Top 6 Social Media Planning Tips
As born organisers, we are a pair of busy bees who LOVE a plan! A plan makes us more productive, more joined up, more strategic, we’re less likely to miss things, and it helps tasks feel more manageable.
We create a plan for anything that has the potential to feel overwhelming: from working out what we’re eating each week, to home-schooling, to writing social media for clients.
Today, as part of our lockdown series of blogs, we’re looking at how businesses can use this time to get ahead with their social media; freeing up time to get our businesses back up and running when we’re all allowed to venture out again.
Ultimately, if you want to reduce the amount of time you spend staring into space when you are supposed to be writing social media, it pays to start with a plan…
1. Set Your Objectives
If you don’t define a goal for your social media efforts, how will you know whether all the hard work you have put in has had the desired effect? Different businesses have different goals. You may want to build your social media communities, this could include increasing the number of followers over one or all of the social media platforms you engage with; you may want to get more people to engage with the content you create (liking, commenting, sharing); or you may want to build your brand awareness by creating content that attracts people to find out more about you.
Once you know what you are trying to achieve, you can focus your planning efforts, and maximise your results.
2. Who Are You Talking To?
Many businesses think they must have a presence on every social media platform in order to have an impact. However, this simply isn’t true. The most effective way to make an impact on your customers is to spend more quality time, engaging with them on the social media channels they actually use.
If you’re a lifestyle brand looking to tempt buyers with luxury products…then consider Instagram. The demographic and posting style of this platform is where you are likely to engage customers. However, if you work in professional services and your goal is to network, improve your credibility and be at the forefront of business trends, you’ll be much more suited to Twitter or LinkedIn. The point here is to put yourself in your customers’ shoes…which social media platform would they be on?
On average, it takes eight social media “touches” before a potential customer will buy from your business. Posting with a purpose is vital if you want to secure this engagement quickly and convert that browse into a buy!
Start by making a list of the types of things you could post about on your chosen platforms. Then put them in priority order – what do you think your customers want to see and what’s most important to you? Sometimes it helps to create a simple pie chart which you can refer back to and make sure you’re weighting your content correctly.
3. Get Planning
Now is the time to write a content plan! You only need to keep it top line. Decide how frequently you want to post, map out dates, key events (for your business and relevant global events to capitalise on social media conversations – Awareness Days is a good resource). Finally, using your priority list or pie chart, a rough idea of the content you want to share. This should be a mix of ‘created’ content (from yourself) and ‘curated’ content (sharing other people’s posts/articles/blogs etc with your commentary – don’t forget to add value!) You’ll be amazed at how quickly it fills up 😊
Most social media platforms have inbuilt content scheduling tools. However, if you are posting across numerous platforms, you may want to create something simple to help you keep track of your efforts. In the spirit of togetherness, here’s an example of a content plan we use.
4. Create Content
This is where you can have some fun and get creative – as well as getting ahead of the game by writing all your social media content for a week (or more) in one go.
While it is important that social media has a sense of off-the cuff, topical and spontaneous content, you NEED to make sure there is a consistent level of quality to everything you post. Working in advance gives you the head space needed to achieve the quality customers will respond to.
Again, go back to point two about posting with a purpose, and think about the tone of voice your customers will respond to (cheery, professional, funny, luxe…), but always keep it authentic to you. Think about the quality of images and videos that will appeal to them, this will dramatically improve your engagement.
5. Build Trust Through Engagement
You’ve done the preparation, you’ve written the plan, you’ve scheduled your messages…now what? Equally important to your social media success is engaging with your followers.
Once the scheduling is done you still need to be checking back in, responding to comments, answering questions, and reciprocating with likes, comments and shares. This builds engagement and connection, creating a lasting relationship between you and your customers.
6. Check in, Make Changes
The great thing about social media is that you don’t have to wait until the end of a marketing campaign to find out how you are doing. Each platform has social media analytics that you can use at any time to measure engagement and growth, or understand which pictures inspire click throughs or what article shares inspired comments.
By continuing to evaluate your social media as you post, you won’t waste time on tactics that don’t work. You can then start to build a picture of what your audience engages with and tailor your content.
It is also important, every few months, to go all the way back to point one and check that your content is still aligning with your objectives and speaking to your audience.
Hopefully, these top tips will give you a starting point when it comes to getting ahead of your social media game. However, if you need a little help putting a plan together, or you just don’t have the time to consistently write and post everything you want, then get in touch, we love nothing more than turning ‘to-dos’ into ‘ta-dahs’.