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Defining your Social Media Plan

David Correll on January 30, 2012 | Social Media | Comments (0)

So you have been tasked to create a Social Media Plan for your company, business or client – but where do you start?

I will outline a very simple process I run through every time I am looking to create a social media plan for a new business or product:

1. Research

Before you even start thinking about social media marketing tactics and strategies, research the product, business, client, target market, competitors, industry trends and so on.

You need to get a full understanding of any business before you can market it.

2. Write a Summary of your Plan

Create a short summary of the goals and objective you hope to achieve by implementing your social media plan. Keep this short and concise to avoid turning a simple task into a complicated matter.

3. Outline Objectives and Goals

Next step is to write a full list (I like to do bullet point list) of all the objectives and goals you hope to achieve such as increasing fan numbers, improving engagement, more email subscribers etc. Specify dates and timelines in which you need to need to achieve your goals by.

4. Outline your Strategies

So we know the goals and objective from our social media plan, but how are we going to achieve these? Again do a list of all the strategies you want to implement that will help achieve your goals, for example: more frequent posting on Facebook, adding a larger email subscription widget to your website, posting more enticing content to get readers commenting etc.

5. Measure your Results

Once you have outlined all your goals and strategies and have commenced social media marketing it’s important to measure and record your results. I like to do this on at least a weekly basis to determine if we are heading in the right direction.

If no progress is being made, do we need to alter the goals – or strategies?

I also like to collate all my results into an Excel spreadsheet initially so at the end of every month I can provide a transparent social media report to my clients showing the progress made. Not enough social media agencies do this and I can’t believe they get away with it!

Related: Do you need to create a Social Media Policy ?