How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan

Social Media Marketing
How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan
Article by Bisera Stankovska
Last Updated: January 15, 2024

Social media marketing (SMM) involves promoting brands, products, or services on social channels.

It's highly effective for raising awareness, generating leads, and converting them into clients. A strategic marketing plan is essential to avoid wasting your time, effort, and money.

This article introduces a concise seven-step SMM strategy, as used by top social media marketing agencies, for creating a captivating social media presence.

What Is a Social Media Marketing Plan? 

A social media marketing plan includes social media goals, actions to achieve them and social media metrics to track your campaign and measure progress. 

Social media platforms differ in marketing features, demographics, user numbers and many other specifics. Therefore, one SMM plan cannot cover all your social media accounts — you should set expectations for each and develop a unique social media marketing strategy for their fulfillment. 

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How to Make a Social Media Marketing Plan in 7 Steps

Now that we've established what it is and why it's important, we present the social media strategy ideal for small businesses, start-ups and any company that wants to improve their marketing efforts. 

Step #1: Define Your Business Goals 

If you don't know, where are you heading, any path will look the same. Therefore, you need to specify your objectives before making any SMM moves. 

Would you like to: 

  • Increase brand awareness? 
  • Attract more traffic to your website? 
  • Introduce more people to your offerings. 
  • Generate more leads? 
  • Boost lead conversion? 
  • Promote a new product or service? 
  • Position as an expert in your industry? 

Your goals should be S.M.A.R.T.: 

  • Specific — Your goals should be precise and clear, impossible to misinterpret. 
  • Measurable — You should be able to track your goal’s progress using various social media metrics and tools. 
  • Attainable — Your objective must be possible to achieve, aka realistic. 
  • Relevant — Goals should be relatable to your business visions and values. 
  • Time-bound — There should be a time frame within which you’ll achieve your objectives, regardless if it is a few months or a year. 

SMART goals will help you focus and make the most efficient use of your time and resources. 

Step #2: Identify Your Target Audience 

The audience stands between your business and desired objectives. They will support you and push you toward your dreams if you find a way to tell a convincing story about your brand and its offerings. 

If not, be prepared to be ignored. 

Who is your audience? If you use social media for eCommerce, think about your ideal customer. 

For example, if you sell woman's shoes, you’ll want to attract a broad female audience. Still, if you sell Louboutin 6-inch heels, you’ll need to target the female population between the ages of 20 and 40 who are interested in wearing and able to walk in such shoes. 

You should know all the important demographic characteristics of your target audience: 

  • Age 
  • Gender 
  • Location 
  • Education 
  • Job title 
  • Average income 
  • Interests 

Social media platforms provide you with a lot of valuable insights into your audience’s demographics and online behavior. You can also use social media tools like Google Analytics to improve your SMM strategy and target a narrower audience. 

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Step #3: Research Your Competitor’s Strategy 

Your competitors are probably already present on social media; analyzing their social media marketing strategy will bring you a competitive advantage. 

Identify your competition and find out the following information: 

  • Which platforms do they use? 
  • How frequently do they post? 
  • What are their primary keywords? 
  • What type of content do they use the most? 
  • How engaged is their audience? 
  • Does their strategy have any gaps?

Utilize wisely the insights you gathered and keep researching. 

For example, suppose your competitors have an active Instagram account but don’t use Twitter. In that case, is Twitter your golden opportunity or should you avoid it too because your target audience doesn't use it? Make sure you have the answers before you engage. 

Some of the best competitor analysis tools that can help you spy on your competition and borrow their ideas are Ahrefs, Semrush and BuzzSumo. 

Bonus tip: these tools are also excellent for SEO strategy development and measurement! 

Step #4: Decide Which Social Media to Use and Set Up Accounts 

Naturally, you’ll use those platforms your audience uses the most. 

Here are some interesting statistics about social media's prevalent users that might help you decide which platform to use: 

Facebook 

  • Active monthly users: 2.93 billion 
  • Dominant age group: 25 to 34 
  • Gender representation: 43.2% female, 56.8% male 

YouTube 

  • Active monthly users: 2.47 billion 
  • Dominant age group: 25 to 34 
  • Gender representation: 45.6% female, 54.4% male 

Instagram 

  • Active monthly users: 1.44 billion 
  • Dominant age group: 18 to 24 
  • Gender representation: 47.2% female, 52.8% male 

Twitter 

  • Active monthly users: 486 million 
  • Dominant age group: 18 to 29 
  • Gender representation: 27.3% female, 72.7% male 

LinkedIn 

  • Active monthly users: 849.6 million 
  • Dominant age group: 25 to 34 
  • Gender representation: 43.6% female, 56.4% 

TikTok 

  • Active monthly users: 1.02 billion 
  • Dominant age group: 18 to 24 
  • Gender representation: 56.2% female, 43.8% male 

Note that the type of content you produce might not be suitable for all social media networks. 

