What Is A Social Media Plan And How To Do It Step By Step For Your Business?

Have you created the Social Media Plan for your business? As you already know, having a presence in the main social networks where your target audience is is essential for the smooth running of your company.

These communication channels are a true digital showcase and it is necessary to have a good strategy, that is, a good Social Media Plan for it to succeed, since carrying out actions without planning them in advance is like “hitting the blind.”

Not having one will cost you time and money, so in this article I would like to show you what it is and how to create it step by step, with simple tips to get started today:

What is a social media plan?

A social media plan or marketing plan in social networks are the strategies that are going to be carried out in these social channels to achieve the objectives proposed by the brand.

It is important to take a few steps before getting started with this type of planning, so here I will explain some interesting techniques.

It is also important to know who will be in charge of executing it.

In this case, if you have a team of several professionals for these tasks, the social media manager will lead each one of the decisions and the Community Manager will execute them.

How to prepare a social media plan?

Before launching into publishing anything on these communication channels, you should do an analysis to see what the current situation is in them and how to approach the trends of these platforms with your objectives.

That is why I am going to teach you several actions that you have to do to create a social media plan and succeed with your strategy:

1. Analyze in which social networks you want to be present
2. Do an analysis of the strategy of your competition
3. Create and execute your planning.
4. Measure results and make decisions

Seems easy right?

Next I will explain a little how to do it with these four points:

1) Analyze in which social networks you want to be present

Before starting with your social media plan, you have to know the state of your brand, and know which channel it fits into, so as not to waste time or effort.

Where is your target audience? On Instagram? Facebook? On Twitter? LinkedIn? _

Precisely this previous question is the one that you should ask yourself in each and every one of the cases, since a very typical mistake is to create accounts in all the networks “in a crazy way”, without thinking about whether there will be those users related to what you offer (products or services).

2) Do an analysis of the strategy of your competition

Once you are clear about the situation of your brand and in which networks you want to be present, you have to carry out an analysis of the strategy carried out by your competition.

In this way you can analyze the positive and negative points that your competitors have in their communication through them.

You will get very useful information to start shaping your own strategy:

• What kind of posts work for them.
• How much engagement they have, depending on the weekly posts.
• What are the posts that your audience shares the most.
• What kind of communication does not attract users at all.

All this information will help guide you in your strategy, but be careful. Do not fall into doing everything like the competition, for your brand to stand out and be successful on social networks you must be original and a unique brand.

There are tools that help you in a very easy way to do an analysis of the competition in social networks and keep it updated, such as Metricool ‘s competitor analysis.

3) Decide the type and format of content you will share

Imagine that you already know in which networks you are going to be present and you are going to create a corporate-type account and how your competition develops this type of strategy.

From this assumption, it is time to select what types of content you are going to publish in each 2.0 channel.

Each platform has its characteristics, including its own size of images, both to complete and optimize your own profile, as well as those that you will share with the rest of your community.

Think about the content for each of them, but don’t let all of them always contain the same content.

This only shows neglect and you will not get unfollowed in all of them, because it is the same as in the others…

4) Fundamental characteristics of the content

I am going to leave you some tips so that you can focus on contributing the maximum value to your community with everything you publish.

After all, apart from the user, “content is king”, right? 😉

• Create original content. Of course, you can be inspired by ideas that other professionals or companies have had. However, never (but never) copy. This type of action “has very short legs” and will make your reputation fall to the ground.
• Do not be a spammer, that is, do not focus only on selling. Better contributes value of themes related to your services and products.
• Share content that is relevant to the user even if it is not from your brand, that is, that helps them and/or provides them with interesting information.
• Vary the formats between photos, videos and gifs.
• It shows that behind the networks there are people. One idea is to post team content often.

5) Execute your social media plan

You already have the content thought out! It’s time for you to get going.

It’s very easy, isn’t it? In principle, it will only be to publish the content that you have created on social networks.

I am going to give you other tips so that you do not get overwhelmed with the subject:

• Create an editorial calendar where you can write down what publication goes each day
• Don’t bore your audience by just sharing your news. Stay active in them and interact.
• Talk to your followers, answer their questions or comments about your articles or even about other collateral topics in your sector.

So that publishing all the content on your social networks does not mean hell for you, I recommend that you schedule a large part of your publications with external tools.

This way you will save a lot of time and have your strategy more organized.

6) Analyze your results

They say that:

“What is not measured can not be improved”

Therefore, this is the last step, but by no means the least important. Once you have started with your strategy and your social media plan, it is time to start analyzing it, to find out how it is working and what results it is giving you.

Analyzing is an essential part of all strategies, whether on social networks or not.

Without analyzing your steps, you won’t know if the effort you put in is worth it or if you’re hitting blind again.

Therefore, you always have to analyze the actions you take. It will help you:

• Correct those things that do not work well.
• Get to know your followers and see which posts they like more or less.
• Find out if you have made a mistake and that has affected your brand reputation.
• How is the evolution of your followers.
• Which strategy works worse or better for you.

Conclusion

With the analysis of everything you do, you will direct your social media plan even more, you will be able to correct all the mistakes or repeat more the actions that your audience likes.

This way you will be more successful and you will achieve your goals with your business.

And so far everything about how you can make your social media plan and be successful on social networks!