An effective social media marketing plan requires a lot of planning and forethought. It’s something done with a lot of expert advice and research. The good thing is the internet offers a lot of information about this topic. Below are the first 5 steps to take to create an effective social media marketing plan.

1. Know your Audience

Different audiences exist on different social media platforms. You could say that millennials flock to Instagram, the younger generation are on TikTok, and older generations use Facebook. Knowing the demographic of your target audience will allow you to craft a social media strategy with a heavy focus on the right platform. Besides knowing which platform they use, you also have to know how much time they spend on the platform, the times they are most active, and how they interact. You can find your audience by doing a marketing analysis of your business.

• Create a Persona
  Create a persona for your audience to get a better insight into what type of person your most engaged customer is. What age are they, what gender are they, what are their beliefs and values. You can use resources such as HubSpot’s persona generator to create a very detailed Persona and simplify the process for you. This can give you a great idea of what type of target audience you have, which can influence you to make better content to suit your customer or to help you make more refined targeted ad campaigns.
  
• Do a Competitor Analysis
  Analyse your competitors online and compare what their marketing efforts are like compared to yours. What are their results and see if they are doing better than you? I would look to see what audience they had and how they interacted with their content. What was their most popular platform? I would use this information to back and analyse my own content and adapt based on my findings.

2. Set Achievable goals

In building a great social media strategy plan, you first have to ask: what do you want to achieve? Is it a better keyword ranking? More attention to your online store? Is it to reach a new audience? Having a set of goals will streamline all the activities to achieve those goals. You won’t end up wandering around wasting valuable money and time trying to play hit or miss with your marketing strategy. And in setting a goal, make sure it is realistic, something you can achieve within a given amount of time. Work towards this goal through your social media strategy plan.

3. Audit your Social Media Presence

You’re done with knowing who your target audience is and where to find them. You’ve also set a specific goal for your social media strategy. The next is to take stock of your current social media presence. This will involve knowing which social media platforms you are most active on; whether your profile on those platforms is optimized; how many followers are on each platform; and which platform has the best revenue potential. Compare these against the goal you have set and determine the best ways to bridge the gap.

4. Choose the tools

Tools make life a lot easier for most people. And in social media marketing, tools are your best friends. Choosing the best ones is going to be an important step in your strategy as choosing a reliable one will mean more time to spend on more important tasks. Keep these tips in mind when choosing the right social media management tool:

● Is it free, or what is its associated cost?

● Does it integrate with other software, specifically those that collect user data?

● Does it support multiple social media platforms?

● Are you interested in social listening?

A lot of these tools will offer a free trial which gives you the chance to try out its features to see if it fits with your goals. Compare different tools and pick the one that aligns with what you want to achieve.

5. Curate your content

The last step in any social media strategy is to start posting content. But don’t just go around posting whatever fits your fancy. In a world influenced by social media, the content has to be curated. This means posting only content that aligns with your vision. It should be content that your audience expects and responds to from you.