How to Create a Content Plan for Business Social Networks

Half of all people who have an internet connection use Facebook. This is why social media is one of the most popular marketing channels. It’s not just the sheer volume of people who use these platforms, 41% of marketers report that content marketing has a better ROI when social media is used to distribute content.

But starting a Facebook or Instagram page and posting something once in a while is not enough to succeed. Planning is one of the most important things for SMM success.

Here’s where you start.

Understand your audience

The first step towards having a successful SMM campaign is researching and understanding your audience. After all, the whole point of reaching out to your main audience on social media is to get them to listen to your message. If you don’t tailor the message to them or try to talk to your audience on a platform they rarely use, you’re doomed to fail.

Do you already have a business with a website and are trying to get into SMM? If you do, you have plenty of data for analysis on your audience already. At the very least, you have the demographic data on your leads and customers.

Age is important, but you have to gather more than that. Marital status, employment situation, life goals, all of this data is going to tell you a lot about your audience. How do you gather this data?

Use survey software like Hotjar to create surveys and ask your website visitors questions you need. 

Source: Hotjar

If you don’t want to get into Hotjar, just send your newsletter subscribers a Google Form. Make sure you offer a gift or a freebie to incentivize them to fill out the form.

Figure out the funnel

Now that you know who you are talking to, you need to understand how to attract these people to your social media page and convert them. You need to understand the concept of social media sales funnel.

Source: CoolerInsights

You probably know what a regular sales funnel looks like. The social media one is very similar except it’s more geared towards content.

You have two main concerns with this funnel: how to increase awareness and how to grow the base of brand advocates. These are the people who love your product and content so much they will give you free advertising by talking about it with friends.

Here are your options when it comes to attracting attention:

• Hashtags
• Paid advertising
• Working with influencers
• Links to social media from the website

Getting people to become brand advocates is much harder. You’ll have to combine amazing content and customer service to sway them your way.

Choose social media

The next step is to choose the right social media. This choice largely depends on your audience’s age.

Instagram and Snapchat are great for younger audiences, but Facebook isn’t just for old people. Pretty much all generations use Facebook, with the age group of 18 to 24 being the only exception.

Source: Social Bakers

Also, if your product looks good visually, you should go for Instagram. If you’re selling digital products, consider giving LinkedIn a shot.

Hashtag research

Are you going to reach your audience with organic traffic, you need to do some hashtag research before starting. Use a tool like HashtagsForLikes to get all hashtags that are relevant to your main hashtag and reach a wider audience.

Source: HashtagsForLikes

Find key influencers

Is influencer marketing your preferred way to get exposure? You’ll have to form an outreach list to make your efforts more effective. If you don’t want to look for influencers manually, try tools like BuzzSumo, UpFluence, or HypeAuditor.

These will help you find profiles on your preferred social media with the number of subscribers you need.

Editorial calendar

Now, you have every step of the strategy set in place. You know your audience, you’ve chosen the right social media, you know how you will attract visitors and transform them into leads and brand advocates. The only thing you’ve left to do is to create content.

The worst way you can go about it is to try and come up with a topic hours before publication and scramble for content ideas frantically. You don’t have to do that. Create an editorial calendar beforehand, and you’ll know exactly when to do tasks to finish everything in time.

You can even go further and use scheduling apps like Iconosquare or Sprout Social that will post the content for you at exactly the time when it will get the best exposure.

Source: Iconosquare

While you’re writing the content, don’t forget to edit it with Grammarly or Essay Writer. Social media posts are small and this makes each misspell stand out. 

Wrap up

Even if you think you can come up with the kind of content that everybody will love, you still need to plan every step of your business journey on social media. From understanding what kind of people you’re talking to creating timely and engaging posts, all of this has to be done before you even create a social media page.

When you start implementing your master plan, don’t forget about the other aspects of your business. Make sure your website can handle the number of visitors you’re about to get from a successful campaign and your sales department is ready to handle new leads.

We hope you enjoyed this promoted piece as much as we did!