In Episode 14, we discussed what makes up a great content strategy. In this episode, we go deeper into the 6 essentials for planning and developing your social media strategy for your small business.
We invite you to listen here on our website or from your favorite podcast player. Scroll below for episode summary and other resources.
Episode 15 Summary:
- Once you’ve selected what social media platforms you’ll be using to market your small business and you’ve determined what content you’ll be making yourself as well as what general categories of content you’ll be posting about, you’re at the point of creating your social media strategy. You want to make sure that your social media activity supports not only your business and addresses your ideal client, but also supports any ongoing or seasonal sales, promotions, launches, or events you have.
- If you haven’t done the basic content strategy work yet, we recommend listening to Episode 14 so you can be sure to get your content strategy foundation set up first. But assuming you’re ready to go, here are the 6 main components to planning a social media strategy for your business.
- The 6 main parts of creating your social media strategy are:
- Determining how often you can create your original content
- Determining how often you’ll publish to each social media platform you’re using
- Deciding how much time you’ll dedicate to your social media including time specifically set aside for engagement and responding to comments and private messages
- Determine your tone and style of speaking to your audience
- Developing a loose posting schedule or calendar to help guide your weekly or monthly publishing pace
- Incorporating your overall marketing, advertising, and promotional calendar into your plans
- Before we dig in further, it’s important to explain that you want to make sure that your social media strategy and what you’re posting aligns with your current marketing objectives. Because of this, you might have one strategy that is sort of a standard plan for the times of year when you don’t have anything special on your promotional marketing calendar, but then other specific social media plans for when you are getting ready to launch a new service or course, or have an upcoming sale at your store or event you are hosting.
- We know this can be a bit abstract to discuss in general terms, so we’ll give you some examples of how this comes together. Let’s say that you own a pet sitting business and you have established business accounts on Facebook and Instagram. You’ve identified your content buckets as: promotional, pet care and training tips, pet and pet owner jokes and memes, and photos or videos of your pet visits, playtime, and walks. You’ve also determined that you have enough content and time in your schedule to post 4 times a week to your Facebook Page and Instagram feed, and that you’ll utilize Stories for in-the-moment photos and videos.
- Using this information you can then develop your social media posting schedule as well as time built in for engaging with other platform users and responding to comments and messages. You might decide that a good post flow for you is something like promotional posts on Mondays and funny stuff on Fridays, and then you decide you’ll post mid-week and over the weekend for the other 2 posts a week. As you visit your clients’ homes, you’ll take photos and videos to use for Stories as well as your regular social posts. And you’ll sit down once every 2-3 weeks to create new graphics to use for your pet care and training tips posts.
Episode 15 Takeaways:
Liz: Don’t be intimidated by words like “strategy development”! You know the answers to those 6 essential questions before you get started. Work through the process and you’ll be happy with how you come out on the other side.
Ronda: Ditto!
Resources: Content Strategy 101
Listen On: Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify
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Liz Jostes – LinkedIn, Website
Ronda VanBuren – LinkedIn, Website
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