Your social media posts have the power to establish your company as a household name and convert your followers into fans. Only having a strong strategy for your social media content can have this kind of impact. Showing up on every platform and infrequently updating your followers when you have the time is insufficient.
The best method to stand out on social media is to set clear objectives, produce insightful posts that support those objectives, and disseminate information on the appropriate networks. Following that, you can evaluate your outcomes and gradually improve your plan.
5 Steps to Creating Your Social Media Content Plan
A social media schedule may be made rather easily. It all depends on how sophisticated your content is, how frequently you publish, and how many users you have.
We provide a few simple steps for building a social content strategy below.
1. Take an inventory of your social media presence.
The first step is to make a list of all of your current social media accounts and the associated login information. This is crucial because, before you start scheduling your material, you must make sure that you have administration access to every account.
We advise developing a spreadsheet that records:
- Inactive or fake profiles
- Passwords, email addresses, and usernames for accounts.
- Personal versus professional profiles
- Audience that each profile is aimed towards.
Who oversees the account? (e.g. you, a team member, a marketing agency, etc.). information that has to be updated. You might come across some accounts that are no longer active or profiles for which you don’t have a login.
The time has come to delete the old account, retrieve your passwords, update out-of-date data, and, if necessary, create new profiles.
2. Construct a content calendar
Building a social media content calendar is time-consuming, but it’s necessary after you know what material performs best and you’ve determined your main objectives. Using a calendar will enable you to organize your social media content in the long term. You’ll be able to better picture your concepts and arrange them so that the plan is simpler to carry out. Everything you upload will have a home in your content calendar.
To get the most out of your content strategy, don’t be hesitant to repurpose it and schedule it across several social media channels. Consider the content kinds that, according to your audit, perform well on that platform when choosing where to post which pieces of material.
When it comes to the ideal times to post on each network, keep in mind that there are best practices. Sprout’s Viral Post feature analyzes data from your followers and generates reports that explain when to post to obtain the most reach if you want to make determining the best posting times easier.
3. Consider Your Audience
Your social media analytics will give you a lot of information about the content kinds that your audience connects with the most.
But since most social media tools won’t assist you to come up with these original content ideas, it’s occasionally useful to gather suggestions and feedback directly from your followers.
You should plan posts that solicit audience feedback throughout your whole content calendar. You might inquire as follows:
- What inquiries do you have regarding [topic]?
- What is the most pressing issue you need assistance with right now?
- What subjects would you like to see more of from us?
These inquiries are a fantastic approach to determining the level of interest in your audience and gathering suggestions for new content.
Keep in mind that the goal of social media content marketing is to maintain audience engagement. You should therefore pay attention to what customers need, want, and how you can best provide it for them through your channels.
4. Distribute and share your content
More than just what you share on social media channels is part of your social media strategy. A good social media strategy includes much more than just planning and publishing your content. Finding strategies to actively spread your material so that the broadest audience is reached is an effective tactic. Establishing a content distribution plan will position your posts for greater sharing.
Include share buttons on your posts if you regularly blog so that your readers can share your information with their followers (like the ones you see at the top of this piece!).
Asking a question and encouraging the respondent to publish their responses on social media or in the blog post’s comments area is another way to get your audience to interact with your material. Social proof in the form of other people sharing your work is quite strong. Responding to or repeating comments made by users who share your content should be a part of your social media content strategy.
There are social networking platforms that make content distribution simple, such as Sprout’s scheduling function.
Engaging in networking with bloggers and content producers in your niche is another effective distribution approach. If you have a relationship with another business and are willing to reciprocate, they will be more likely to share your material with their audience. Just keep in mind that anything you communicate to your audience should be pertinent to your business and useful to them.
5. measure results
Measuring the outcomes of all of your efforts is the last step in developing a successful social media content strategy. To develop a long-lasting strategy, proper tracking will be essential. Maintaining thorough metrics can assist you in gradually fine-tuning and improving your plan. To maintain track of what’s effective, you should analyze your content at least once a month.
Take a top-down perspective on your content over the course of the analysis period. Examine each piece of content’s performance and the circumstances that influenced it. Evaluate the content’s contribution to the overarching content objectives you specified in step one. Several of the most crucial social media metrics to track are as follows:
- Reach and impressions, which indicate the number of times your material was seen, are indicators of awareness.
- Engagements are the number of likes, shares, comments, and clicks that your content receives.
- ROI — External sources conversions and referrals
