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Having an established process for posting new content to your social media properties is key.
Once you've started developing new content, it's time to lay out your social media content plan.
First, set your goals.
Goal setting is key to measuring your program's effectiveness and ROI. Establishing goals that are specific, attainable yet challenging, measurable, and "time bound" is where you start.
Be sure to establish benchmarks on the key performance metrics (KPIs) you want to track, as you'll be comparing results regularly against them.
Know your audience.
Knowing your audience is the next step in crafting effective social media content. A personally targeted methodology is usually more effective than trying to engage with a broad audience using a shotgun approach.
Despite consumer unhappiness with Big Tech over privacy and data-sharing issues and the changes they are forcing, Facebook and LinkedIn can still provide you with powerful insights about your audience that you can use to personalize your campaigns.
Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, not so much.
Choose the right social platforms.
Believe it or not, you don't have to use every social media platform to run an effective social media program. Pick the platforms where the majority of your audience spend their time and establish yourself there first.
Here are the platforms I recommend and why:
Just by its massive reach, numerous content formats and multiple targeting options, Facebook should be considered by both B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B (business-to-business) companies to be one of their core marketing channels. Facebook is popular almost equally across all age groups.
Instagram is a great platform for B2C companies who like to share engaging images to their audiences. Owned by Facebook, Instagram offers some of the same powerful demographic targeting features. Instagram usage skews heavily toward the 18-29 and 30-49 age groups.
LinkedIn is ideal for B2B businesses with its Company Pages and various ways to post new content. Being selective about who you connect with is an effective strategy for developing a customized audience. People within the age group of 30-49 represent the largest cohort of LinkedIn users.
X (Twitter) works best for both B2B and B2C companies that rely on quick concise communication, making it a favorite tool for customer service and support functions. Its largest user base is in the 18-29 age range but has a massive overall audience, so I'd recommend including it in your stable of SM platforms.
I suppose you can call YouTube a social media platform (IMO, it's a video sharing platform, but I'll list it here anyway). YouTube is one of the world's largest search engines, second only to its owner Google, and for both B2B and B2C companies, it's an excellent place to publish promotional video content. User cohorts run the gamut with ages 18-29 being the heaviest, ages 30-49 a close second, ages 50-64 not far behind in third place, and ages 65+ running a very respectable fourth place.
Pinterest is primarily an image sharing site where users predominantly post information like recipes, style, inspirational and home content, so it's geared more toward B2C audiences. Audiences here are mostly in the 18-29 and 30-49 age brackets.
Here are the platforms I don't recommend:
Unless your audience is predominantly between the ages of 18-29 or 30-49, and you don't mind publishing your content on a platform owned and operated by the Chinese communist government, TikTok may not be your best bet. (Should TikTok ever be bought and controlled by an American company instead, I will change my opinion accordingly.)
The concerns I have about TikTok also apply to WeChat. Besides being of limited functionality outside of China, they've also been criticized for their handling of data and influence by the Chinese government.
Snapchat - used primarily by ages 18-29 - is a instant messaging app where users can post images and messages that disappear after a short period of time. Since your creative content doesn't persist, you probably wouldn't want to spend your time and money on it.
From my professional prospective, Reddit is borderline. It has a large following but there doesn't seem to be many, if any, controls on what content gets posted there. If you're concerned about your brand being perceived as "guilty by association", I recommend passing on it.
Plan your content and formats.
This may not be as important for a company with only one person who's role is social media creator, but it's very important for companies with multiple in-house and/or external media sources to have a formal documented style guide. This guide ensures consistency across all content types and branding.
Deciding on your content and which formats to use comes next. Map out your key promotional messages first and fill in around them using a mixture of other content types.
Again, it comes down to really knowing your audience, but a good rule of thumb ratio might look like this:
- 50% business / educational / inspirational / engagement posts
- 30% recreational posts
- 20% promotional posts.
Try to blend different content formats for the best audience engagement, but don't ignore how much time it takes to create each particular piece of content. It's important that you publish your social media content on a consistent basis.
Create your Content Calendar.
A calendar helps you focus by committing you to publishing regularly, and it also helps coordinate the work of various teams that may be involved. (Many of the tools in the article above have built-in content calendars that will work just fine for your purposes.)
Frankly, publishing consistently is hard to do, but the companies who make it happen can gain a big competitive advantage over their competitors who don't.
A typical posting schedule might look something like this:
- Facebook: 1 - 2 posts daily
- LinkedIn: 1 post daily
- X: 3 - 4 posts daily
- YouTube: 1 - 2 new videos weekly
- Instagram: 1 story or post daily
- Pinterest: 1 post daily
Publish your content.
Using your calendar and one of the many SM posting platforms that are available, schedule your posts in advance and deliver them when you think they'll be the most effective (e.g., day of week, time of day). Pick one day during the week when you'll schedule your content for the next week and stick to it consistently. Making it a regular task for that day will help keep you focused and publishing on time.
Measure and analyze your results.
Take the goals you initially developed and look at your results side-by-side to them.
For example, if one of your goals was to increase engagement with your Facebook content, match your content's results against the benchmarks you set earlier. Monitoring on a weekly basis is the best way to make adjustments as needed to keep your content program on track.
Bottom line
Having an active social media program has gone from being a luxury to being an important part of your company's overall promotional strategy. If you aren't currently active in the social media space and you really want to be, following this plan can help put you back in the game.
If you need help with your social media, let's chat.
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