How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan for Small Business

All digital marketing efforts such as web content or social media should always be backed by a plan. Simply creating a social media post without a well-thought-out strategy can lead to minimal results or even no results at all. Before creating content or promoting a business on social media, you should first create a small business social media marketing plan that will help you reach your target audience and ultimately achieve your business goals.

When creating a social media marketing plan, what are the best strategies for small businesses? Today, you will learn how to craft a social media marketing strategy that is simple, easy to follow, results-oriented, and cost-effective for small businesses.

Small Business Social Media Marketing Plan: Best Strategies to Consider

Select your best social media platforms

Before considering posting or creating social media accounts, it is best to consider 2-3 of the best social media platforms to promote your small business. Larger companies have more time, resources, and room to expand across multiple platforms, but efficiency is key to success in small businesses.

To do this, you should consider where your target market usually consumes social media content. Based on various analytical researches, you will notice that about 70% of people between the ages of 18-49 use Facebook. Instagram users are mostly women between the ages of 18-29. Digging into the demographic usage and researching competitor engagement on each social media platform will give you insight into selecting the best social media platforms.

Once you have identified 2-3 social media platforms for content creation and promotion, you can start crafting a social media marketing plan for your small business from there.

Create SMART goals for your social media strategy

A SMART OBJECTIVE is what kind of outcome can be measured during the implementation of your action plan. SMART simply means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. SMART goals in social media could look like this:

“To achieve 3% engagement rate through comments and likes by creating Instagram consistent posts and video content within 3 months.”

As you can see, the goal is measurable and within a certain time frame. Creating goals like these can help you track real progress and help you see if your plan is working. Such a strategy for small businesses will help preserve and maximize your resources to get the best results.

You can make a list of long-term goals (LTGs) annually while creating some short-term goals (STGs) that will serve as sub-steps to achieving your annual social media initiatives.

Review effective marketing campaigns for your small business goals

Digital marketing is about integrating all areas of your marketing campaigns to produce results for your small business. You can review some effective social media marketing campaigns geared towards:

• After Repeat Business : Creating a line of products or services that people frequently use allows you to repeat business with the same satisfied customers. A social media marketing campaign that delivers benefits, features, and previously satisfied customers can help grow your repeat business.
• Increase conversions : Trends in social media are showing that short videos are becoming popular in generating posts and conversions. Adding video marketing campaigns with a strong call to action can enhance the effectiveness of your strategy.
• Spread the word about promotions : New product releases, sales, gifts and other promotions are some of the things you can post on social media to expand your reach.

Taking a look at some of the marketing campaigns that have worked with others such as sponsored posts, user-generated content, or selling in embedded marketplaces can help you create your own plan.

Drafting a social media content calendar

Another useful strategy for small businesses is to have a monthly content calendar ahead of time. The content calendar allows you to select:

• What to publish : You can pre-plan the types of content to publish daily, weekly, or monthly if you have a topic. For example, creating an Instagram story, reel, and static post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday can help increase post consistency and ultimately engagement rate.
• When to publish : Posting times can also be useful when creating social media marketing campaigns. For example, having pre-loaded posts about your upcoming Black Friday sales a week before the event can help drive more conversions in your social media strategy.
• Themes to follow : This strategy is useful for content creators or those small businesses that have products or services to offer. Aligning your social media content with holidays, relevant recent events, and any other popular topics can also help achieve your social media goals.

To create a calendar for social media content, you can simply use a large monthly calendar and list down the posts you plan to create during the day. If you want to create media ahead of time such as graphics, images, or captions, you can also use the slide presentation tools to keep all the output up front.

Reuse of high quality content

There are many things you can do with digital marketing content. For example, blog posts can be easily converted into static short-form circular posts on social media. In the same way, any simple social media post can offer ideas for a Youtube video, podcast or blog post.

Thus, when making ideas for social media content, consider popular blog posts that you can turn into different types of images, infographics, or reels. You can also create excerpts from your long Youtube videos and put them in your social media accounts.

Purpose variable content allows you to populate your social media content calendar while giving you the opportunity to cross-promote your offerings on different platforms.

Align your brand with social media accounts

Another thing to consider when doing social media campaigns is to think about how you will present your small business as a brand. Branding is not limited to the content on your website, but also in your social media accounts.

Thus, having a consistent sound in your copy, using the same color themes and font types, and even the “look and feel” of your social media content, should be taken into account when creating posts.

Implementing this strategy will make your small business more attractive and attractive to social media users who are not yet customers.

Optimize your social media content

Just like optimizing your web content, it is also important to optimize the posts you will create on social media. Each of the social media will have different ways of making each content more searchable and reachable, but in general, you should take into account the following:

• Related Tags : Hashtags like those on Instagram, Tiktok, Pinterest or Facebook can be used if you want new users to share your content. Using and researching hashtags can also give you insight into the types of social media posts your target audience is interested in.
• Search tags : Some social media platforms allow the use of search tags such as Youtube and Facebook. You can use search tags with low competition and high traffic to help rank your content on such platforms.
• Captions : Captions are also useful for people who make inquiries through social media. You can also load your captions with relevant keywords, or make them interesting for your target audience. The goal is always to be engaging while driving users to more call-to-action such as signing up for a newsletter, going to your website, or buying products in the built-in market.
• Visual Quality : With a few exceptions like Twitter, a lot of social media platforms rely on visual content. The general rule is to maintain a high quality of your visual media by creating crisp images, carefully designed graphics, and well-edited videos as well as in keeping with your brand.

Having a social media marketing plan for a small business is not only beneficial but vital when you want to grow in these platforms. Keeping these pointers in mind will help you create goals and spread ideas that will lead to results for your business.

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