For example, video content works great on all platforms, but textual content won't get attention on YouTube, a video-oriented platform. 

Also, each social media platform has a predominant purpose you should consider: 

  • Facebook is suitable for SMM of all kinds and businesses of all sizes and types. 
  • YouTube can help you reach a global audience. 
  • Instagram is best for new product presentations and influencer marketing. 
  • Twitter is ideal for customer support. 
  • LinkedIn is great for sharing the company’s visions and culture. 
  • TikTok is best for increasing brand exposure. 

Once you decide which platforms to use, make business accounts and fill them with all the necessary information customers identify your brand with. 

Congratulations. Now you’re ready to publish content and interact with your audience. 

Step #5: Create a Content Schedule 

Publishing quality and engaging content is vital for your social media marketing strategy to succeed. Still, you should research how frequently and when to post to achieve the best results. 

Use a social media content calendar to organize your posting schedule. The content calendar contains lists of posting dates and times and the type of content. It can significantly help manage daily publishing and SMM campaigns. 

How Often Should You Publish Fresh Content? 

Many marketers and business owners are trying to determine an ideal posting frequency. Our advice is to focus on quality rather than quantity. 

Instead of spamming your followers' feeds and quickly earning an annoying reputation (and probably an unfollow), 74% of customers think brands should post once or twice a day. 

What Is the Best Time to Post on Social Media? 

According to a survey of more than 300 marketers, the best time to publish content, regardless of the industry or social media platform, is from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. 

The best days to publish are weekends, especially Saturdays. 

Step #6: Produce Appealing Content 

The content you publish should be compelling and engaging to get the attention of your target audience. It should provide value and inform, educate or entertain the readers. 

Needless to say, your content has to be unique — you can borrow ideas from your competitors without plagiarizing their content. 

Follow the 80/20 content strategy: 

  • 80% of your content should be informative, educative or entertaining. 
  • 20% should promote your brand, products or services. 
  • Another content plan you could test is the rule of thirds: 
  • One-third of the content should promote your brand, convert leads and generate profit. 
  • One-third should share relevant content and industry experts’ insights. 
  • One-third should be interacting with your leads and customers. 

Step #7: Use Social Media Metrics to Track Your Success 

Monitoring big data on social media will get you valuable insights into the performance of all aspects of your social media marketing plan. 

Some of your tactics will underperform and you’ll need to adjust them. Some will surprise you with high efficiency. 

Some of the key social media metrics you should monitor are: 

  • Reach 
  • Impressions 
  • Conversion rate 
  • Engagement rate 
  • Audience growth rate 
  • Return on investment (ROI) 

Regularly re-evaluate your social media plan to maximize its potential, getting you closer to your business goals. 

Social Media Marketing Plan Template

1. Goals and Objectives: Define specific, measurable, and time-bound goals for your social media marketing efforts, such as increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, or generating leads.

2. Target Audience: Identify your ideal audience demographics, interests, and behaviors.

3. Content Strategy: Outline the types of content you'll create (e.g., posts, videos, infographics) and the topics or themes.

4. Social Media Platforms: Choose the platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) that align with your audience and goals.

5. Posting Schedule: Define a posting frequency and schedule that ensures regular, consistent content.

6. Engagement Strategy: Detail how you'll interact with your audience through comments, messages, and community management.

7. Paid Advertising: If applicable, describe your paid advertising strategy, including budget and targeting options.

8. Influencer Collaboration: If relevant, identify influencers or partners you'll collaborate with.

9. Metrics and KPIs: List key performance indicators (e.g., likes, shares, clicks, conversions) to track progress toward your goals.

10. Budget and Resources: Allocate resources, budget, and tools needed to execute your plan effectively.

11. Monitoring and Reporting: Define how you'll monitor performance and report on results. Include tools and frequency.

12. Adaptation: Specify how you'll adapt your strategy based on insights and changes in the social media landscape.

Why Is a Strategic Social Media Plan Important? 

