A social media plan is a comprehensive blueprint for your social marketing strategy that will help you do just that. It includes:

Setting realistic social marketing goals to align with your overall business goalsDetermining how you will measure the success of your social marketing effortsIntegrating emerging trends and best practices into your strategy and content development

This 30-day social media plan template is designed to help you re-invent your social media management strategy so that what you share aligns with the interests of your community and contributes to overall business value. You will learn how to:

Create an effective social strategy that aligns with audience interestDiversify your content and build a robust content calendarDetermine business value driven by social

Use the social media plan template below to track your progress as you work through the plan. By completing just one task each day for the next 30 days, you can fully transform your social marketing strategy.

Drive website trafficRaise brand awarenessBoost brand engagementGenerate new leadsNurture leadsBuild a community around your businessEstablish authority and industry expertiseImprove customer supportShift brand sentiment

The objective here is to give purpose to your social efforts. Once you’ve established your social goals, the content you produce and share should continually support those goals. There are several methods to help you write out specific social media goals, including the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) method. The OKR method asks you to set a broad objective statement and list out key results that describe what successfully achieving that objective looks like. Here’s an example of a broad objective statement supported by clear, result metrics that define meeting the objective. According to this example, if your objective is to boost brand engagement, you must increase the number of likes, shares, mentions and comments by 20% by the end of the fourth quarter.

Day 2: Define your success metrics

How are you going to define the success of your social efforts? Decide which metrics will provide the right data to determine whether or not social is supporting your business goals. As you identify your success metrics (e.g. organic mentions, share of voice or conversions), set clear standards for your social campaigns so that you know when you achieve success. If you are tracking audience engagement, what exactly do you consider successful engagement rates for your social content? Depending on the type of content you produce, where you share and the goals you set for your social marketing efforts, the metrics you track will change. If you’re at a loss for the goals your team should set, use the Social Media Metrics Map to assess options for owned, earned and paid social.

Day 3: List out your challenges

The task is simple: Make a list of the challenges you face when it comes to social media marketing. Think of any barriers that are keeping your social content from making its biggest impact. As you list out your challenges, write out simple explanations of how these barriers are impacting your marketing efforts or overall business success. Here are a couple of examples to help you get started. Challenge 1: Although we consistently post on social, we are not achieving ideal engagement levels. Challenge 2: We have seen a dramatic drop in our social content’s organic reach. Not sure what your specific challenges may be? Our recent Sprout Social Index™ surveyed social marketers and found these five challenges are the most common.

Day 4: Brainstorm solutions

Round up your marketing team and brainstorm possible solutions to the challenges you previously listed. Be sure to provide evidence to justify effective solutions so that you’re prepared when the time comes to gather resources and advocate for your budget.

Solution to Challenge 1:

We can use creators to engage with our social content and drive conversation. Justification: In 2022, most marketers (74%) plan to spend at least a quarter of their social media budget on partnering with a content creator. With loyal followings, creators can boost engagement and keep relevant conversations going on social.

Solution to Challenge 2:

We can invest in paid social media advertising to run highly targeted campaigns and reach the right people. Justification: Almost half of consumers report they “find the perfect products” by seeing targeted ads. By 2025, social shopping is set to become a $1.2 trillion channel.

Day 5: Analyze the competition

If you’re running out of ideas, try running a competitive analysis. Be careful not to mimic your competitors’ content, but use your analysis to determine your brand’s unique positioning instead. Your brand and its competitors have similar ideal customer personas, so focus on the type of content that is resonating, both within your own social efforts and those of the competition. Here are a few questions to consider as you analyze your competitor’s social marketing efforts:

Which marketing channels are my competitors using and are they successful in those channels?What are my competitors talking about and are those topics generating high audience engagement?Are there areas within our social strategy where we are outperforming our competitors?

Social analytics solutions are an effective way to compare your efforts against your competitors. Using Sprout’s Analytics, you can directly benchmark your efforts against one or more competitors. Start your free Sprout trial You can pinpoint days when competitors experienced peak engagement and dive deeper into what content was shared on those days to understand what resonates most with target audiences. Conduct a survey among your marketing, sales, customer service and product teams to gauge where they see areas of success or room for improvement. For each criteria regarding your social marketing strategy, determine whether it’s one of your strengths or weaknesses. This will help identify what you should focus on over the next five weeks.

