How to Create a Strong Social Plan

When it comes to brand marketing and communications, any well-versed High-Vibe Entrepreneur knows the importance of a developed social media presence. Whether you’re a product or service-focused business, having an organized and proactive social media strategy is the key to optimizing engagement, conversions and staying connecting with potential customers.

It may seem easy, but anyone who has attempted to build and grow a social following is aware of the difficulties. Creating quality content is time-consuming to start with, not to mention scheduling that content, measuring results and optimizing your posts. To help you start a new social media presence or improve relationships with your existing followers, we’ve put together some of our favorite tools and strategies that will help you plan your social media activity in advance.

Brainstorm social media content and campaigns in advance.

‍When you’re an entrepreneur, it can be difficult to find time to dedicate to your social media platforms. To make sure your time is used productively and constructively, it’s important to get yourself clear and organized on the objectives for your campaigns, then schedule them accordingly. First, we recommend finalizing your business’s marketing goals for the year. Once finalized, social media content can be planned and written at once and organized a month in advance. This will not only save you time throughout the year, but will also allow you to efficiently track performance and engage with your audience by using scheduling apps. Plan a monthly review where you re-read and edit any pre-written social content and then schedule it for the coming month. Planning in advance allows you to see what content works and doesn’t work for future campaigns, and will give you time to reply to and engage with your followers throughout the month.

Consider what a customer truly wants from your account.

It can take a while to grasp, but we’re going to cut through the noise and teach you a valuable social media lesson now: good content is four things — valuable, aspirational, relatable and catered to your audience’s desires. To create content that accomplishes all of these things, think about the wants and interests of your followers and why they follow your account. This can vary greatly depending on the type of brand you are. For example, a customer may follow a local fashion boutique on Instagram because they want to learn about new products and see how they’re styled, but a customer will follow a life coach because they’re looking for advice and inspiration. This means your account and approach to your content should vary depending on your customer’s end game. (Need more direction? We’ve put together a few post examples at the bottom of this page to help you brainstorm some ideas for your specific business.)

Create a social media calendar via Google Sheets or Google Calendar.

Creating a robust content calendar is one of the first steps in strategizing your brand’s social media accounts. For easy organization, Google Sheets and Google Calendar are great tools to use for planning monthly content. The best part? These easy-to-use platforms are free and can be shared with your team.

Invest in social media scheduling tools.

If you don’t have the bandwidth to create the outline of your own social media calendar, you can invest in tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social, Edgar, Iconosquare, Schedugram, OnlyPult or Planoly. Each of these tools will allow you to plan and schedule your social media content for the month. This might seem unnecessary now, but your most valuable resource as a spirited entrepreneur (aka #spiritpreneur) is your time — and that’s exactly what these tools will give you. By scheduling social posts ahead of time, you’ll have more time to engage with your audience and brainstorm the content for the next month.

Or – use each social media platform to directly schedule posts and check analytics.

Facebook allows you to schedule posts directly through your brand’s Page. Facebook also offers Insights (their word for analytics), so you can track your brand’s Facebook content performance and understand your audience. Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest also offer analytics tools that you can also use to measure the performance of your brand’s growth on each channel and the performance of your brand’s content.

We know that coming up with beautiful and unique content can be one of the most difficult parts of social media marketing, so we put together a cheat sheet for post ideas for product and service–focused businesses:

For Service-Focused Businesses

• Info about your Services/Packages
• Insider/Industry/Pro Tips
• Project Spotlights (Work/Portfolio)
• Blog Content
• News
• Client Features
• Quotes/Inspirational
• Process (In Progress) Photos of Projects/Behind the Scenes/Workspace
• Team Highlights (Meet the Team)

For Product-Focused Businesses

• New Arrivals
• Sales/Promotions
• Customer Photos (Get permission and credit appropriately)
• Product Shots (Making of/Detailed Photos)
• “Making Of” Product Photos
• Behind the Scenes (Buying Trips, Store Scenes)
• Inspirational Images
• How To (Wear, Use, or Get the Most Out of Product)

Creating, executing and analyzing your social media strategy is a full-time job. As an entrepreneur, it’s vital that you make sure you have a solid social media strategy in place to save your time and energy.

If you don’t have the time to dedicate to the task, DesignGood has a team of experts who can guide you. Give us a call today and we’ll talk through options.