Hundreds of companies and businesses have a very interesting presence on social networks. However, many of them are still not clear about their strategy in this regard. That is, they still don’t know why or why they do what they do.
There is a lot of improvisation. An example of this would be looking at the large number of IGTV channels that brands are creating. New tool, new toy. Why is this happening? Basically for two reasons: the need to ride the wave of trends and the absence of a solid Social Media Plan.
In this article, we are going to see how to deal with this issue, so important to achieve the established Marketing objectives.
The Steps That Don’t Fail to Make an Updated and Effective Social Media Plan
First of all, let’s define what a Social Media plan is: it is a document that describes the main points of a social media strategy. It must be aligned with the Digital Marketing objectives and the business plan.
And something fundamental that is often overlooked: it has to be INTEGRAL. That is, the social media plan is structured by parts. Each of them must be chained to the others, have a relationship. It is a team that must play in harmony.
STEP 1: Diagnosis of the brand, the Web and the platforms
To make a diagnosis it is necessary to analyze, investigate. You will have to ask many questions. Let’s list some here:
- Does the brand have a general communication or marketing plan?
- How is that plan working? Where are the problems?
- Do you already have a social media plan in progress? Why do you want to change it?
- Who is your target audience?
- How is your product sold or how is your service contracted?
- Have you already implemented a sales funnel?
- What have you done on the Internet so far? Has this worked?
- Is it talked about on the Internet? Where and what is said?
- Who is the competition?
- What does the competition do on social networks? Which ones do they use? How do they do it?
- What is different about this brand in relation to others in the sector?
And there would be a question missing that is essential to create an effective Social Media plan: What are the objectives of the company or business? You must always review this point and update the planning with the focus on this issue.
Let’s say one of your business goals is to increase your market share in a specific area. The social media marketing plan needs to be developed in order to go after that objective.
It is necessary to clarify that we are only asking some questions here, but there are many possibilities to ask other things about the Web (if the brand already has a site) and social platforms. Is the Web prepared to fulfill what is expected of it? Is it well worked at the SEO level? What keywords should be included? What user experience does it offer?, on which social networks should the brand be present, why?, etc.
STEP 2: Strategy Design
Once all the necessary audits have been carried out, it is time to establish SOCIAL MEDIA OBJECTIVES that are SMART. The acronym in English means:
Do you need to nurture communities? Generate awareness? Get leads? Learn more about the audience? It is important that you be specific when defining your Social Media objectives. That they are also realistic, that is, that you do not expect things that are practically impossible (even in relation to the time in which you propose to reach them), achievable, measurable and within a period of time.
According to an article by Marketing specialists at Social Media Examiner,
The goal you decide to pursue will determine the strategies you will adopt and the performance metrics you will need to track. After you have this general goal, you can begin to identify relevant metrics, strategize, and create content.
Now is the time to define the CONTENT PLAN. The first question is to decide, according to several factors, on which social networks the brand will be present. This is the time to think about what’s new and put together a plan that is as up-to-date as possible.
It is a ranking of the most popular social platforms in the United States as of April 2018 according to the number of active users in millions. The podium goes to Facebook with 2.2 billion users. It is followed by YouTube with 1.5 billion, WhatsApp with 1.3 billion and Facebook Messenger with 1.3 billion. They are all messaging applications.
Only in seventh position does Instagram appear with 800 billion active users. Maybe you were hoping it would show up sooner. In any case, these statistics do not reflect all realities, but they show a trend.
At least, it helps us know that Facebook has to be among the social networks that you are going to use for your brand. You could also think about a WhatsApp strategy or a YouTube channel. It all depends on the objectives, the audience and other factors related to the product or service.
If your audience doesn’t use Instagram, then eliminate it from your plan. You don’t need to be there just because every brand uses it. You have to be where your clients or potential clients are.
Once you have chosen the social networks that you are going to include in your plan, you are going to prepare to put together the strategy or plan in an organized way. To do this, we recommend our article: Downloadable Checklist to define your Social Media Plan step by step. If you want you can download this checklist directly from this link.
What are the trends that you are going to take into account so that your plan is updated?
- Social listening. Track what is said about your brand, your products or your services. Also from the competition. Respond to all comments, whether good or bad. This is not new, but since there are a greater number of users and a significant number of networks, it is necessary not to overlook this point.
- Live broadcast and video. Without a doubt, the trend of the moment is in video and also live content. We say it again: you have to evaluate the use of YouTube or take advantage of the video resources of Facebook or Instagram.
- Influencer Marketing. This type of marketing is growing despite bad forecasts. It is necessary to know more about it and start applying it.
- Use Facebook to set the pace. The great Neil Patel simplifies it like this:
“It’s easy to consider Facebook past its prime. It’s been around since 2004, a lifetime in the digital realm, and news and trends often focus on the new and emerging.
That is a big mistake. Facebook is the platform to rule all platforms. It was, is and will continue to be. If you only participate in two platforms, it should be Facebook and another platform. Three? Facebook and two others. You get the idea.”
- More engagement on Messaging platforms. If the use of messaging applications is increasing, then we will have to commit much more to them. Why not think about the possibility of incorporating a strategy in WhatsApp?
- Instagram Stories. Using this tool (if Instagram is incorporated into your plan) is almost mandatory. Being in the stories is repeating yourself in the customers’ heads, it is increasing the number of followers and even getting a sale.
- Augmented reality. This is perhaps the future of social networks. Only with a smartphone, users are able to enjoy this experience. Snapchat’s Lens Studio is already opening the doors for brands to create AR experiences.
STEP 3: Metrics and Evaluation
You are implementing your social media plan. It doesn’t all end there. To know what the results are and be able to make the necessary adjustments, you will have to closely track some metrics. This is also part of the design of a Social Media plan.
How to do it? In this article we are going to briefly review the most important indicators (KPIs). For that, we are going to turn to another Digital Marketing specialist, Juan Carlos Mejía. According to him, the indicators in Social Media can be divided by categories.
In this graph you can see a summary of the three categories of indicators: Conversion and Result, Interaction and Reach, Community and Management.
The purpose of this article is not to dwell on this issue, which deserves much more depth. But let’s see an example.
Hypothetical situation: Your goal is to increase awareness of your brand. The reasons may be several: you have lost a significant amount of market share, or you are trying to reach a new target market or you are launching a new product or service, among others.
What metrics are you going to track? Well, there will be a mix of all categories of indicators:
- Average reach per post
- Website traffic from social media
- Number of followers
- Number of brand mentions
- Engagement levels (likes, shares, comments, responses, etc.)
- Share of voice (brand coverage relative to competitors)
Many of these metrics are accessible from free tools like Facebook Insights and Google Analytics. Monitoring must be organized to be effective. When there is a mismatch, we can immediately resolve it. Therefore, it is very important to be perfectly clear about what we are going to measure and how often.
