Social media has become an essential tool for people, and therefore for businesses, who have identified the need to strengthen ties with their customers and go in search of their potential customers in one of the places where they spend most of their time.
The more specific your social media plan is, the more effective it will be, so keep it concise - don't make your plan so general or so narrow that it's impossible to achieve or impossible to measure.
In this article we'll explain how you can create yours easily and simply and start gaining visibility on social media.
what is a Social Media Plan?
A Social Media Marketing Plan is a document that details the social media strategies that will be carried out to achieve the marketing objectives of the company. In other words, a Social Media Plan is a Social Media Marketing Plan. It is the rudder that will direct all our strategies and actions of the network plan and that will be executed by the community manager.
Brands no longer see social networks only as a communication channel, but also as something that can help them sell, so a content plan is needed to guide us to know what content to publish on our channels, and at what time, in order to reach our audience and the objectives we set.
This plan will be our base document to be able to design, create and programme the contents of our strategy.
Steps to create a social media plan
Once you understand what a social media plan is, it is important that you understand how to create it. That is why we are going to show you all the necessary steps to start your social media content plan and make it totally effective. We will begin with:
- An internal and external analysis
Before getting down to work, it is important that you carry out an analysis of the specific activities of the plan, the audience you are targeting and the market in which you operate, among other issues.
Within the internal analysis we should study our website, as it should be optimised as much as possible to be more successful, and our existing platforms, because it is necessary to analyse which channels are the best to reach our target audience.
Remember that Facebook could be good for branding, LinkedIn is the most suitable if you are a B2B business, Twitter is the best option if you generate highly specialised content, and if you are targeting a young audience, you can consider social networks such as Snapchat or Instagram.
A very useful tool to carry out our study would be to apply a SWOT analysis, that is, to study our weaknesses, strengths, threats and opportunities in the market.
- Locate and establish your target audience
Once you have completed the analysis phase of the social media plan, it is time to identify your target audience. This is undoubtedly one of the most important steps in the whole document, as correct segmentation will bring you closer to success.
This process will help you when it comes to developing content. You will be able to better analyse what type of content you want, what language you will use to reach that person, tone and you will even be able to know on which social network you should publish that content, the best time to publish it and the best time to publish it.
- Define your social media objectives that are aligned with your business objectives
For a solid marketing plan, it's important to define what you want to achieve. Without objectives, you can't know if what you're doing is working or measure the return on investment. The idea is that your social media objectives are aligned with your overall business goals.
This is the time to rely on S.M.A.R.R.T. objectives, which will guide your actions to ensure they lead to real business results. S.M.A.R.T. stands for what kind of objectives we need to set to achieve those objectives in the long run. They should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
All our actions, apart from being aimed at achieving our objectives, must be measured to know the results you are getting with your strategy. Remember that it is not necessary to wait until the end to be able to evaluate the actions you have undertaken: you must do it at all times.
The KPIs to be analysed vary depending on your needs: they can be interactions according to the number of followers, clicks per number of publications or conversions to direct leads from social networks, among others.
- Content strategy
After taking all the steps we have seen, now it is time to start defining the strategy and the actions you are going to carry out.
We will have to define what strategy we are going to implement (launching, visibility, trust, positioning, promotion, expansion...) and also, what social media actions will help us to achieve these objectives.
You have to be very patient as, in most cases, it is a slow process, although there is one thing you must be clear about: what people are looking for are solutions to their problems and their needs, hence the importance of knowing how they search and with what words they search in order to draw up a strategy that positions you as the number one alternative to satisfy their desires.
- Dissemination and promotion plan
Our content plan must also be accompanied by a dissemination and promotion plan. As we have seen, it is important to analyse, design the content strategy, create, programme and publish, but we must not forget about promotion.
Sharing valuable content is essential, but so is sharing it at the right time. A good content calendar will help you maximise the impact of your publications and will make your team's life much easier.
To design this plan, you can use paid media or your own media. If you have a budget, you can design a dissemination plan that combines different ways of promoting content: paid and owned. If you don't have a budget, design a dissemination plan with your own and free media to help you promote your content and increase its visibility.
Carrying out a content plan for your social networks requires time, analysis and a lot of work. But it will undoubtedly be the basis for your social media strategy to work. Starting to manage social networks without carrying out this analysis is not optimal, which translates into wasted time and money. If we want to bet on a professional presence, this analysis and content design will be necessary.
