How to create a social media plan

Introduction

Ever feel like your company’s social media is directionless? Maybe the occasional post does well, but you can’t really put your finger on why, and then you find it hard to replicate the results. On top of that, you struggle to tie social media back to ROI and justify successes. Chances are, you’re in dire need of a social media plan.

In this blog, we outline the fundamentals of creating a social media plan, including business goals, target audience, and implementation to create a social media strategy that is consistent, impactful, and measurable.

What is a social media plan?

A social media plan is a framework for a company to ensure consistent storytelling across all platforms and posts, all driven towards clear objectives and a target audience. It's a key asset for social media management, the foundation that social media campaigns are built from.

It’s much more than a content calendar. While it includes details like social media formats and content topics, the plan also defines the social media strategy that informs all of these elements. Therefore, creating a social media plan first means the company must know its objectives and target audience.

Step 1: Define your goals

The first step of any plan is to know what you are trying to achieve. Social media plans are no different.

Social media marketing should be tied to specific business goals. Generating leads, converting engaged audiences, and increasing brand awareness are all good examples of social media plan objectives. These are clear goals your social media campaign can be built around.

Examples of bad objectives include wanting to post on social media twice a week or wanting to jump on the latest social media trend. If these are the types of goals you are currently working towards, you need to dig a bit deeper into what you are actually hoping to achieve. 

The objective-setting stage is important because the goals of the social media plan will influence how the plan is implemented. For example, if the main objective is to become thought leaders in the market, members of your team could be engaged to become “topic owners” and use their own personal brands to show their expertise

Step 2: Determine your audience

One of the most common mistakes that companies make on social media is trying to appeal to everyone. The result is often very generic social media content, with a neutral tone that is inoffensive but also completely unengaging, or a variety of tones across posts that make the overall company message messy.

A lack of a clearly defined audience also impacts a company’s ability to target potential customers on social media, reducing their ability to achieve their business goals. A key aspect of creating a social media plan is to define the target persona in as much detail as possible, including their demographics, interests, pain points, and behaviour. 

If you don’t have all these details on your target audience, you might just be wasting a lot of energy. For example, you could have a viral post (great!), but if it’s on TikTok and you’re trying to appeal to Managing Directors on LinkedIn, have you achieved anything? It’s very unlikely you’ll win a new customer.

At IVL Creatives, we tell our clients to find a real person who represents your target persona. This helps to avoid creating a fake persona that is completely imaginary and instead grounds your target audience in a real profile that can then be used to build out a list of similar real-life targets.

Step 3: Build the social media strategy

Once both your audience and your objectives are defined, a social media strategy is created to execute the campaign. Key messages, pillars, and topics are documented into a content strategy, and then the content types, formats, and channels can be determined. Each of these elements should link back to one of the established goals, so your social media is focused and objective-driven.

A social media strategy should cover:

• Social media platforms: selecting the channels where your target audience is most active and optimising content for the platform.
• Post formats: decide whether video, image, or text-based posts perform best for your target audience. Most social media strategies include a mix of formats.
• Frequency/time of posts: posting consistently and at the optimised time for your target audience to achieve maximised reach.
• Hashtag and keyword strategy: ensuring the SEO of your content to improve organic traffic and maximise the reach of your posts.
• Engagement strategy: reach out to people who match your target persona or have interacted with your posts to start a conversation.  

From this strategy, a social media content calendar is created, and content creation begins.

Measuring social media ROI

The metrics for measuring the success of your social media plan should be agreed from the start so you can understand return on investment (ROI). Social media ROI can be measured using KPIs such as revenue generation, engagement rates, follower acquisition, and website traffic, depending on your objectives.

At the beginning of the campaign, set your performance benchmark, then create performance targets for what you would like to achieve within a set time frame (we usually recommend at least 3 months to see a meaningful impact from a social media campaign).

As well as assessing successes, metrics are important for ongoing strategy. They help to see what content worked best, whether the targeted audience is converting, and whether there are any gaps that could be filled in the next three-month calendar. 

It could be that a new target persona is identified, another topic, or that paid social (i.e. social media advertising) could support organic social media posts to achieve your goals. A good social media plan adapts as business objectives shift and social media platforms evolve.

Need help with social media management? Contact us

A proper social media plan will take a company from random posting to consistent, impactful results, thanks to all activity being strategic, tracked, and driven by clear objectives. If this is something your brand needs but you don’t have a social media manager to create it, contact us to outsource your social media management today.