Day 7: Audit your content

Run a social media audit to identify your best-performing content and most popular channels. Take time to understand what’s working and why. Your metrics can help you identify which posts effectively cater to the interests of your audience. If your posts aren’t engaging and resonating with your followers, your social media content strategy needs to shift. Use your audit to review the content you’ve shared and identify which posts had the biggest impact. You can use Sprout’s Post Performance Report to parse through your most popular posts across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

Day 8: Create a list of relevant keywords

Use social media listening tools to identify the keywords most often associated with your brand. These keywords can help your team throughout the content brainstorm and creation process. Social listening can help you uncover unique opportunities to tie trending conversations to your business and products. For example, our team of analysts found that a new TikTok sound titled “Corn but it becomes a song and unites world” spawned over 607,000 videos. South Dakota, home of the Corn Palace, went all-in on this trend by inviting the star, an elementary school student, to visit the attraction, garnering 5.5 million views and over a million likes.

Day 9: Determine your brand voice and social persona

When it comes to building a social audience, consistency is key. Creating a brand voice and identifying a persona will enable you to remain consistent across all of your social channels. ♬ original sound – Doing Things Take this 3-minute assessment to help you characterize your brand and determine the business goals you’re trying to achieve. Select the responses that best describe your objectives, vision and audience. After you narrow in on your persona, choose three words that describe your brand then explain what they mean for your brand and create dos and dont’s to guide content creation.

Day 10: Optimize your social profiles

While much of your time is spent planning and creating content, the information included on your profiles is vital to the success of your social marketing efforts. After you’ve determined your brand’s persona, build out your profiles to align with your voice. At a quick glance, your profile should speak to your brand with relevant visuals and engaging copy. Here are a few tactics to optimize your social profiles.

1. Use a consistent profile picture

If you own multiple social channels for your business, it’s important that your profile picture is consistent across every channel. Most businesses will use their company logo or variations of their logo that have been designed specifically for their social accounts. Staying consistent across your profiles will increase opportunities for brand recognition.

2. Complete every section of your profile

If there is a field for information, take advantage of the opportunity to tell your brand’s story. In creative and succinct ways, you should be able to describe what your business does, the offerings you can provide and how you add value to the lives of your customers.

3. Add keywords to boost SEO

On Day 8, you compiled a list of keywords relevant to your industry, brand and its offerings. Use these strategic keywords in every section of your profile to boost SEO. They should appear in your bio copy, in photo names, interests and experiences. Buyer personas help you better understand current and future customers, so you know exactly who you are marketing to and can create relevant content and offerings. Start by writing down everything you know about your target customer and perform research to fill in any gaps. For a robust buyer persona, try to capture the following information.

DemographicsBackstoryLifestyleCareerPurchase behaviorsFinancesGoals, challenges, pain points

Day 12: Listen to your audience

Listening to your community can help you gain insight into the minds of your followers, so you can be more strategic in your social marketing efforts. Using social media listening, you can learn a lot about your community (even when they’re not directly interacting with your brand) to inform a more effective strategy. Here’s what you should listen for on social media:

What your audience is talking about and what they share most oftenWhat your audience is saying about your brand, industry, products, services and competitorsWhat your audience is sharing on forum-style platforms like Reddit or QuoraHow your audience engages with creators, trending topics and industry events

To create relevant content and establish your brand as an authority on social, you must stay up to date with what’s happening in your industry. Join conversations surrounding high-interest topics. Perform ongoing research to make sure the content you produce and share aligns with the current interests of your community. Here are a few resources that will help guide your research.

Newsletters

As social marketers, research is one of our most valuable skills. Instead of browsing aimlessly through content, rummaging through thousands of social profiles or running endless Google searches, an easy way to streamline research is to sign up for a solid mix of newsletters. Newsletters provide insights into the state of the industry, changes in technology, updates to social networks and emerging trends and best practices. Here are a few newsletters that social media marketers should add to their resource list:

Link in Bio features expert interviews from industry-leading social media managers. The newsletter shares actionable advice and relatable experiences to inspire their community.Social Media Today focuses on sharing original analyses of what’s happening in social media. Their content is platform-focused, providing social marketers with insights on how to adopt new features and where other brands are finding success.Org is a membership organization for leaders in the social media marketing space. Their weekly newsletter, The Shortlist, highlights member stories as they share what they’re working on and what they’re keeping an eye on in the space.

Webinars

Webinars can have a significant impact on social marketing strategies by generating new leads and prospects, nurturing existing relationships and demonstrating expertise in our industries. During webinars, many businesses will live-Tweet along with their users to answer questions and keep the online conversation going. Webinars can also provide a way for us to learn, which can spark content ideas during our brainstorming sessions. Social Media Today provides a wide variety of webinars specific to social marketers. You can register for upcoming webinars or watch from their library of on-demand sessions.

Forums

Forums give marketers an effective way to identify the topics that spur the most conversation online. Quora is a great resource to discover topics of interest, ask questions and engage in conversations relevant to your brand. As a brainstorming tool, forums can help social marketers build social content plans that address questions people are already asking.

Blogs

Adweek (and publications like Digiday and Marketing Land) present the anatomy of the latest, most creative campaigns out there, and also fill you in on the most recent news. The Mission (and Medium generally) is great to turn to for thought leadership and gauging the pulse of our industry and the visionaries in it.

