Nowadays, it is difficult to be successful on social media. Every day the number of social media profiles keeps growing with the help of a social media plan. These accounts range from top brands to NGOs and local organizations to personal profiles.

But, it can be difficult to cut through all the noise. Every social media profile that gets popular is due to many different factors. The main reason they succeed is that they have a good social media strategy. You won’t find them just sharing memes or holiday posts. They have extensive planning behind what is posted and when.

A social media strategy requires a content calendar and automation tools. It also includes techniques for monitoring performance data. All of this is an important part of a brand’s growth. You must carefully plan each post that you share. This can help to increase your social media success.

If you aren’t sure about where to begin, then read on. In this article, you will get many important tips and instructions to plan your social media.

What is Social Media Plan?

Social media planning helps determine your company’s target audience. It also shows you what social networks you can connect with. Besides that, you can even understand what style of content you should create and share. This is important for your marketing strategy.

After that, you can improve the content, analyse engagement and develop audience relations. 

Almost every company has a social media presence. But, success on social media requires more than uploading regular updates. Think about what your objectives are. Who is your target audience? What are they interested in? Why should they care about your content? It would help if you had a proper plan to answer all these questions. 

Benefits and Importance

Some benefits of social media plans include:

• Create active communities.
• Offer products and services for sale.
• Analyse brand sentiment
• Offer customer service
• Promote services and products to specific audiences.

Social media planning is growing in importance. A large population of purchasing adults use social media. So if you want to create a household name, this is the way to do it. Here are some reasons why social media plans are important:

• It increases brand awareness. You need people to see your brand so that they can trust you. They should be aware of your brand and understand what it is that you offer. Since a majority of your customers are on social media, having a plan is important. 

• It wards off competitors. Social media can help you generate a lot of leads. But, it is also full of competitors and many other distractions. A social media strategy can help your plan a way to stand out. You can then create an audience of followers who are informed and active. This also creates an opportunity to develop buyers through leads. 

The Social Media Plan Strategy

Here are some social media plans for you to apply.

• Find the correct tools: Social media planning requires a little bit of technical help as well. You can find various planning tools that help you publish posts on time. You can also monitor their performances and manage various social media ads. These tools range from performing one specific function, to doing it all. Some examples are: 

• Make a guidebook: It is helpful to have a collection of all your plans and strategies used on social media. You can also note down the small details that are important for regular posts. For instance, they could be things like audience segmentation or content themes. Your guidebook should contain demographics like age, location, industry, and job. It can also contain information regarding posting frequency and content mix.

• Ideal Audience: You should make sure you are clear on who your target audience is. If you’re a baby wipes brand, your target audience would be mothers. You can also look at other demographics like age, stature, background, etc. In this way, you can customise your content according to what they will relate to. 

• Analyse and Monitor: You should constantly analyse and review your social media strategies. This can help you uncover any data you need for strategies in the future. You can note down any high-performing posts, hashtags or challenges. Besides that, you can also measure the engagement levels of different platforms, CTAs and content.

• Definite Objectives: Creating well-defined objectives is crucial to a social media plan. They can be to increase awareness about your brand. Or it could be to introduce many people to your product or service. You could also choose to promote a particular event. But, make sure your goals have key performance indicators that you can measure.

Top 3 Social Media Plan Tools

Social media planning needs some technical support as well. These tools can perform a single function or perform all functions. Here are some examples:

• Aha!: Aha! Is a tool that performs various functions. You can use their roadmapping tool to build workspaces for your marketing team. You can also strategise and build content calendars here. Besides that, you can share plans, publish content and monitor your social media.

• Hootsuite: This is also another great social media planning tool. You can use this tool to publish and schedule posts. You can also engage with customers and monitor their activity. Besides that, you can promote various content and analyse your results.

• Asana: Asana is a great social media planning tool. It helps you to stay productive while creating content. You can also organise your work according to different, projects and teams. You can use it for various operations, marketing and product launches as well.

Pros

Here are some pros of social media plans:

• It helps reach your target audience better. By planning your social media, you can also relate to your followers better. This can be done through interactive tools like polls or question stickers. You can then gather all the information you get and create content based on that. In this way, you are posting things your audience actually wants to see. This will help connect you to the desires and problems of your audience.

