How to Create a Successful Social Media Plan?

A social media presence is essential for every business these days. It is an opportunity to tell your brand’s story and engage with your customers, but many find this task to be very overwhelming and time-consuming. There are so many different social media websites, and each platform has distinctive features that should be a part of your marketing plan, as every site has a unique way of connecting with its audience, which they love.

It is very hard to create a successful social media marketing plan when you don’t have a full-time team of social media experts at your disposal. However, you can still have online success if you have a straightforward and sensible strategy that fits your goals and resources.

This article will help you create a very simple and easy marketing plan that will surely put your business on the map.

What is a Social Media Marketing Strategy?

A social media strategy is an outline of your social media goals, the content you are going to post, the responsibilities of everyone on the team, and the tactics to use to achieve your goals. It also contains metrics that help you keep track of the progress you have made.?

The strategy does not need to be complicated. What you want is a simple and specific plan with meaningful measurables. This will help you identify which tactics will be successful on what social media website.

Your ultimate goal for your social media strategy should be to create brand awareness and engagement across social media websites for your targeted audience.

Why do you need a Social Media Marketing Strategy?

Having a social media presence for your brand or business is no longer just an option; it has become a necessity, and to have a successful online presence, you need to have a good social media strategy. A good strategy will help you overcome challenges like creating engaging content and reaching your target audience. It also helps you set goals, track performance, and adjust your metrics over time.

How to Create a Social Media Strategy?

Step 1: Identify your goals

Before making a social media strategy, you need to have clear and measurable objectives because the aim you set will help you stay on track, and get the most out of the work you are already doing.?

Your business goals should be S.M.A.R.T – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. Your goals should be properly defined and not vague.

Common goals for a social media strategy include:

• generating leads
• increasing brand awareness
• improving customer satisfaction
• driving website traffic

You can set as many goals as you want, but they should be clear, measurable, and in line with your overall business strategy.

Step 2: Research and know your audience

Content needs to be targeted to be effective. For your strategy to be successful, you need to know your audience. You need to understand your audience's needs and interests. Create posts that they will connect with and relate to.?

Something that can help you greatly during this step is developing audience personas that can embody who will be your targeted audience and who you will be engaging on social media.?

These personas should or can include important details regarding their interests, age, content interests, where they live, and their behaviour on the internet.?

Step 3: Research your competitors

Knowing about what your competitors are doing to make their brand more relatable to their audience can also give you points to follow. Since your competitors have been in your industry before you, you can learn a lot from their posting frequency, caption styles, topics, and visuals. Do not try to do exactly what they are doing; just learn from them and try to put your spin on it, like making it your own.?

Step 4: Do a social media audit

This step is for those who already have social media accounts for their brand. You should ask yourself a few questions to see what you have learned so far from your efforts:

• What measures have you taken, what have you not, and did they work?
• Who is interacting with you?
• Which partnership of yours is especially valuable to you?
• What network does your targeted audience frequently use?
• How does your competition's social media visibility compare to yours?

Once you have collected the relevant information, you should now start focusing on ways to improve your brand's online presence.?

Your audit should give you all the necessary information about all your accounts. This will give you a clear idea of whether an account is worth keeping or not. If not, then you should delete that account and focus on those social media sites that are giving you something in return.

Look for impostor accounts

During the audit, you should also look for accounts that use your business name and the name of your products.

This can harm your brand's reputation, resulting in people losing trust in your products. The best way to be safe from this is to verify all your social media accounts.?

Step 5: Choose your platforms

Now the time has come to choose which social media platforms you will focus on to improve your social media marketing. It is not a rule to stick to only one site; you can also switch to other sites if you are not getting the results you expected.

There is a wide range of platforms available, and tackling all of them at once is not an easy task, and you shouldn't. If you’re a B2B company, Twitter and LinkedIn users offer workable partnership candidates, but using Pinterest to promote your brand will be a big waste of time for you. If you are a beauty brand, use Instagram and Pinterest to promote your brand, as more than 60% of the audience on Pinterest are women.

Research and find which social media platform your targeted audience is using so you can add that site to your social media plan. That will help you reach out directly to them.?

Keep in mind that if you are a small business owner, you do not have to worry about learning the rules of engagement on multiple networks simultaneously, as it can be very overwhelming. Just focus on one site at a time and expand gradually.

Step 6: Define your brand’s voice and tone

The key to a good marketing strategy is to have a consistent brand voice and tone. The same applies to social media marketing as well.

Even before developing a content strategy, you should focus on the tone of your content and how engaging it would be for your audience.

You can also take inspiration from your competitors and research what your targeted audience likes to look at on social media. This can help you get an idea of what kind of brand tone you should have.

Step 7: Create and curate engaging content

It will come as no surprise that a good social media marketing strategy depends on good content. At this point, you should have an idea of what to publish so you can achieve your goals, what your audience wants, and what your brand identity is.?

Even with all that, creating engaging content, whether it be for a promotional post or a social ad, can be a lot of legwork. However, this is the most essential part of your strategy, and the more time spent during this stage, the better your content is going to be.?

Businesses often make the mistake of making different content for different social media sites. However, this can create a lot of hassle and unnecessary work. The process cost a lot as well.?

You should not put yourself through the hassle and reuse the same awesome content in different places—within reason, of course, especially if you are a small business owner.

Step 8: Create a social media content calendar

An integral part of social media marketing is a content calendar. It creates a pathway for your social media strategy. It is a map of what is to be published, when, and where it should be. This way, you won’t forget anything, even if there are a lot of things going on at a time.

Your content calendar should include all the scheduling of the social media accounts, which should include:?

• Social media platform– which site are you going to post on?
• Posting schedule – when and which content should be posted.
• Type of content – what is the format of the content, e.g., photo, video, text?
• Targeted audience – who should get this post?
• Performance tracking – has the goal you set been achieved?
• Topic – What is the post's topic, and whether it is for educational purposes or an ad??

Another thing you can add to your calendar is the budget for every post. This will help you later as well when it is time for your quarter or annual budget review.?

Step 9: Track performance and make adjustments

Your social media marketing strategy is the backbone of your business, and you cannot assume you will get it right on the first try. It is a trial-and-error process.?

When you start implementing your plan, you are going to review it daily in terms of what your audience is connecting with. During this process, you are going to see some of the strategies not working; however, you should not get disappointed and focus on those that are working.

It is a very crucial step that you should document at all costs, as this will help you when you are going to re-evaluate and revise everything.?

Once you have all the data, you can use it to re-evaluate your strategy regularly. You can also use the information you have gotten to test different posts and different campaigns. In this way, you can perfect your strategy simultaneously.?

Finalising your social media plan

It may come as a shock to many readers, but in social media strategy, nothing is ever final. Social media is fast and is constantly changing. Now and then, a new site emerges and becomes popular, which causes others to change and match up to it.

Similarly, your business will change too; it will change over time to keep up with new trends of that time.

The best way to make perfect social media marketing for yourself is to keep an open mind when it comes to marketing strategy. Lastly, keep documenting the reviews and adjustments you have made. This will help you stay on track and achieve your goal.