Should you have a Social Media Plan?
Posted on 9th September 2021
Pretty much every business has a social media presence but being successful on social platforms takes more than just posting daily updates. You need to know what your goals are and who you are trying to reach? Do you understand the type of content that your audience truly cares about and why they would want to engage with you? Answering those questions and moving beyond a simple social presence requires a strategic plan.
A social media plan outlines what you want to achieve on social media and how it supports your overall marketing strategy. It helps identify your target audience, what social networks to join, and the type of content to develop and share.
Why should businesses have a social media plan?
Having a social media strategy in place will ensure that your social media efforts are more effective and are working to support your business goals.
Creating and implementing a social media strategy will help you save time. Who doesn’t want more time on their hands? Forming a social media calendar will help plan out your posts for days, weeks, or months ahead. A social media calendar will provide you with an overview of what to post, when to post, and where to post. Following a fixed schedule will make it much easier to organise your daily work routine and overall save you time.
A social media plan has the ability to increase your search ranking, as Google looks at your social media presence when determining where your business will rank on SERPs (search engine results pages) Along with giving you an SEO boost, social media provides an easy way to drive traffic to your website.
A social media strategy uncovers the elements, methods and networks which are working for your business, as well as the ones which are not. A strategy in line with your business goals will simplify creating content that affects your audience, gives you the opportunity to refine the quality of your material, and enables you to think about how you can get creative with social posts.
What should be included in your social media plan?
Here are the 10 factors that belong in your social media plan, regardless of the type of organisation, size, and structure.
1. Baseline Metrics
2. Competitor Benchmarks
3. Social Media Goals and Objectives
4. Build a successful editorial calendar
5. Strategy
6. Staffing Plan
7. Partner Integration
8. Ideas
9. Social Media Success Examples
10. Reporting and Analysis
Embrace these 10 factors in your social media plan and you will develop a more successful social media platform.
How often should a business review its social media plan?
After each and every campaign or month of activity, you need to review your social media plan. There’s no point moving forward with social media content or advertising campaigns if they’re just not getting the responses you were hoping for. So, reviewing your social media strategy on a regular basis, or perhaps after you’ve run a particular social media advertising campaign, would be extremely beneficial.
One way your social media plan can be reviewed is by looking at the insights. Your insights will show a great deal of information, including;
Who are your users?
What times of day do they appear to be most active online?
What pieces of content did they engage the most with?
Which advertising calls-to-action incited the most activity?
Did males or females click on your ads more?
Which age brackets engaged with your advertising more frequently than others?
With this information, you can re-structure your content to make it more effective for your target audience and possibly make a significant change in your business.
Reviewing your social media strategy can be significant when there are significant changes in the world around us. Take for example, if there has been a recent change to privacy laws or General Data Protection Regulation. As new laws can have a roll-on effect to how businesses that may have a European audience need to handle the capturing of data, particularly through the use of Facebook pixels, and more.
Social media is a great way to promote your products and services, raise your ranking in search, increase sales and improve customer loyalty. That’s why with a great plan in place, you will gain the confidence that comes with driving business results.
Need further advice?
Get in touch to discuss your specific requirements and see how we can help you grow your social media presence
Tel: 07963216248
Email: chris@chrislondononline.co.uk
Or join our online Facebook for Business Course by clicking here
Tagged as: Facebook, Facebook Engagement, Facebook Marketing, generating leads, Linkedin, Linkedin marketing
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