Day 14: Connect with other departments

As you continue researching industry trends and topics as inspiration for your content, connect with other departments within your organization. Social is no longer limited to marketing, with functions across the business weighing in on strategy. But as a more diverse set of stakeholders gets involved, core social teams will need to adapt. Figuring out who owns what, and which proficiencies are needed across teams, has to be addressed as social strategies become more sophisticated. For example, try speaking with members of your sales team: they are often the first points of contact for consumers, and they can provide insight into customers’ needs, challenges and successes. This insight can help generate content that addresses these needs or highlights successes. Your human resources team can also provide insight into ongoing employer brand initiatives. Collaborate with HR to investigate how employees and potential hires are engaging with your brand on social. Their understanding of your workforce can help you identify what content is most effective for this important group of stakeholders. A social media collaboration tool can help you streamline your efforts and manage cross-functional initiatives.

Day 15: Choose your content types

Start thinking about the types of content that will benefit your brand the most, while keeping your audience engaged. Refer back to the buyer personas you created to determine if an image linking to a blog post would perform better than a Twitter chat or an Instagram Live event. Consider the resources available to you to determine if you can create a high quality how-to video, or if you need to scale down your efforts and create an infographic using the same content. For the best results, diversify your content to keep your audience interested. If you post the same type of content day after day or week after week, your audience will inevitably disengage. Here’s a list of possible content types you can start incorporating into your social marketing strategies:

MemesGIFsInfographicsHow-tosPollsContestsUser-generated contentPhoto and videoLive streamingAudio

Before you start searching for content to share on social, figure out what your audience actually likes. One way to do that is to look at past social media posts to see which were most successful. Pull all of your unique social media analytics with a tool like Sprout Social, Twitter Analytics or Facebook Insights. Below is an example of how to view your published posts with Sprout (available with a free, 30-day trial). Make sure you sort your posts by the metric that is most important to you, whether that’s clicks, responses or total reach. Once you have an idea of what kind of content works best, you can move onto the next step.

TikTok: 1-4 times per dayInstagram: 1-2 times per dayFacebook: 4-5 times per dayLinkedIn: No more than 1 time per dayTwitter: 3-4 times per dayPinterest: No more than 1 time per day

There’s a good chance your post frequency will depend on the size, experience and authority of your social media team, so don’t feel like you have to send out less than stellar content to meet these guidelines. Your brand’s analytics can help you determine your best posting frequency. You can use a tool like Sprout to see how often you post on each social network, then compare that to how much engagement you received over that same time period. Look for trends between publishing rate and engagement. The screenshots above are from our Facebook Page Report, but you can do the same for Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn posts as well.

Day 17: Brainstorm content ideas

Now’s the time to gather your inspiration and plan out content you know will resonate with your audience. The key to effective brainstorming is to put yourself in the mindset that inspiration can come from anywhere. Think of what your business does well and how you can turn that into an engaging content piece. Look through some of your older content and see if you can repurpose or reformat it for a different channel. Based on the conversations you’ve discovered are popular among your audience, how can you contribute to those conversations with fresh content? Here are some of 2022’s most popular content types.

Video

About 66% of consumers cite short-form video as the overall most engaging social content, while 37% prefer live video and 24% prefer long-form video. Even if you don’t have the budget to hire a videographer, don’t rule this medium out. Tools like Canva and Biteable have democratized the creation process. Anyone on your team can make professional, on-brand videos, even while working remote.

Images and text-based posts 

In the era of video, images and text-based posts still pack a punch with today’s social users. In fact, 61% of consumers find images to be the most engaging social content. From Instagram carousels to Twitter threads, these posts are key pieces of leading content strategies.

User-generated content

Marketers have been able to amplify user-generated content to increase brand awareness, promote products and services and use the digital word-of-mouth concept to build brand trust and increase sales. In fact, 39% of consumers like to see brands share customer testimonials or real customer demos.

Day 18: Gather resources

Once you’ve determined the types of content best suited for your business and have decided on a publishing cadence, start gathering your resources. Think back to the types of content you decided to incorporate into your social strategy and what resources you need to bring them to life. Here are several questions for you to consider as you start collecting your resources.

Have you decided on the type of creative assets you’ll use and how you’ll store them?Who within the company needs to be involved in order to create this specific content piece?Do you need any sort of creative support for visual elements?Do you already own content (guides, e-books, blog posts) that can easily be repurposed for social?

Day 19: Draft your social media plan calendar and create your content

It’s time to get to work. Start the content creation process and set reasonable timelines for project completion. Be sure to build social content that speaks to your customer personas, stays true to your brand voice and can easily fit within the posting schedule you’ve established.

