Content Planning: How to Create a Content Plan For Social Media?

What is a Social Media Content Plan?

In the world of online marketing, it is no longer just enough to simply have a website to promote your brand or business on, as there are now hundreds of different channels that customers may use to find the best products and services to fulfil their needs. Social media platforms have grown in leaps and bounds over the last few years, and as they have grown their customer base, these different platforms have identified ways to help brands and businesses promote products and services through different streams. Social media platforms and social media marketing have become the new way for brands and businesses to promote their products and services, and with these widely used platforms being free to use, they offer a cost-effective way to further market a brand and the products that they offer! 

A social media content plan is an outline of the different goals you are hoping to achieve through your social media platforms and the different methods and tactics that you are going to use to achieve this. Through careful planning and outlining different elements, coming up with the best ways to target your audience and gain a following, your social media platforms can grow to be one of your top marketing tools! Developing a strategy of how you are going to promote your brand and market your products or services will ensure that you know exactly what content to make and spread across your various social media platforms. 

Why Should You Care About Your Social Media Content Plan?

Social media is used by tons of people, and it offers a free space for brands and businesses to promote their products or services, interact with customers and post content relative to their company. Social media content marketing is growing every day, with different platforms and features added to social media all the time! In order to have a good social media presence and take advantage of the additional features provided, it is important to have a social media content plan in place, as this will help you to create the best and most effective content possible! Like with any marketing platform or tactic, having a content strategy that outlines the goals you are hoping to achieve and what you are looking to gain from using social media, you can monitor your progress and pick up on any inconsistencies or issues, either with your actual content or those who you are marketing to. 

What are The Most Important Things To Focus On When It Comes To Your Social Media Content Content Plan?

As with any marketing plan, having an effective strategy that outlines goals, methods and tactics is always necessary! Strategizing and laying out all that you need to do when it comes to your social media content plan will ensure that you have certain goals that need to be met within a certain time frame. Whether these goals are centred around likes, followers or sales made is dependent on what you are looking to gain through social media. In order to ensure that you have an effective strategy when it comes to your social media content plan, monitoring your account and the content that you are placing on it is extremely important, as this is able to tell you whether or not you are going in the right direction. 

How to Create an Effective Content Plan For Social Media?

The following is a brief look into some of the best ways to plan your social media content so that it is as effective as possible. 

Revisit Your Target Audience

Any good marketing campaign, no matter what platform you are planning on using to execute it, will require you to get an idea of who your audience is and what marketing techniques would be best for this group of people. While some of the data that is pulled from this research can be used, when coming up with an effective social media content plan, you will need data specifically about how your target audience interacts on social media, which platforms they use more often and the types of strategies and features they interact better with. This data will be found by revisiting your target audience and figuring out how they interact with social media platforms, something which may not have been done for previous advertising campaigns that focused on different mediums. 

Polish Your Social Media Content

When it comes to social media, content is always king, and polishing up the co0ntent you are placing on your social media platforms will help assure your followers that you are sticking with the times and updating your content as new things develop. New features and elements are adapted all the time and ensuring that you keep ahead of the market and plan and structure your content according to these changes can make or break your social media content plan. 

Track performance 

As your social media platforms grow and your target audience becomes more aware of who you are, it is important that you monitor how certain content is seen by your audience, Monitoring metrics and adjusting certain elements that may not be working well for you offers you the chance to make changes as you go, ensuring that you do not waste time creating content and using elements that your audience may not appreciate. There are many different kinds of social media tools that are able to track and monitor your performance, ensuring that you are kept up to date with the content metrics and know exactly what your audience is relating best to! 

Create an Engagement Plan

One of the main benefits of using social media, as opposed to other platforms, is that you are able to easily communicate and interact with your target audience. Through creating an engagement plan, you can determine certain metrics that need to be met in order for a piece of content to be considered a success, and the amount of engagement that a post gets, the likes, shares and views, is easily provided by the platform itself! User engagement is vital for any effective social media content plan. 

Create a Plan to Encourage Users to Create Content for You

One of the most effective ways to see how users interact with your content is by determining what they want to see straight from the source. You may have many aspiring marketers who have great ideas and can add a ton of value to your business. Encouraging users to create content that they would want to see gives you a good idea of what they are looking for and it may also give a ton of new ideas for you to use! 

What are The Benefits of Content Planning For Your Social Media?

When it comes to creating a good social media content plan, it is important that you understand why completing this task is so important, not just for your social media accounts, but for your brand as an entirety. The following are just a few benefits of content planning for your social media platforms. 

• Clear goals: A social media content plan is created by setting up goals and specific timelines within which these goals need to be met. Doing this for social media will provide you with a clear outline of what needs to be done and how you can achieve it. Due to the fact that social media is used so often, response to certain products, services or content can be easily measured, with your goals being adjusted as your audience interacts with your social media accounts! 

• Tracking: One of the best things to do once you have your social media platforms set up is to start tracking and monitoring them. Social media provides data that is quick and easy to read, providing direct information on whether or not your audience is enjoying the content you are producing and the products or services your brand or business supplies. Interaction with your audience offers you the chance to communicate with your audience and can help you better understand what they want and need! Be sure to set up a social media tracking tool that can monitor the effectiveness of your social media content plan. 

What are The Effects of Social Media On Your Content Strategy?

Social media can clearly define your content strategy for you and help you to better structure and produce the content that your audience wants to see! Having a clearly defined social media content plan and coming up with ways that you can use your content marketing strategy can help to streamline content across all platforms. Social media has the ability to grow your following quickly and this can help you to determine what type of content your followers are interested in seeing. This information can streamline your content strategy and help to structure it so that it is in line with what your audience is wanting to see! 

What Tools Can Help to Build a Social Media Content Plan?

There are tons of different social media content planning tools that can help you to manage your social media platforms. The following are just a few of the best and most effective social media content planning tools around! 

Buffer

For small businesses, and even individual marketers, one of the best social media management tools around is Buffer! This suite of online social media marketing tools is able to help you manage your content and ensure that it is seen by the right people with their analytical data and engagement tools. This suite is highly effective and efficient, ensuring that marketers are equipped with all that they will need to create good content! 

Sprout Social

WHen it comes to understanding your customers and the market you are advertising to, there is no better tool than Sprout Social! This unique tool is equipped with CRM features that can help you to profile your target audience and better understand what they would want to see across your social media platforms. Having this CRM feature, along with other planning and management tools, will ensure that you are able to create meaningful data and get it to your followers and potential customers in ways that they will understand and appreciate. 

Sendible

For agencies that are looking at tools for social media content planning, Sendible is able to customise its landing page so that multiple different accounts and social media platforms can be used. Along with this, the platform can be shared within a group, ensuring all members of a marketing team are given the same information. For a great tool that agencies can use to better help their clients with their social media content planning, consider trying out Sendible! 

How Can Our  Expert Team at Markethinkers Help Its Customers to Create Content Plans For Social Media?

As a team of professional SEO consulting and SEO Copywriting experts, we understand how engagement, content and user experience play a big role in whether you fail or succeed as a brand or business. When it comes to planning content for social media and marketing yourself across these platforms, having a team who knows the ins and outs of the industry, along with understanding how the market works, can be extremely beneficial. Social media is all about content and creating it so that it is relatable for your target audience. This is why our team of experts are highly skilled in determining who your market and audience is and helping you find the best ways to create content specifically for this audience! For a social media guru on your team, look no further than Markethinkers!