Now that you have decided to use Social Media to promote your brand, it is time to start the strategy. But where to start? How to make a social media marketing plan? This will serve to guide your steps in Social Media and be able to achieve your goals. Now, you are likely to wonder: how is it done? Read on and find out all the details!
Why Should You Create a Social Media Marketing Plan?
Before entering fully into the explanation of the procedure, I would like to tell you what a Social Media Marketing Plan serves. Its primary function is to order all the actions that you will develop in the Social Networks, to fulfill the objectives that make up your Strategy of Marketing in Social Media. Organizing your activities in this way will allow you to reach your goals with greater efficiency and measure your achievements in Social Media.
Your Marketing Plan for Social Media must meet all the goals you want to achieve and the actions you will take to make it. Thus, some of the aspects that will include are the definition of objectives in Social Media, an analysis of the media situation in which you are and what tools you will use to realize your purposes.
Now that you know what a Social Media Marketing Plan is for, I’ll explain how to create a step by step social media marketing plan. As a general advice, I recommend that you set clear and accurate goals. This will help you measure your progress more quickly and not ‘get tangled up’ with multiple and unreachable goals.
1. Set objectives for your Social Networks!
Setting your goals in Social Media is the best way to channel your investment of time and work into Social Media. Thus, the objectives you set will be your reference to measure the success of your actions and to make decisions regarding the management of your channels and the content you will share in them.
At this stage, your mission is to define objectives for your Social Media Plan that respond to the marketing strategy of your business. As you can see, here is the purpose of appealing to the Social Media: favoring the growth of your brand. And this is the instance where you are going to determine and how you will achieve it.
Concerning the objectives itself, I advise you to go beyond raising superficial goals such as reaching a certain number of Likes or Retweets. It is much more profitable to set as the goal to achieve a particular average volume of visits to your site, for example.
In this way, I recommend raising at least three goals for each of your Social Networks. To achieve the highest possible efficiency, make sure that each one meets the requirements you will see below.
Your goals for Social Media should be:
- Specific.
- Measurable.
- Reachable.
- Relevant.
- Temporarily Limited.
Thus, a goal could be: “On Facebook, we will publish a status per day dedicated to transmitting the spirit of our brand. Each of those posts should reach at least 50 Likes and be shared at least ten times.”
2. Analyze your situation in Social Media and create the necessary accounts!
At this stage the idea is to review what your current situation is in the field of Social Media, so you can know where you are standing. After knowing your circumstance you will be able to determine if you must create new accounts to carry out your Marketing Plan in Social Media, and at the same time, you will be able to adjust your Plan according to the state of things that you find in each account.
Thus, in this instance you will have to determine:
- How is your presence in the Social Media? Concerning your competitors?
- Who connects with your brand through Social Media?
- What Social Media Your Audience Uses?
Conducting this analysis of your Social Media Networks will allow you to know what the Social Media accounts represent you, who administer them and what is the purpose of each one of them. It will also help you determine which of them are of no use (you may need to remove some) and which need to be updated.
After assessing your situation in Social Networks, you will be ready to create or improve the accounts that are necessary. At this point, it is a question of evaluating if the accounts you have been linked to your objectives. So for example, if you have a clothing business use account at Instagram to display your models could be very convenient. On the contrary, if you are in the financial or life insurance business, an account on Instagram would probably be a waste of time.
Finally, keep in mind that all your profiles on Social Media must be attractive and professional. For this, you have to make sure to respect the image sizes suggested by each site and fill in the spaces dedicated to the information of your profile with the data and identity of your brand.
3. Study the activity in Social Media of clients and competitors!
The next step is to look at what your competitors are doing, customers and the most prominent representatives of your industry. In this instance, it is advisable to navigate the social networks of your competitors, with the aim of inspiring you in content and give you an idea of the reaction of the audience to different types of publications. At the same time, you can study the profile of the competition to establish what your distinctive elements will be in Social Media.
Analyzing the accounts of your competitors will also serve to take note of the schedule of the most successful publications, as well as the most accessible content. Finally, you can get information about who are the most influential users in your sector, to interact with them through mentions, retweets, etc.
I also recommend using Buzzsumo, an online tool that will help you to know which are the most shared themes in the different Social Networks. So, all you have to do is enter a topic, keyword or domain to discover the best content. Thank me later!
4. Create a Social Media Content Calendar!
Now that you already have a Marketing Plan for Social Networks, you have already reviewed your accounts, and you know the situation of your competition in Social Media; it is time to organize your editorial strategy. For this, the ideal is to create a Calendar of Contents for Social Media, to organize your publications and be able to manage each of your channels efficiently.
In this way, in your Calendar of Contents for Social Media, you will indicate the days and times in which you will publish your content on your blog and also on Facebook, Twitter, Google + and other Social Networks. This will help you keep a record of the progress achieved in each channel, according to the objectives set for each of them.
To facilitate this task, we offer you a Template to create your Social Media Content Calendar. It is a basic model that you can adapt to your needs. In this regard, it is advisable to fill in the sections each day in advance instead of doing it throughout the day. This will save you time and better organize your day activities.
5. Evaluate and adjust your Marketing Plan for Social Networks!
Once you have organized and registered all your actions in Social Media, you can start to evaluate the effectiveness of your Marketing Plan for Social Networks. In this regard, it is recommended that you conduct these audits periodically. For this, you can use the different analytics tools offered by each site, such as Twitter Analytics or Facebook Insights on your Fan Page. You can also use bit.ly when generating your links, so you can know how many clicks have received and collected other data.
Another way to get information about the performance of your different accounts is consulting users directly. So, for example, you can conduct Surveys with Sweepstakes, that to encourage your audience to respond to your questionnaire by promising a winning prize or giveaways.
From the data that you obtain about the growth of your accounts and the fulfillment of your objectives, you can go changing your Marketing Plan to accompany the results in the most convenient way. In this sense, you should not forget that in all cases they are Dynamic Marketing Strategies, which you must adjust based on the periodic evaluations that you carry out.
I hope this guide to Creating a Marketing Plan for Social Networks in 5 Steps has been useful. If you complete all the stages that I have explained in this post, you can systematize your actions in Social Media and in this way maximize the efficiency of your investment. This social media marketing strategy plan will undoubtedly yield the result.
Conclusion!
The most important thing about your plan of “social media marketing” or “social networks” is to understand that it must constantly be changing. As new networks emerge, you may want to add them to your plan. It is also real and possible that you have to adjust or find new goals for each network.
New challenges will regularly be presented, rewrite your strategy and goals as often as necessary and make sure your team is aware of what you have updated. Success with your plan!
Did you like this blog post? You already have or had a Social Media Marketing Plan for your Business? Share your experience with us and do not forget to recommend this article to your friends!
Also, if you want to learn & apply Social Media Marketing to elevate your business, enroll in our Social Media Marketing Course.
Image Credit: business2community, foundersguide, bigstock, DIW.
