What is a Social Media Content Strategy Plan?
Many small business owners want to take advantage of the marketing opportunities on social media, but do not know where or how to begin. Some try their luck by diving headfirst in to their social media marketing campaigns without any kind of direction and wander aimlessly in the huge crowds. The starting point of every small business’ social media marketing is creating a social media content strategy plan. A social media content strategy plan is the documented management of all content (text, images and video, or downloadable content) posted on behalf of a company. This is where your brand voice and uniqueness are developed. How do you want to sound to your audience? What makes you stand out from your competition? Determining these two factors in the beginning sets the tone for all your social media posts and starts your business’s online branding. Starting with a social media content strategy plan lets you or your content management team know exactly how you want to deliver your messages and guides them to keep it sounding consistent.There is an endless amount of content to post on social media, but small business owners need to focus on three types of content: curated, educational, and promotional.
- Curated content is content created by a reputable source in your industry. It has value to your particular market and shows that you keep yourself informed of current trends and topics. Sharing this type of content builds trust between you and your audience because other credible sources support your thoughts.
- Educational content is content created by you through research. It teaches your reader how to solve common problems or something new about your industry. Creating educational content shows your expertise and builds trust with your audience because you are giving them free information about issues they need help with.
- Promotional content is the content you create to promote your business. Once you have earned your audiences’ trust, whether it is a soft or hard promotion, this is your opportunity to sell your products and services.
Now that you understand what type of content to post for your business, you want to keep your posts consistent by making an editorial calendar and social media content calendar. This is where you plan the buyer’s journey for your audience. The following example will illustrate this:
- Monday-Curated content to introduce the chosen topic
- Tuesday-Top of the funnel blog post
- Wednesday-Soft promotional post and a middle of the funnel curated content post
- Thursday-Bottom of the funnel blog post
- Friday-Hard Promotional post
This example may not work for your particular business, but remember to follow a consistent pattern when posting. A simple rule to follow is the 4-1-1 rule, which reminds you to post 4 informational posts to 1 soft promotional post to 1 hard promotional post. Keeping a schedule like this keeps your business from becoming overly promotional and guides your leads through the buyer’s journey converting them in to customers.
How to Start Your Social Media Content Strategy Plan
At this point, it is almost time to put your social media content strategy plan in to action, but you still need to narrow a few items down. First, define your target audience. Who is buying your products or services? This helps with creating content because it gives you a focus on who to market to. Next, you want to define your goals. What are you trying to accomplish with this campaign? Create content that engages your audience with purpose. Having a purpose to your social media campaign makes it easier to decide what content to share, whether it be text, pictures, video, or downloadable content. From here, you can make a much better decision on deciding which social media platform or platforms to use. Research which platforms serves your target market best and use them.
Now you are ready to start your social media campaigns. With every social media campaign you run, you want to track their analytics and use this information to create campaigns that are more efficient. As time goes on, you are going to want to audit your content and see which posts are driving the best results and adjust your future posts accordingly. As you run your social media marketing campaigns, check out your competitors’ social media profiles. See the quality of content they post and strive to create content that is more valuable. The combination and sequence of these practices form a solid social media content strategy plan that sets you up to run successful social media campaigns.
Starting your social media marketing campaign is an overwhelming task if you do not have a clue where to begin. Without a solid plan in place, you are either guessing with your posts and not posting content with any real purpose or posting mostly promotions. Starting with a social media content strategy plan gives you a great advantage and saves you a lot of time by giving you a solid social media structure. A social media content strategy plan combined with consistency and persistence are the stepping-stones to have successful social media marketing.
Resources
https://blog.hubspot.com/marke
https://sproutsocial.com/insig
