Starting from scratch and not sure how to do up a social media marketing plan?
When we started our business for the first time, we were not exactly sure how to start and we were newbies in the space of starting a business! We saw our peers starting businesses and doing it successfully but how do we get there? We would imagine starting a social media marketing plan for your business could feel the same way. Thus, it'd help to have a plan. Let's share with you our experience with some tips on how to get started!
Social Media Marketing Plan
“We present to you 6 tips to help you get started.
Step 1 Choose your social networks
Step 2 Fill up your profile completely
Step 3 Find your voice and tone
Step 4 Pick your posting strategy
Step 5 Analyse and test
Step 6 Automate and engage.”
I would like to think starting a social media marketing plan is just like starting your own business. You would need to get started and you would have to have a plan. Here are 6 steps to help you get started!
Step 1 - Choose your social networks
How do we choose which social media platforms to be on? Consider 3 things, your target audience, time and resources.
Target audience - How old are they? What platforms are they usually on? Typically if they are under 23 years old, we would suggest going for a platform like TikTok or Instagram. Are they above that age? Perhaps you could go for Facebook and Instagram. They could also be businesses and you could use a platform like LinkedIn or Facebook to get their attention!
Time - How much time do you have to devote to social media marketing? Perhaps if not so much, you might want to think of going for just 1 or 2 platforms instead of all of them.
Resources - Do you have the resources to do up the creatives such as photography, videography, graphic design and the like? Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are heavier on quality content, images and videos.
Step 2 - Fill up your profile completely
A completed profile would show that you run a professional business and people know what business you are running and can see for themselves what you are selling. This shows that you are serious in engaging your customers.
Visuals such as your profile picture, cover photo and having some initial content on your page would show a genuine business page. You can always look up a social media image size chart to know what are the best sizes for the various visual requirements.
Step 3 - Find your voice and tone
“Be original, show off your style, and tell your story.”
It's always easy to jump right in to showcasing your first content and writing your first caption for your social media post.
First, think about the persona you would like your brand to carry. You could ask yourself some questions such as, if your brand was a person, what would his/her personality be like? What would he/she be wearing? What's their relationship to the consumer? How do you want your customers to think about your business?
Some examples would be brands writing content as if they are an "ah beng" or "ah lian". This resonates with a certain target audience that may find this fun, funny and interesting. Why would a brand be talking like this? This would be a branding concept that the business is going for.
Step 4 - Pick your posting strategy
How do you know how much content do you need to post? A rule of thumb we would like to use is to post 3 times a week, about 12 times a month. This gives your customers some space in between days to see your posts and have a day of rest. We do not want to create an impression that we are spammy. But is this a hard and fast rule? No. That's because every brand would work differently. If you have announcements and promotions to make all the time such as a shopping mall, you would by all means want to post everyday or more than once a day. This content would also be something your consumers want to see more of.
Next, how do you know what to post? Video posts gets more views, shares, likes than any other posts. On the other hand, it is also likely that you will not be able to come up with video content all the time and there should be a good number of visual type posts as well to keep your business at the top of your consumers minds.
Step 5 - Analyse, test and repeat
After posting your content, we should be looking at your social media's organic and paid analysis. It is important to not only rely on organic content, but to also buy advertisements to get your content further out to customers that do not follow your social media page.
Look at the engagement levels, likes, shares, reach and after 2 weeks to a month, look at the average of the statistics and set benchmarks for your social media page.
You should also constantly try new things to see what works or does not work. Does Facebook live videos do better for your brand? Or corporate videos? or perhaps Gifs? and if they perform well, continue to create such content! For ads as well, is your targeting going well for you? Otherwise you can change it up.
Step 6 - Automate and engage
Lastly utilise an automation tool such as Buffer or make use of Facebook's free content automation tool to post on both Facebook and Instagram so that you do not have to manually do the postings yourself!
It also does not end there. You would also need to constantly engage with your customers whenever they send you a message or post a comment. Set back a time such as 4pm everyday to reply these messages. Where you can, quickly reply your followers.