In a world where we spend so much time on social media, there’s a lot more to simply taking a cool photo and uploading that very same photo to all social platforms with identical captions and maybe a couple of hashtags to boot.

The same can be said about businesses using social media to promote their products and services — where the practice of creating content in a ‘one size fits all’ capacity may have once worked in 2009, this is no longer the case, with social media requiring a great deal of planning in order for content to be effective, engaging, and reach the correct audiences.

So how should you plan your social media content? Here are six steps to ensure your social content will help you grow as a business.

Identify Goals

You should start out with some clear goals in mind that you wish for your newest content, and content overall, to achieve.

Typically, goals could look like increasing brand awareness, driving engagement, driving website visits, selling more products, and so on. There are many businesses using social media channels without clear goals, which not only limits the effectiveness and potential of each post, measuring their success becomes more difficult too.

Start out by highlighting your primary and the basic structure to your social media plan will follow.

Pick the Best Platform(s)

By identifying your goals, you should now be able to look at the available social media platforms that can best align to your goals and your target audience.

For example, if you are targeting brand awareness among teenagers, Facebook shouldn’t be part of your plan because teenagers are no longer using Facebook. Instead, think Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok as this is where the youth are hanging out nowadays. Facebook is for older generations, and LinkedIn is for professionals.

Remember that not all social channels are the same, so alter your content accordingly to best increase the chances of becoming visible on each platform individually.

Create a Social Calendar

Consistency is always going to be key in ensuring growth, no matter what you do. This is where a social media calendar is going to be crucial in maintaining that consistency.

A social media calendar will allow you to enter your posts and plan out weeks and months in advance, with the beauty of this being that you can set up your calendar and almost forget about them as places like Loomly or HubSpot do all the hard work for you, saving you plenty of time.

Many social media calendars allow you to do much more than simply plug in content, too, with many advanced features such as hashtag and keyword generators at your disposal to further enhance your social presence.

A final point on scheduling should be to publish your content at times that best suit the platform you are going to be posting to. Posting to LinkedIn might be more effective at 12 p.m. when there are more people online at their places of work, for example. Do some background research into each platform and you’ll find some information on when best to post.

Engage

Social media is designed to be a place where you can connect with different people and audiences, and in general, be social, hence the name…

If you’re not engaging with your audiences when they bother to engage with your business, then they are likely going to stop engaging with you altogether, and move on to a competitor of yours. Engage with your audience and you’ll start to develop a positive brand image.

Track your Metrics

Different goals call for different metrics to be tracked to see if your goals are being met. And the best part? Most social media channels already collect these metrics if you are using a business or professional account.

Number of clicks, number of visitors, and engagement rate are three of the most common metrics that can be used to measure effectiveness and success of your social media content.

Other tools, such as Google Analytics, can offer much more in-depth metrics specific to your content, and collate all platforms in one place, allowing you to compare each directly to one another.

Review, Adjust, and Grow

Once you’ve completed the previous five steps, you should then be ready to look at the metrics you’ve gathered and see what is working well, and what is less effective for you, allowing you to adjust your current strategy accordingly.

The more you complete this cycle, the more you will understand about what does and does not work, allowing you to create a refined, long-term plan that works for your business time and time again.

Be careful though, social media is highly dynamic, with trends coming and going very quickly, so be sure to keep up to date with what’s hot and what’s not.

Bonus: Be Unique

Being unique goes a long way towards standing out online. Trends are great, but imagine if you were the reason a viral trend started?

Don’t be afraid to let your creative juices flow and have some fun with what you post and create. Break down the business-to-client wall and address your audience as you would your friends or family.

Conclusion

Regardless of what your business goals are, planning your social media content is a must for you to grow online.

There is an array of tools and applications available online to help you plan, post, and analyze your content, so be sure to utilize them. Many of these tools are even free, giving you even more of a reason to be using them.

Whatever you do though, make sure to be consistent.

To take your business to new heights, contact SALVé for a free discovery call.

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