Is Your Social Media Plan Falling Through the Cracks? Use These 5 Best Practices to Build a Winning Strategy

Looking to create a social media plan that will produce results and help your business grow? Look no further!

As per Capterra’s Email and Social Media Marketing Survey 2022*, most (75%) marketers invest a large part of their budget in social media—but they don’t look too thrilled about the results. When it comes to utilizing social platforms to achieve marketing goals, only 16% of the surveyed marketers call the performance of their social media marketing efforts “excellent.”

For small-business owners struggling to reach new customers, build relationships with existing ones, and boost their brand awareness, social media marketing can be a proven, mighty tool to achieve all these objectives and more.

But most often, small-business owners struggle with one big challenge; they don't have a plan, and sometimes, they don't even know where to start. As a result, they waste a lot of time and effort in their social media marketing without getting the desired outcome.

To save entrepreneurs from venturing into the social media world without a plan, we've put together this guide on creating a social media marketing strategy to help you achieve your business goals and objectives.

What is a social media plan, and why do you need one?

A social media plan is a road map that outlines your social media goals, strategies, and activities to be undertaken in the future. With a social media marketing plan, you determine which platforms to use, what kind of content to post, when to post, and who will manage your accounts.

As per the Capterra survey, the top three reasons marketers state for using social media marketing are to increase customer engagement (72%), improve traffic (70%), and increase visibility and brand awareness (68%). An effective social media plan ensures that you're using social media to its full potential to reach your goals.

5 best practices to create a successful social media plan

#1. Pick the most valuable social media platforms for your business

If you’re sure that social media needs to be a part of your marketing mix, you need to figure out which platforms should be a part of your social media plan.

The Capterra survey found that while marketers primarily use classic channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, many new sites, most notably Instagram and TikTok, are gaining ground among them.

Look for the ideal customer

Before you even choose which social media channel to use, identify your target customers and then go about finding their prime social hangouts.

There are some clearly discernible patterns; for example, teens are moving away from Facebook and using more multimedia-oriented platforms, such as Instagram^[1].

How to practice this strategy?

Gaining decent traction across all social media platforms takes time. You’ll need to promote your posts for days, weeks, or even months. To start with, choose and manage limited platforms. Fill out the statement below to identify the most appropriate audience and social channels for your business goals:

“Through our efforts to engage <insert target audience group> on <insert social platform> using content such as <insert media type: videos, infographics, white papers, images>, we will be able to <insert desired outcome: awareness, leads, customer insights>.”

#2. Move away from what you want to tell your customers; find out what they want to hear

As you become adept at identifying the most relevant social media platforms for your business, make decisions based on data. Collect more information on your customers by understanding what they respond to.

Simply listen

Spend an hour on each platform to track conversations and keywords. See what people are sharing. What topics does your target audience care about?

Marketing professionals need to focus more on this aspect. The Capterra survey shows that using social media to collect customer insights is the least of marketers’ priorities.

How to practice this strategy?

• Search for keywords, phrases, or hashtags relevant to your business.

• Invite customers to give feedback and review your products. (You can use these reviews as user-generated content on your social media pages.)

• Find influencers in your industry and target them to drive discussions around your brand.

#3. Create a well-thought-out content strategy

Now that you know who your target audience is, what they want to hear, and the social platforms you need to be on, it's time you emphasize the content you're going to create.

Tailor your content for the platform

This is where things can get a little tricky as you need to ensure that the content you create is not only valuable but also aligns with the user intent of the platform. What works on Facebook might not work on LinkedIn, and vice versa.

Ensuring that your social media content strategy is well-thought-out and planned will save you time and effort in the long run.

How to practice this strategy?

• Experiment with content types to find out what sticks with your audience—video content, white papers, campaign landing pages, blog posts, carousels, images, infographics, or something else.

• Create one long piece of content and make multiple social media posts and pieces from it for different social platforms^[2].

• Before cross-promotions, such as sharing a blog through social ads, optimize your content to see if it’s appropriate for the medium and resonates with your audience. Do this by conducting A/B testing – a process that allows social media marketers to test out different versions of their ads and easily identify which ones perform better.

#4. Produce high-value content to gain customer trust; refrain from inauthentic viral posts

Write content that genuinely helps

Brands that help customers with needful and intriguing content witness huge success. This practice is gradually decreasing, partly because social marketing campaigns usually just aim to sell.

When asked if consumers should trust the information shared by marketers on social media, 50% of marketers either think they shouldn’t or are not too sure about it.

How to practice this strategy?

• Aim to teach, not sell. One misconception, for instance, is social ads must sell products. That’s not true. Give unaware users more helpful content and make indirect mentions of your brand. The goal of content creation for social media is to give information that’s useful and worth mentioning.

• Use the 80/20 rule for your content strategy. Make sure 80% of your social media posts are useful, i.e., they educate, entertain, or provide practical solutions to the audience, and only 20% explicitly promote business.

#5. Determine your desired outcomes

A foolproof social media strategy is incomplete if you don’t know what you want to achieve and the progress you’ve made.

The Capterra survey reveals that many marketers aren’t conscious of their goals and progress. Thirteen percent of marketing respondents say they aren’t aware of the impact social media is making on their business outcomes. On the other hand, 22% of marketers expect to derive a quarter of their business revenue from their social media marketing efforts in 2022.

Know your goals and ROI

This is where you need to set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) marketing goals.

There are two types of metrics you can track to confirm the payoffs of your social media efforts.

• Engagement metrics: These metrics focus on the interactions between you and your audience. This can include likes, comments, shares, and more.

• Impact metrics: These metrics focus on how your social media efforts are impacting your business goals. This can include website traffic, leads generated, conversion rate, and more.

How to practice this strategy?

• Define your goals by stating them in the following formats:

  • Generate <insert number> leads within three months

  • Increase followers <insert %> within six months

  • Drive <insert %> traffic to the website within one month through social media

• Calculate the direct return on investment (ROI) of your social strategy by tracking the total sales made to social media visitors on your website and the total investment made by you in software, tools, ads, and man-hours.

• Collect customer responses by asking how happy they are and how likely they are to recommend you. Calculate your customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and net promoter score (NPS). CSAT and NPS demonstrate the experience of your brand’s existing customers.

• Track non-monetary metrics, such as conversations and engagement, to measure social media success.

Put everything together and kick-start!

Now that you have a social media marketing strategy in place, it's time to start putting it into action. Implement your strategy and monitor your progress to see if you're on track to achieve your desired outcomes.

Also, keep in mind that a social media plan is not set in stone and should be able to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of the social network. If you don’t see the desired results, make changes till you get it right!