Day 20: Optimize your content

During the creation process, it’s essential for you to optimize your content so that your efforts don’t go unnoticed in consumers’ crowded social feeds. Every net new content piece you create should be able to be repurposed for another use down the line. Consider your video strategy. A video can be broken down into short clips, quote graphics, still images and more. Think through your options while creating content so you can fill out your calendar with less effort going forward. Here are a few additional tactics to optimize your social content to maximize reach and increase engagement:

Include hashtagsShorten linksInclude imagesAdapt content for various social channels

Take The Sill, for example. Their TikTok videos provide their community with tips for caring for plants with a twist of humor that feels authentic to their brand. They go beyond standard product content, showcasing their brand in fun and creative ways that align with platform trends. If the primary goal of your social marketing is to generate new leads and guide people into your sales funnel, you need to give your audience a clear next step. Include direct CTAs (call to action) on the posts you are using to drive action. ♬ Throwing roses – Rickie For copy inspiration, check out this article on effective social CTA phrases.

Day 22: Connect to more resources

By connecting your audience to more resources (especially owned resources) you are establishing your brand as an authority on your space while inviting them to engage further. The more they learn about you and stay engaged with your brand, the more likely they are to convert. At Sprout, we often share links to some of our favorite blog posts for our audience to learn more about social networks, best marketing practices and trending topics.

Day 23: Amplify your efforts

Once you’ve started promoting your content on social, think of ways you can amplify your messages to reach a larger audience. Get the inside scoop: https://t.co/BlowGcykxx — Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) September 15, 2022 Here is a short list of methods to consider in order to extend the reach of your content:

Leverage your employees by using Sprout Social’s Employee Advocacy platform to amplify your contentGive incentives for customers to share on their social channelsUse creators to extend the reach of your content

Day 24: Invest in your best content

As you promote and amplify your content, you may quickly notice that some types of content perform better than others in terms of engagement and conversion. Extend the reach of these high-performing pieces through paid ads. You can target a highly specific audience, attract qualified traffic and leads and grow your customer base. The algorithms for social networks like Facebook and Instagram are now starting to favor paid content over organic content, making it increasingly important to invest in paid to give your content a fighting chance for discovery. Which social media network you choose will depend on three important factors:

Where your target customers are most concentratedWhere your target customers are most accessibleWhere your target customers most actively engage with ads

Day 25: Engage with your audience

About 80% of consumers expect brands and companies that have a social media presence to interact with their customers in meaningful ways. It’s important to engage with and respond to your audience. Engaging with your audience in a two-way dialogue builds brand trust and adds authenticity. As you monitor your audience’s reaction to your content, you can also gain valuable insight into its effectiveness. Read through comments on your social posts and respond to questions and insightful comments. The comments section is a great tool for social marketers looking for feedback and can even inspire ideas for future content. You can track all of your content with the Sprout Social Post Performance Report. Use the Post Performance reports to analyze published content down to the individual post and understand its performance with your audience. Here’s an example of how to view your cross-channel post performance with Sprout (available with a free trial).

Day 27: Compare results to goals

Think back to the objectives you set at the beginning of these 30 days. For example, if your objective was to boost brand engagement, you needed to increase the number of likes, shares, mentions and comments by 20% by the end of the fourth quarter. Using a social media analytics tool, you can compare month-over-month engagement for all of your social profiles to determine if you are on track to meet your social marketing goals.

Day 28: Report out

Share the results of your social marketing efforts with your marketing team and leadership. If you’re new to reporting or need to brush up on best practices, here’s a suite of resources that can help you create a routine reporting system. This is your opportunity to showcase the goals you’ve established and your progress toward them. You should use hard evidence, like the data you’ve gathered through listening and analytics, to report on the success of your social marketing efforts. Depending on your goals, you may want to build a custom report that zeroes in on what matters to your team. With Sprout’s Report Builder, you can customize performance reports to meet your exact business needs. Once you’re happy with your report, you can customize your branding and export it as a .PDF or a .CSV file for easy sharing.

Day 29: Revisit and readjust your strategy

The most savvy marketers know that marketing strategies are in constant flux. Revisit your strategy, revise your marketing goals and adapt your strategies based on the data you’ve collected.

Day 30: Celebrate your transformation

Congratulations, you’ve successfully made it through the 30-day social marketing transformation program. Celebrate your new strategy and the effort you’ve made to enhance your social marketing. Keep in mind that transforming your social media strategic planning doesn’t end with these 30 days—continue to identify challenges to your social marketing strategy, analyze your competitors, discover ways to optimize your content and social profiles and remember to always revisit and adjust your strategies as needed. Want to learn how Sprout Social’s features and solutions can help you create an even better social media plan? Request a demo or start a free, 30-day trial to try Sprout for yourself. Start your free Sprout trial