting things like this. Thank you so much and keep up the good work!