• It creates ambitions and goals. It is important for you to have a social media strategy. Because you can create an environment of achievement. When you have set goals, you feel productive and get motivated to aim higher.

• It saves time. Creating a content calendar may seem like a big task when you start out. There will be many different things that you need to understand while creating content for your social media. But, scheduling your posts will make up for a lot of lost time. It also creates less space for errors when you plan everything out.

Cons

Here are some pitfalls of social media plans:

• Not keeping clear objectives. If you don’t have a plan in place, your efforts will go in vain. It could be to introduce many people to your product or service. You could also choose to promote a particular event. Or just establish yourself as a personality. Without these goals, you won’t know if your plan is working or not.

• Focusing on vain metrics. Vanity metrics are things like your follower count, and the number of likes, shares, and comments you receive. These metrics may not be a bad thing. But by focusing on achieving these goals, you are less likely to be successful. You should instead focus on your KPIs and content.

• Targeting the wrong audience. As we said before, your target audience is crucial to a social media plan. For instance, if you own a boutique in Paris, you shouldn’t target someone in Brussels. For this, you should make sure you know who your target audience is. And then create content that they will find appealing.

Tips

Here are some tips for you to keep in mind and apply to your social media plan. 

• Best Site: Different kinds of people prefer different social media sites. Once you have zeroed in on your target audience, you can find this out. For instance, see if your audience is more active on Instagram or Twitter. According to that, you can create content for each platform. 

• CTAs: Call-to-actions are very popular and effective forms of social media marketing. You should clearly define what you need your audience to do. It could be watching a video or registering for an event. You should plan your CTAs according to what products or services are coming up. In this way, you can also create interest before launching anything.

• Have set guidelines. If you have a team or more than one person working on your social media plan then maintain guidelines. This important to keep everyone on the same page throughout this process. You can have policies and steps for how they can deal with different situations. For instance: how to deal with an upset customer?

Best Practices

Here are some best practices for you to apply to your social media plan:

• Know your competitors. You can track information about your competitor’s audience. For instance, you can learn their desires, find important data and obtain insights. You can also examine their social media usage. You may also discover the style of content they post, and how often they post. Through this, you can decide whether you want to stay on the same networks or shift.
• Review your past work. You should keep reviewing and analysing your social media plans. This helps you to locate any information you may need in the future. You can make a list of any posts that perform well. It could also be hashtags or different forms of content. Besides that, you may track your levels of engagement on various platforms. Or measure how well your CTAs are bringing in engagement.

• Style and Tone: The tone and style of your brand on social media are important. You should try to maintain one voice throughout your marketing content. But, this voice can be tweaked according to the different platforms. For instance, your brand could have a professional tone on LinkedIn. Or it could be more playful or humorous on Twitter.

Top Social Media Plan Examples

Here are some of the top social media plan examples.

• Burger King France

A great example of social media marketing is the Burger King franchise in France. They share a “Quarantine Whopper” recipe during the lockdown. Through this tactic, they brought humour to a time when things were uncertain. They also brought to notice their fresh and crisp ingredients. 

• Made.com

This brand uses the tactic of user-generated content on its Instagram page. They post a lot of content showcasing all their designs by actual customers who use their products. Through this, people can see what their products look like in real settings. 

• Hootsuite

Here is a software brand that uses humour to better its brand. Hootsuite used a tweet that called them out on not having certain features. They proceeded to add those features and then created a post. They took customer feedback into consideration. But they also showed their ability to accept criticism in a humorous way.

In Conclusion

A social media plan is also known as a social media strategy. It summarises whatever you need to accomplish on your social media profiles. It is important to plan your social media posts. By creating a good social media plan you can get better results. A detailed and precise plan gives you great outcomes.

It is obvious that when your social media platform performs well you will create awareness. This awareness will increase your credibility and bring you more customers. Besides that, it also strengthens your market position. Thus making you a solid professional organisation.

What are your favourite social media plans? How do you create an effective social media strategy? Let us know in the comments section below.