Managing a company’s social media presence can be time-consuming and at times overwhelming. But taking the time to create a plan that addresses your goals, content topics and audiences can take it from stressful to successful. Consider a concise, easy-to-follow social media strategy to help you make it manageable and effective.
Here are some tips to get you started. Plus, we’ve included a social media template for a one-page social media plan we use at Clearpoint Agency to keep our client’s social media programs on track. Is it fancy? No. Is it complicated? No. It’s a plan that fits on one sheet, is easy to follow and share. That’s all we’ve found you need. That and a lot of smart ideas to make your social media exciting and relevant.
Pick Carefully
Before you jump into the deep end of the social media pool, you need to define what social media platforms you want your company to allocate its precious time, money and resources to. This can be accomplished by defining your key audiences and researching what social media platforms they use.
For example, you may personally like Pinterest, however, it may not be the best social media channel to reach a B2B audience.
Another way you can decide what social channels to use is by looking at what platforms your competitors are actively using. If all of your competitors are using Twitter, it may behoove your company to start an account.
Set Objectives
After you’ve created your social media accounts, the next step is to create social media objectives. Outlining and setting objectives will make it easier to find appropriate content to post to your feed.
A few common social media objectives include building brand awareness, increasing followers, likes and total reach, and driving traffic back to your website. While these are common goals, try to tailor your company’s social media based on your unique needs.
Plan Content
Deciding what to post can be the most time-consuming part of social media management. Defining and designating what type of content you want to share can help streamline your content creation and focus your content curation efforts.
At Clearpoint Agency we create “buckets” of content ideas for posting to social media. Each “bucket” has an overarching theme, and within each bucket is a list of the types of posts that correlate with that focus. For example, a bucket could be “Company Culture” then the following post ideas could be office celebrations, awards, and recognitions, etc.
We suggest creating approximately 3 – 5 buckets of content to draw on for social media postings.
Content Ratio
When it comes to sharing content, many social media experts adhere to the 60:30:10 ratio (Rallyverse). What is the ratio?
- 60% – relevant content curated from an outside source
- 30% – content you created, such as a blog post, infographic, etc.
- 10% – promotional content that promotes a call to action
When it comes to looking for curated content to post, it’s important to read the entire piece to ensure it does not mention your competitors, doesn’t counter any of your company’s philosophies, does not say anything negative about your customers or contain any information you would not support. Yes, this takes time, but is crucial. Don’t, and we repeat, don’t rely on just the headline when reposting content.
It’s important to make sure you try to stick with the above ratio to ensure your social media feeds do not become redundant or too self-promotional.
Posting Frequency
Social media is a great way to stay relevant and connect with your audience. However, it is critical to maintain your social channels through frequently and continuously posting. Frequency of posting varies for each platform and depends on your audiences.
Look at how often your competitors are posting and take into consideration your time bandwidth and budget you have allocated for social media to help you set realistic and manageable frequency rates for posting.
Consider Tools
There are several great social media tools out there that can help monitor your company’s social media accounts. Tools such as Hubspot, Hootsuite and Sprout Social are just a few examples of the different tools available that can help you easily manage your company’s social media accounts under one roof.
Get Clearpoint Agency’s complimentary one-page social media plan template here to get you started. If you are interested in learning more about our social media planning and management services, contact us at 760-230-2424 or info@clearpointagency.com – we’re happy to help.