Simple Social: 5 Steps to Creating an Effective Social Media Plan

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram… In 2015, the list of new social media sites seems endless. But in the marketing world, knowing all of them—and more importantly, how to utilize them—is a must. But with new articles, blogs and maybe even sales for your product or service coming out daily, how can you plan your social media in advance?

By creating a plan.

This process is quite simple. Here are a few quick steps to create your own:

  1. Define Demographics: And by this, we mean three things: audience, first and foremost, but also time and resources. Knowing your audience is the most important aspect of your marketing. What age group are you targeting? Do they have a specific career? A passion? This will direct the tone of your posts. Once that is decided, determine how much time you have, and what resources you have available to you. Need help? Red Mallard can take care of all three.
  2. Go for the Goals: Set high, but still realistic, goals for what you want to achieve through social media. How many shares and likes do you want per week? How many conversions per month? When planning out your goals, make sure they are SMART. That is, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time sensitive.
  3. Create Accounts: Now it’s finally time to actually make your accounts. Choose which platforms will be most conducive to your business and create them. Fill in all profile and cover photos, and ensure you have the correct sizing for each. For a more professional touch, have a graphic designer manage the graphics. It’s superficial, but an ugly account will not drive as much traffic as one that looks professionally created.
  4. Curate Content: Find the leaders in your industry and see what they’re posting. What posts have more success? Which aren’t successful? Take this inspiration and apply it to your own accounts. Add your own touch of course, but leverage what other great thinkers are saying about your industry.
  5. Construct Calendars: Finally, put your content calendar together. To do this, you need to know what types of content you will be producing (graphics, photos, articles, etc.), how often you want to post (the more you post, the better), who will be creating the content, and how the content will be promoted. Make a spreadsheet with all of these answers and fill in the blanks as far as you want, or download Red Mallard’s customizable content calendar.

We can’t lie to you: social media is a lot of work. But it’s what we do. Want to have someone do all the work for you? Red Mallard is ready and able to get your social media plan started today. Contact us for a free consultation.

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