Social media is a set of tools to develop your brand. Rather than one-to-one marketing it has a greater reach in terms of customers and potential clients and as you know, isn’t limited by geography.
Increasing your reach (how many people you can potentially “touch” with a post) is a huge part of why social media marketing is effective.
Perhaps the best part of social media is that it helps you target your right audience. Not sure where yours is? Check out this infographic.
Each of the social media sites are unique in their approach and they can create demand for your products and services within a few short months if you’re consistent.
For many small businesses, it’s useful to break down social media into a 90-day plan. The reason is, everyone can wrap their heads around a three-month time frame and it makes it seem more manageable.
If you were to re-evaluate your social media strategy every quarter, that would be a good thing because you could see how far you’ve come and what’s working..and what’s not.
If you plan your next three months on social now, that will take you through the rest of 2016 and into 2017 when you can re-evaluate and make adjustments as necessary.
Here’s how to plan for your next 90 days:
1—Establish your initial goal – for example, do you want to get your next 200 followers on Facebook? Or, do you want to get your next client on LinkedIn or maybe you want to establish a robust presence on Pinterest?
Choose ONE to focus on. That way, you can accomplish more without spreading yourself so thin.
2—Take Stock – of your skills, knowledge, time and financial resources to achieve your goal.
–Do you know how to create content that people will find useful?
–Do you know how to effectively use the platform you’ve chosen?
–If you’re using Facebook, do you know how to use Facebook ads effectively to reach your intended audience?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, getting some social media coaching/training will pay off for you in a big way. (Hint: I’m available for hourly consultations as well as longer term projects!)
Once you’ve established your goal, your platform and your resources, now you can develop tactics.
3—Brainstorm ideas for content – see what else people are doing in your industry, borrow from other industries. Make notes about posts you like and what seems to get engagement. You’ll need photos for some of your posts, will you take them or buy them from stock photo sites?
Think of upcoming holidays or any events you have planned for your business. For example, if you’ll sponsor a 5K, how can you use that information in your upcoming posts?
Consider your potential customer and what they would like to see. If you need help coming up with ideas, see this post on the 5 x 5 method for creating content.
4–Develop your content – It’s a good idea to block out a couple of hours every week or so to plan what you’ll post. You can create a simple spreadsheet or table like this.
| Tuesday | Share a “how to tip” (include a picture) |
| Wednesday | Share an interesting article from a pub |
| Thursday | Post a picture from an event you attended and tag the people in it. |
| Friday | Post a link to your latest blog post with a pithy comment |
Graphics are good. There are tons of free or inexpensive programs you can use to create your own images with quotes or sayings. Programs like Canva or Picmonkey let you upload pictures and add text without knowing any graphic design skills.
5—Plan Your Implementation – Now that you have all this great content, you need it to get out to the world. You can schedule posts directly to Facebook all at once but you or someone else will need to check your page daily to respond to anything, “like”other posts and generally look like you care. Who will do this?
So, there you are. If you take an hour or two now to plan out your next 90 days, you’ll get clear on what you need to do in order to accomplish your goals. Then, it’s a matter of implementing and paying attention. Come next quarter, you can evaluate and see how far you’ve come.
