Have you been slogging away at your social media presence but you’re not sure what’s working? Developing an effective social media plan will make sure your socials are working smarter, not harder. Get ready to unlock social media success with a data-driven, results-oriented approach! 

Set SMART Goals to track your progress

I’m sure you know the drill for SMART Goals, but let’s revisit:

S– Specific. Be clear about precisely what you want to achieve. Nailing this down early will help avoid shifting goal posts, and will help you recognise and celebrate your progress. For example, achieving a 20% increase in page followers, or a 20% increase in your account’s reach.

M – Measurable. This is where your metrics come in! You can easily track and measure your follows, unfollows, reach and impressions via your analytics on your social platforms.

A – Achievable. Keep your goals realistic to avoid disappointment or burnout! Sometimes, this also looks like adjusting your goals or metrics if needed. For example, if you originally planned to increase your website leads from Facebook and you struggle to achieve that, you might find that you actually need to start with goals of increasing reach and engagement, first.

R – Relevant. make sure your goal and your selected metrics or measurement are aligned to the sort of social media success you’re after. If you’re looking to achieve brand awareness, focus your goals on impressions and reach. If you want to drive product consideration, focus on engagement, website visits and website actions. 

T – Timely. Setting a time limit keeps you accountable! I’d also recommend setting a calendar reminder for regular ‘check-ins’ towards your goal’s time limit. Although, don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t reach your goal within this time. I’m sure you’ll still have made great progress and had some great learnings and insights along the way.

Identify your audience

I’ve got some great news for you. Did you know your social content doesn’t have to appeal to EVERY single person on the big wide internet? Narrowing down your target audience is vital for an effective social media marketing plan. It helps you create tailored content and messaging that is going to appeal most strongly to your potential customers. 

For example, if your social channel is promoting a women’s activewear brand? Your ideal target customer might be women aged 22-30 who are interested in fitness, wellness, yoga and nutrition. 

Narrowing down your target audience takes a lot of the guesswork out of the type of content you need to post. For example, for this audience they would love to see your workout tips, wellness inspiration, recipes, and highlighting the comfiness of your activewear designs! 

Video is KING!

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, video is ruling the roost across all social platforms! With over half of social media users preferring video to other types of video content, video needs to be a key part of any effective social media marketing plan in 2022.

And the particular type of video post we also won’t shut up about? Reels. That full-screen vertical video content is completely eating up the algorithm right now.

Go to any brand’s Instagram page and compare their feed video post views with their Reels views and you’ll see a DRAMATIC difference, with Reels achieving much higher views. Reels are being pushed out by the Zuck algorithm fairies to directly compete with TikTok, and YOUR Instagram page can benefit from this rivalry! 

Build Reels into your social media marketing plan and you’ll be nailing any reach and engagement goals in no time.

Consistency (and timing) is key to any effective social media marketing plan!

Creating and scheduling your content in advance will be a game-changer in making sure you always have consistent content posted at peak times.

Use a scheduling tool like Skedsocial to schedule your feed posts so you can sit back, relax and know your content is ready and waiting to be published at just the right time (jokes, we know there’s not much sitting back OR relaxing in the SMM or small biz world, ha!).

Creating a posting schedule driven by the data you have available to you is important for any effective social media marketing plan. You can check your unique audience’s most active times via your Instagram or Facebook analytics, and align your post times with these to make sure you can maximise your reach and engagement when your posts go live. 

On Facebook, just go to your Page Insights, then click Posts. Hint: times will be shown in PST so make sure you convert them to your timezone!

On your Instagram mobile app when logged into your business account, you can see this by going to your page Insights, selecting Followers, then scrolling to ‘Most Active Times’, and you can toggle by time of day or by day of the week!

Implement paid ads to drive targeted results

If you’ve got ambitious goals for your social media results, including a paid ads strategy might be the icing on the cake to get you there. 

We always recommending making sure your organic social strategy is strong before launching paid ads activity, but if you’re ready, you can use paid ads to: 

• Build awareness: use reach and awareness objectives to get your brand in front of targeted new audiences  
• Consideration: You can set objectives such as social engagement or website traffic to start educating audiences about your brand on a deeper level, and get them to start exploring your products or offerings 
• Conversions: with campaign objectives like purchases or leads, you can drive really meaningful actions and ROI with paid ads. Don’t forget, this bottom-of-funnel campaign type is only going to work effectively if you’ve nailed your awareness and consideration, too. (Essentially – you’ve gotta walk before you can run!)

Now you’ve got all the pieces of an effective social media marketing plan, there’s no stopping you!

Now, when it comes to creating that shiny, engagement-magnet content? Our Content Marketing Formula For Success is an hour of gold nuggets. We’ll be breaking down our own approach to content marketing, a formula honed by our founder Cherie over 13 years! You can sign up now to get ready for the action on August 9th. 

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