For anyone running a business in this day and age, not engaging in social media marketing means you are missing out on the crowds. Brands with an online presence with three or more social channels mean they have the potential to sell three times more than a competitor who is not exploiting the potential of social media.
But the fact is, the more channels you handle, will also mean that you have to develop juggling skills to handle all these social accounts with ease and efficiency.
Granted that, it is no mean feat to brainstorm, plan, manage, organise, and execute realms of regular social media content across multiple social media platforms. For this reason, you would need a dynamic social media planner.
With a social media planner, you and your organisation would be able to optimise your entire social media workflow in one location. You’ll have a centralised place where you can boost all your impressions and create an even bigger impact with every post.
What is a Social Media Strategy?
Without whistles and bows, a social media strategy is simply a detailed blueprint that addresses the who, what, when, and how for all the content you put out or post on all your business’s social pages.
It is not just about posting Tweets and liking photos and videos. There has to be a well-conceived plan behind what is being posted online. Additionally, there have to be set goals that you want to achieve from each and every post.
Just like any business strategy, it comes with expending a bit of elbow grease even before you start creating it. Before sitting down and making one, you and your team have to keep in mind that, first and foremost, it is a plan.
A Social Media Strategy is a well-thought-out plan that incorporates a mix of ideas with a specific purpose and citing a clear path to a specific goal that you are aiming to achieve.
Think about the day that you decided to create your own small business. It’s inconceivable that you would simply just open a shop the very next day. There’s a lot of planning and strategizing involved that went behind it before turning over that ‘open’ sign on the door the first day you started operations. It’s the same with every new step you take towards building your business.
Needless to say, a strategy is a prime ingredient of social media marketing, which requires understanding your audience. This also includes knowing what they are looking for, and how their needs align with your goals. Ultimately, how you can attract and/or entice them with an offer to get them on board with your business.
How can businesses save time implementing their social media strategy?
It is important to keep in mind that time is a valuable resource. Therefore, it is of valuable importance to know how much time you should invest or spend when it comes to social media.
We are not going to sugar-coat it, managing all your socials is a painstakingly time-consuming process. It is therefore of prime importance to know, plan, and incorporate in your social media management how to properly manage time spent on social media.
Conversation in social media is a never-ending stream. Along with this, is the need to constantly post, engage, and share. Add to this, the time you would need to consume to create and/or compose valuable content to post.
With all this chaos going on in the background, how can you juggle them all and save time and still achieve your social media goals? Short answer: a Social Media Planner.
When you have a comprehensive and dynamic social media planner like what we offer at The Growth Manager, it would be far easier to take the reins and strategize your social media marketing strategy. You can set it accordingly to your need or goal on a weekly, monthly, or even annually basis.
A social media planner will provide you with a clear and centralised place for you and your team to manage, organise, and update all your social media campaign ideas and strategies. It also helps in laying out your exact campaign strategy, including the target audience, its destination, and most importantly the content to be used.
Additionally, you would also be able to budget time, resources, and expenses in one neat place. A social media planner not only makes it easier for you and your team to collaborate and stay up-to-date, but it also saves time when searching for relevant content and having to deal with last-minute changes, revisions, and decisions.
Having a cross-functional plan can save valuable time and keep everyone with eyes on the ball when a crisis happens on social media. Yes, they do happen from time to time.
With a social media planner, you can also determine and ensure that everyone in your team is on task. Making it easier for you to identify bottlenecks that need to be dealt with immediately.
With this in place, it would make it easier for you to scale your social media posts and campaigns across all of your social media platforms without being bogged down by administrative work.
What is a Social Media Planner
Before we dive in and determine what a social media planner is, allow us to elucidate what it does. A social media planner is designed to help you think through and address key questions and considerations that surround your social media activity.
- Why are you posting?
- Who are you trying to reach?
- What will you talk about?
- How will you share your information/content?
In the simplest of terms, a Social Media Planner keeps your social media marketing on track. Addressing the why, who, what, how questions above, help you outline what your goals are to achieve in social media, and how it can support your overall marketing strategy.
Notice its similarity to Social Media Strategy. It is not an accident. The simplest analogy we can offer to explain this is a restaurant setting. The menu is your social media planner, the order to the chef is your social media strategy, and the waiter is your social media platform.
It may be way more complicated than that, but the general idea is that there are steps needed to ensure social media success.
With a host of different social media channels now available, creating every type of content, scheduling them to reach the right audience, engaging followers and such is a juggling chore. Planning your social media by using The Growth Manager’s Social Media Template will help maximise your team’s potential for social media success.
Get in touch with us today, and we’ll show you a pain-free way to achieve your goals.