A personalized social media marketing strategy will bring many benefits: 

  • Make your business stand out from the competition, 
  • Precisely target desired audience, 
  • Build brand image and awareness, 
  • Create a community of leads that will get to know your brand, develop trust and convert into satisfied customers. 

A comprehensive social media plan will also give you an idea of the time frame and investment needed to reach your objectives. You’ll put efforts into suitable platforms and serve carefully crafted content to highly qualified prospects at the right time, bringing you closer to your goals. 

Expert Insights on Social Media Marketing Plan 

We asked agency experts: "How do you plan your clients' social media strategy?"

  1. Start With Clients' Needs
  2. Understand Your Client
  3. Do a Lot of Research
  4. Begin With Social Listening

1. Start With Clients' Needs

Elaine Freeman, Owner & Co-Founder at Parliament Marketing Group:

"We collaborate with small business owners to develop effective social media strategies based on their needs. Our clients range from real estate brokerages to emergency service agencies, so there's no one-size-fits-all formula for developing strategy. However, we do emphasize focus, urging them to choose one to three goals (tops) to prioritize. By mastering those goals, they can achieve a more significant impact before moving on to the next challenge."

2. Understand Your Client

Juliana Weiss-Roessler, Founder of WR Digital Marketing:

"The first step is figuring out if social media even makes sense to focus on for the client.

The social networks and scheduling tools encourage these “best practices” in terms of how often to post, when to post, and what type of content to post. But if you look closely, you’ll see the recommendations are tied to getting more likes, comments, and followers — which certainly benefits the social networks — but what businesses need are more clients, appointments, and sales. 

For most clients, it makes sense to maintain a presence on social media as a consideration channel, but not to invest heavily in it as an awareness or conversion channel. That means the goal is to ensure people can go to social media to check if the business meets their needs and is legitimate and trustworthy. 

So the plan starts with understanding what the business does, what audience they target, and what sets them apart from competitors. Once we understand those three things, we can figure out an overall marketing strategy and see where social media fits in."

3. Do a Lot of Research

Kymber Heinze, Director of Social Media at SmartSites:

"Social media strategy is more than meets the eye. More than just caption and an aesthetically appealing graphic, we put a lot of research in to our client strategies including competitor research, hashtag research, timing, audience/their interests, and industry trends. Reviewing competitor research will help up choose topics and post types that keep our client competitive, but also assures we won't make the same mistakes as the competitor. Knowing what hashtags are getting the higher amount of reach and impressions helps support organic KPI's.

Timing is key - there are a ton of charts that will tell you the best times to post, however, keep in mind every industry, business, and audience is different and should be treated as such. Choosing a posting cadence and times that work for our client's audience is key to high engagement rates. Knowing and understanding industry trends help us determine what our client's audience is searching, reading, and engaging with which supports us in creating content they want to read. Using all this information, we piece together a customized strategy that we will use and test for 2-3 months before revisiting and adjusting regularly as we collect data."

4. Begin With Social Listening

Nick Fernandez, Founder of Upsway Marketing:

"Before presenting ideas or a plan, we love to do social listening and an audit of their current social media. This helps us create a more straightforward strategy by seeing what platforms and what types of content perform, underperform, and why.

Then, we identify why the client should be on social media and which platforms fit the best. Social media isn't a one-size-fits-all and should be specific to the industry and target audience.

Lastly, we craft engaging content plans, mixing them up with informative, fun, and promotional content that suits their goals. Our content calendars tend to be one month out but with more active clients, we create content daily and forego the calendar for a realtime content approval process."

Social Media Marketing Plan Takeaways

SM platforms are ever-evolving and your marketing strategy must keep pace with their changes. 

However, some tactics, like the seven steps described above, will never be outdated: 

  • Define your business goals. 
  • Find out who are the best prospects for your brand. 
  • Research competition and find gaps in their social media presence. 
  • Create accounts on the SM platforms most suitable for your brand. 
  • Establish a content schedule. 
  • Publish creative, engaging and unique content. 
  • Track the success of your work and adjust if needed. 

Social Media Marketing Plan FAQs

1. What does a social media marketing plan include?

A social media marketing plan typically includes:

  • Objectives
  • Target audience analysis
  • Content strategy
  • Platform selection
  • Posting schedule
  • Engagement tactics
  • Advertising campaigns
  • Performance tracking

It outlines how businesses will leverage social media platforms to achieve their marketing goals and connect with their audience.

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