Here's a 10-step guide on how to create an effective plan for your business.

• Get organised, at The Thinking Cap, when we start working with new customers we create a mood board, that incorporates brand guidelines, colour palettes, tone of voice, ideas around the style of imagery etc.

• Choose social media marketing goals that align with business objectives. Follow the SMART framework. Each of your goals should be: Specific / Measurable / Attainable / Relevant / Time-bound. Should having more followers be the priority over engagement?

Here’s an example of a S.M.A.R.T. goal: “We will use Twitter for customer support and lower our average response rate to under two hours by the end of the quarter 

• Conduct competitive analysis, this allows you to understand who the competition is and what they’re doing well (and not so well). You’ll get a good sense of what’s expected in your industry, which will help you set social media targets of your own.

• Who is your target audience? Do your fans/followers across all your platforms reflect this?

• What does your target audience want to see on social media is key. That way you can create content that they will like, comment on, and share. It’s also critical if you want to turn social media followers into customers for your business.

• Are you on the right platforms of where your target audience hang out?

• Is your content hitting their pain points, are you influencing, teaching and helping in a social way, rather than just selling your products and services to them.

• What day/time of day works best? When is the right time to post to your audience? Don't just schedule and hope for the best? This will alter across every platform too.

• Track meaningful metrics, you may want to track different goals for different networks, or even different uses for each network. For example, if you use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your website, you would measure click-throughs. If Instagram is for brand awareness, you might track the number of Instagram Story views.

• Carry out regular social media audits (maybe monthly/quarterly) and take stock of your efforts so far. Ask yourself the following questions: What’s working, and what’s not? Who is engaging with you? Which platforms do your target audience use? How does your social media presence compare to the competition? Once you start collecting this information, you’ll be able to tweak and make valuable improvements on a regular basis.
  

As you know social media moves fast. New platforms emerge, others go through demographic shifts.

Your business will go through periods of change as well.

All of this means that your social media strategy should be a living document that you review and adjust as needed. Refer to it often to stay on track, but don’t be afraid to make changes so that it better reflects new goals, tools, or plans.

When you update your social strategy, make sure to let everyone on your team know. That way you can all work together to help your business make the most of your accounts.

What’s next? If you’re ready to put your plan into action, I'm here to help should you need it. It might be a good idea to take me up on a FREE social media audit, this is always a good starting point.

If you need anything, please contact us below.