How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan in 6 Steps

A social media marketing plan is basically everything that you do to achieve your business

via social networks. An effective social media marketing plan starts with an audit taking into

consideration your current accounts, creating goals that you wish to achieve and deciding

tools & platforms that can actually help your achieve your goals. The more effective you

work on creating a social media marketing plan you have the more clearly you can move

towards its implementation. Keep it concise and don’t plan anything unattainable. In this

article we are going to teach you how to plan your social media marketing in six easy steps.

Create social media objectives & goals

While planning your social media strategy, firstly you have to establish objectives that you

wish to achieve. Having all these objectives enlisted will give you a clear idea about what

exactly you wish to harvest from your social networks. Without having any set goals there is

no meaning of judging your success and how can you measure your ROI.

After setting your business objectives you need to ordinate them with a marketing strategy

to make sure that your social media efforts are going in the right direction. When the social

marketing strategies shows some improvements, you will also feel like doing more

investment and go beyond just retweets and likes, and can move towards metrics like leads,

and website traffic. A smart approach should be followed to achieve your goals and they

should be specific, attainable, measurable, relevant and time-bound.

Conduct a social media audit

Before creating a social media marketing plan your need to audit all your current social

media profiles and check how they are working for you. Here you will have to figure out

what is their target audience and evaluate your social media presence as compared to your

competitors.

The following steps can give your proper idea about creating such an audit:

Prepare a sheet and write down all the social networks you own and the owner of

each

Search for any other social media profiles that represent your company. Create a

separate spreadsheet

Evaluate the needs for each of your social media profiles and create a mission

statement. E.g. Instagram profile can be used to share company culture &

achievements.

Make sure that all of the accounts are about your brand with proper profile photo,

cover photo, icons, photos, proper descriptions, and URL.

Centralize the ownership of passwords. Like you can give all the password keys to

your IT department and then share access on use to basis.

Create a process for how new channels will be established going forward to a

criteria. Make sure to take a note of who is going to approve those requests and

consider other factors as well such as:

The target audience

The type of content that will be posted

Who will respond to that content?

Once you have successfully audited all your social accounts, you should maintain everything

regularly and keep a check on what goes on your social profiles from time to time. Keep only

verified accounts and disapprove or report any fraudulent accounts you might come across

during this process. With a social media marketing plan you can easily create specific goals

for each of the social media profiles like facebook, google+, twitter, pinterest etc.

Step 3: Create or improve your social accounts

Once you have done all the auditing work, it’s time to hone your online presence and wisely

choose the social media networks that can help you achieve your goals perfectly. If you

don’t have accounts on some networks, which can be of use to your company you must

create them, improve others, as well as update some for best results. You must know that

every social network has its own role and audience, hence you must consider this factor and

then make the use of the social platform in such a way that it brings out the best results for

your company. You can also optimize your social profiles to generate more traffic to your

website or products. Above all you must make sure that your social network profiles are

precise and all updated.

Step 4: Get social media inspiration from industry leaders,

competitors, clients

So why do you exactly need to be on social media? Obviously because your clients are, and

so are your competitors. This not only means that you already have a lot of competition, but

also that you have a lot of information sources out there. Take a look at your competitors’

social networks, and see how they post their content, interact with their audience, and also

try to evaluate your consumers’ behaviour. Monitor how big brands target their audience,

go through some giant brands, and then try to learn how effectively they involve their

clients through their social media profiles.

You will find a number of companies who have made the best use of their social networks

and achieved a lot. Be open to research, and try to learn if you don’t know anything.

Create a content plan and editorial calendar

Great content should succeed at social media and your social media strategy should have a

content marketing plan as well including strategies for content creation, curation, and an

editorial calendar.

These questions can help you create a perfect content marketing plan:

What type of content do you wish to post on your social platforms?

How often do you need to post?

The target audience for each of your content type

Who will create the content?

How will you promote the content?

The editorial calendar should precisely have information about everything including the

days & time you will post across your social media channels. This will help you to schedule

your posts well in advance and easily work towards achieving the goals you have set for

each of your social accounts.

Try to keep up with your social media objectives and post content that can help you

accomplish those goals. For example: if you are considering LinkedIn account to create leads

then you should make sure that enough lead generation content in being posted on that

profile.

The one-third rule by hootsuite will help you to have a have a better idea on how to allocate

your resources:

⅓ of the social content promotes business, converts readers, and generates profit.

⅓ of the content on your social profiles should surface & share ideas, and stories

from thought leaders in your industry

⅓ of your social content should comprise personal interactions & build your personal

brand

Step 6: Test, evaluate and adjust your social media

marketing plan

Monitoring and keeping a check on your social media profiles will help you to what

adjustments do you need to make. Proper test each of the action on your social media

networks. Track page visits via social accounts, leads generated through social media links

analyze your success, & failures, and then make changes to your social media marketing

plan accordingly. You can also make use of surveys to determine your marketing plan’s

success. The most important thing is to understand that you social media marketing strategy

should constantly change as per the new market trends, and your goals.