How to make a social media marketing plan

Social media marketing is an increasingly essential component in the strategies of Inbound Marketing for brands. But if you want to get the most out of social media, you need to have a well-defined social media marketing plan that guides your actions and allows you to correct the course when necessary. To clear up all your doubts, in this article, we will discuss what a Social Media Marketing Plan is and how to make yours step by step.
What is a social media marketing plan?
The social media marketing plan is a document in the form of a text or presentation where the fundamental information about the company’s presence on social networks is collected: situation, objectives, strategies, planning, and measurement.
For the Digital Marketing Team (and for the company’s workers in general), the social media marketing plan is like a kind of map or blueprint that helps them stay on the right track and continue to progress to achieve the company’s objectives.
A very important aspect of this plan is that it must be aligned with the company’s entire strategy. To understand this, we can think of a series of “Russian dolls” that go from the most general to the most concrete:
- First, we must take into account the company’s business model and global objectives.
- Based on these, the general marketing plan will be drawn up, which will include all the online and offline actions aimed at advertising the brand, its products, and its services within the target audience.
- Within this plan, or as a complement to it, we have the digital marketing plan, or Inbound Marketing, which structures all online actions during a certain period.
- And finally, the social media marketing plan can be understood as a part of the digital marketing plan, although due to its importance, it is worth treating it as a separate document.
Another fundamental characteristic that a good social media plan must have is flexibility, since it is a constantly evolving sector, in which new social networks and tools constantly appear and user habits change. That is why we must be ready to correct course when necessary.
How to develop a social media marketing plan step by step
To better understand how to develop a social media marketing plan, we leave you with this infographic and the 5 basic points developed and extensively explained.
1# Analysis of the situation
In order to establish a coherent objective and strategy, we need to know where we are starting from. Therefore, before we get down to work, we must define what the company’s situation is both internally and externally.
Internally, we must take into account the following factors:
- Social presence of the brand. What social networks are we on, what is the follower and interaction data, and what impact is it having on conversions? We also have to assess what actions we have carried out so far and what results have been obtained.
- Online reputation analysis. Here, we’ll focus on content generated by people outside the brand, such as media mentions and user comments.
- Overview of the company’s digital marketing. We will refer to the company’s general digital marketing plan to see how the strategy is in other digital areas, such as SEO, SEM, and email marketing.
- Resources are available, both at the staff and budget levels.
Externally, we must carry out both an analysis of our main competitors and their presence on the networks and the situation of the sector in general.
To synthesize and clarify all this information, it can be useful to develop the classic SWOT analysis, where we list the weaknesses and strengths of the company and the threats and opportunities offered by the environment.
2# Target Audience
In any Type of Marketing, it is always essential to clearly define who we are addressing. The target audience determines the entire strategy, from the choice of a given channel or tool to the tone of the messages.
If we have previously prepared the general marketing and digital marketing plans, it is most likely that we already have the description of the buyer persona or ideal customer of the brand. Therefore, we will have done a good part of the work, but it can still be refined further.
On the one hand, we can ask ourselves if our presence on social networks is focused on the entire target or if we are going to focus on a specific group within the brand’s universe. We must also keep in mind that each social network has its own peculiarities around the demographic characteristics and profile of its users.
On the other hand, if we are going to launch campaigns of Social Ads, we must take into account all the targeting possibilities they offer us and how we can use them to categorize and define our buyer persona even better. We are likely to discover segmentation ideas that we had not thought of, since these tools allow us to classify users based on many parameters and with a very high level of detail.
3# Objectives
Based on the analysis of the situation and the target audience that we have carried out, the time has come to define what we want to achieve with our actions on social networks.
There is an acronym in English, SMART, which can be very useful when it comes to knowing what our objectives should be:
- Specific: referring to a specific area. For example, “improve our social media presence” is too general, while “increase the number of conversions achieved through Facebook” works much better.
- Measurable: the objectives of the social media marketing plan have to be quantifiable so that we can know if we are achieving them or not. Following the example above, we can establish that we want to increase conversions from Facebook by 25%.
- Assignable: it must be very clear who the people is responsible for the tasks necessary to achieve the objective.
- Realistic: setting goals that we are able to meet is essential to maintain motivation and for forecasts to fit.
- Time-bound: In this way, we can establish controls to monitor whether the objective is being met or not. For example, “increase conversions from Facebook by 25% during the first half of 2019”.
4# Strategic Plan
In essence, the strategic plan seeks to answer the question of what we are going to do on social networks during the period to which the social media marketing plan refers. We can subdivide it into the following sections:
- Social networks. On which social networks are we going to have a presence and why? Although it is always tempting to sign up for the “trendy” network, you have to take into account the resources we have and the demographic profile and particular characteristics of each network. When in doubt, it is always preferable to concentrate resources on fewer networks and expand little by little.
- Editorial and content plan. Quality content is like the gasoline that feeds and gives meaning to the entire social media presence. Therefore, we have to establish what types of content we are going to publish, how often, and who is going to be in charge of producing it. It is important to have regular publications, but above all, the focus should be on providing quality and value to the target audience.
- Actions and campaigns. In addition to having a sustained presence through content, it is also necessary to plan specific actions, for example, contests and raffles through networks or seasonal campaigns. Remember that it is always necessary to link these actions to business and marketing objectives.
- Tools. This section is perhaps the one that is most subject to variability, as new resources are constantly appearing on the market. In any case, it is a good idea to include a reference to the tools that the team will rely on, both to manage the presence on networks and to measure the results.
- Contingency plan. Last but not least, we need to think ahead about what steps to take if goals are not achieved for a certain period or if problems such as a reputation crisis arise on social media.
5# Measurement and monitoring plan
The last step in completing our social media marketing plan is to decide how we are going to measure the results of our actions. Rather than focusing on specific metrics, such as the number of followers, we should look for Key Performance Indicators or KPIs, which are metrics closely linked to business objectives.
Likewise, it is necessary to decide how often we are going to carry out this monitoring of metrics and in what way. For example, the social media marketing manager can create a monthly report and share it with the team to determine the next steps to take.