How to build the best content plan for social media business profiles with Steps (Followed by top brands)

content plan for social media
Content Writing

How to build the best content plan for social media business profiles with Steps (Followed by top brands)

Social media marketing is one of the most used forms of promotions in today’s world. Social media helps to create awareness about your brand, engage with your customers, and converting interests into inquiries. The content plan for social media is one of the most essential ingredients of social media promotion. As per ABG essentials content marketing is having 6 times more conversion in comparison to other digital marketing methods.

A successful content plan for social media with the right strategy will help you to meet your business objective by gaining traffic for your social media channels and websites. According to a recent study, 78% of customers preferred content over advertisements for knowing about any particular products or services.

As social media content marketing is one of the most potent modes of digital marketing, more and more companies are investing in it with the expectation that it will bring a positive outcome for them. Because of this increasing competition, it is very important to devise a powerful content marketing strategy.

Identifying the goals and setting up measurement parameters

The beginning of any successful strategy starts with the definition of a content plan for social media with a clear goal. A defined goal for your social media content will really help you to design the entire social media content strategy.

The process of setting up a goal starts with a detailed marketing plan. An exhaustive marketing plan will help you to understand the objective behind your social media content promotion. The next part of goal definition is to describe business objectives that you want to achieve out of social media content marketing.

For example, if you are a furniture company and want to achieve more sales conversion out of your content then you should devise content that will encourage people to land into your landing page or website page.

Similarly in case you are an FMCG company and looking for the branding of your products and services out of your social media content, then you should drive content that brings more engagements in terms of like, comment and share on social media platforms.

Creating a content plan for social media:

An effective content marketing strategy involves a plan for accomplishing business objectives using social media content. The entire process of strategy starts with the proper definition of your audience base as well as the particular social media channels which they might follow with the right content plan for social media.

 A compelling strategy will also need to have a plan for the creation of the most effective and engaging content as per the market. Like when the series Game of Thrones was broadcasted and becomes hugely popular, Lawrence of Morocco who offers customized holiday packages based on Morocco takes advantage of the situation. Since the series was shot in Morocco their content backlink brings huge traffic for their website.

A detailed social media content audit also helps you to identify the contents which are doing well and contents that are not performing as per expectations. Measuring the performance of each content against different social media channels will give you a tool for devising an effective content marketing strategy. There are multiple metrics that brands can track to understand the effectiveness of any post.

Most of the major social media channels like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn is having the tool where you export results of each content into an excel sheet. Keeping a master sheet with the detailed performance of different posts across different social media will help you to understand the performance of the different types of content with regards to different types of channels.

The takeaways from the audit should be studied in view of the social media content objectives. For instance, if you are running an e-commerce business and your goal is to achieve sales out of social media content then you should check what are the percentages of clicks that are happening out of different social media posts. This will essentially keep your content marketing in tune with the overall marketing objectives.

It may also happen that you are expecting better performance out of any particular post, but the results showing otherwise. It may happen because of the tonality of the content or the creative design associated with it. An exhaustive study will help you to analyze the performance and planning the content for each type of post across different social media.

Building a social media content calendar

Based on the data collected from the past interaction, you should devise a content calendar for your social media posts. This will help you to understand the bigger picture across all channels.

Also while making a content calendar; you should study which type of content is best for which type of channel. A detailed study of the past results will help you to gauge the performance of different posts across divergent channels.

You should make a comprehensive content marketing plan with details about the content, name of the channel, and time when you are going to post it.

Creation and optimization of social media content

The next part of the social media content strategy is the creation of a content plan for social media for different channels. A content that is ideal for one media, may not work for others. You should plan distinct contents based on the channels where they are going to be posted.

Also, you need to optimize content for different media as per their objectivity and use.

Distribution of the content and promotion of the same

The most important part of any social media content strategy is the distribution of the content. You may have created great content but it will lose its value if it doesn’t reach the desired audience. Synchronization between effective content creation, distribution, and promotion of the content will help you to achieve the desired result out of social media content marketing.

There are several strategies for the effective distribution of the content on social media.

Social media buttons:

First of all, you should create social media share buttons along with your content. So in case, somebody wants to share your content, they can do it easily with one click. You can integrate your social media channels along with your content so that people read it more carefully and engaged with it.

Different content plan for social media for different channels:

Secondly, you should follow different promotion strategies for different social media channels. For Twitter and Instagram hashtag is widely used for content promotion. On Facebook, you can join groups for more effective promotion of the content.

Contests

Thirdly you can also have the strategy of asking questions to your social media users for better engagement. Also, you can create an online contest with exciting prizes which will help you to drive traffic for your content.

Like in case you are a real estate company, you can ask your customers to take selfies with a picture of the building in the background and you can offer rewards for the best-taken picture.

Bloggers

Another compelling strategy that you could follow for the effective distribution of your content is to connect with the bloggers. Since the established bloggers in the market are having a large audience base, they can easily give you an instant reach. Also, the blogger adds authenticity to your content.

Paid promotions

Along with the organic distribution strategy, paid promotions can be used by you for quick and targeted reach. Nowadays all social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram provide paid promotion with targeting based on demographic, location as well as professions. Paid promotions have got this added feature of targeted marketing which can help your social media content to reach the target audience base.

Measuring the campaign results

The last and final step of an effective content marketing strategy is to measure the results of your different efforts. An ideal way is to measure the results periodically which will help you keep track of different initiatives taken by you. Also, while measuring the results you should also look into the facts and figures with respect to each post, to understand the performance of individual posts on different channels.

Results out of content marketing can be measured using different metrics. Like engagement out of your social media content can be measured against the comments, like and share done by the audience. Also, the results should be measured from the perspective of the overall content marketing objectives.

Like in case you are a company selling an innovative and new-age product like a smart speaker, the effectiveness should be measured against click that is happening out of your posted contents explaining the use of the product.  Conversions and referrals out of your content are two of the most important parameters for measuring the performance.

Conclusion

Lastly, there are several points that must be considered while devising an effective content plan for social media and its content marketing strategy. But if you take care of the basic points discussed above you can easily achieve your desired objective out of content marketing.

Social media content marketing is an effective tool to build relationships with customers. It not only helps to connect with potential customers but also helps to educate them about your products and services. These activities, in turn, help to improve conversions by giving them the desired information which they need to have before making a decision about purchasing any products or services.