How to Create a Strategic Social Media Monthly Content Plan
Creating a strategic social media monthly content plan is essential to achieving your business objectives and engaging your target audience. With the ever-changing landscape of social media, it can be difficult to know where to start. We get that. That’s why in today’s episode, I will walk you through the steps of creating a plan that will help you to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, and generate leads.
Blog Overview:
- Define Your Social Media Goals
- Conduct a Social Media Content Audit
- Identify Your Target Audience on Social Media
- Research Industry Social Media Trends
- Create a Social Media Content Calendar
- Mix it Up on Social Media
- Measure and Pivot as you Go
- Be Consistent on Social Media
Define Your Social Media Goals
Before creating any content, it is important to define your social media plan’s objectives clearly. This will help to ensure that all of your efforts are focused on achieving specific, measurable goals. Some businesses are looking to grow their community on social media, and some are looking for just brand awareness. You have to hone in on what’s right for you. Common objectives for social media content plans include:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Driving website traffic
- Generating leads
- Engagement
It’s essential to be specific and realistic when setting your goals and ensure they align with your overall business objectives. Defining your goals also allows you to measure the success of your social media plan and make adjustments as necessary. Once you have defined your goals, you can create a tailored content strategy to achieve them.
Resource: Goal Check-In – While your business plan should include all of your long-term goals, it can be helpful to take a close look at each of them to determine if they are achievable in the near future. Sometimes, your business goals might be more long-term; other times, they might be doable within the next few months. In this workbook, you will be able to refine your business goals and ensure that you’ll be ready to achieve them in the new year.
Conduct a Social Media Content Audit
Conducting a content audit is crucial in creating a strategic social media monthly content plan. This process involves reviewing all of the content that you have posted on your social media channels in the past. During this analysis, take note of the types of content that have performed well and those that haven’t. This information can be used to develop the next wave of your content strategy.
You will drive engagement by identifying the types of content your audience is most engaged with and the topics they are most interested in. This content audit also helps you identify gaps in your content or areas that need improvement. Are you not doing much video, but that was your top performer? Now you know to make that adjustment, right? By doing this, you can ensure that you are creating the right content for your audience and, more importantly, that it resonates with them. It’s a noisy world out there, so creative and relevant content is all that will stand out.
Identify Your Target Audience on Social Media
I’ve said it a million times. If you are talking to everyone, you are talking to no one. Identifying your target audience (ICA) is essential in creating a strategic social media monthly content plan. Understanding your target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points will help you create content that resonates with them. This is important because when your audience can relate to your content, they are likelier to engage with it. By identifying your target audience, you can tailor your content to speak directly to them and create a more effective social media strategy. You can use various tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Audience Insights, or other social media analytics to gather information about your audience demographics, interests, and online behavior. This information can then create a detailed buyer persona, guiding your content creation and helping you understand your audience better.
Resource: Ideal Customer Avatar – Are you struggling to know your ICA inside and out? Do you have an exact vision of who your ICA is? This template will help you dig into those important details you need! Remember, you NEED to know your ICA before you can begin to market to them. Because if you are marketing to everyone, you are marketing to no one!
Research Industry Social Media Trends
Staying up-to-date with industry trends and news is important to creating a strategic social media monthly content plan. By researching industry trends, you can create timely and relevant content that will engage your audience and pull in on SEO ranking due to popularity. By keeping an eye on the latest developments in your industry, you position yourself as an expert and thought leader. This will help you to stay ahead of the competition and create a content strategy that is unique and interesting. Additionally, this will help you to identify opportunities for content creation and to be able to create more meaningful conversations with your audience.
Pro Tips:
- Subscribe to industry newsletters
- Follow influencers and thought leaders
- Joining online communities and groups
- Monitor social media and news outlets for relevant articles and news
Create a Social Media Content Calendar
I can’t stress enough how planning is everything. Creating a content calendar is essential to creating a strategic social media monthly content plan. Our social media content calendar is a schedule that outlines the topics, formats, and channels you will use for each piece of content. This helps you to stay organized and ensure that you are consistently creating and publishing content. If you are uber-organized (like me), a project management tool also is a great way to create your calendar. It makes it easy to see an overview, make adjustments, and put it into production.
It also helps to ensure that you are not repeating the same topics or formats too frequently and that you are using the right channels for each piece of content. By planning your content in advance, you can also ensure that it aligns with any upcoming events or promotions and supports your overall business goals. You should be launching something each quarter at the very least.
Resource: Social Media Calendar – If you want to increase engagement with your social media followers, you will need an air-tight posting schedule. Regularly posting content and promotions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is a must, so be sure never to miss a post with this free social media calendar template. I use it to keep track of my posting schedule, and I hope it’s as useful to you as it is to me!
Mix It Up on Social Media
Using a mix of content types is an effective way to keep your audience engaged and to create a strategic social media monthly content plan. By providing a variety of content types, you can appeal to different preferences and keep your audience interested. A mix of text, images, videos, infographics, and live videos can help to break up the monotony and provide a more dynamic experience for your audience. For example, a tutorial video can be more engaging than a written step-by-step guide. Infographics are great for presenting data and statistics in an easy-to-digest format. Live videos can offer behind-the-scenes access to your company, provide product demonstrations, and give your audience a chance to ask questions and engage in real time. You get the point. Using a mix of content types will increase engagement and reach a much wider audience. Remember – don’t cast too wide of a net, though.
Measure and Pivot as you Go
Measuring and adjusting your content strategy is an important step in creating a strategic social media monthly content plan. By using analytics tools, you can track the performance of your content and gain insights into what is working well and what isn’t. This information can then be used to adjust your content strategy as needed. Popular analytics to track include
- Google Analytics
- Facebook Insights
- Twitter Analytics
- Linked In
These platforms provide data on various metrics, such as engagement, reach, and click-through rate, which can help you understand how your audience is interacting with your content. You can also set up goals and conversion tracking in your analytics tool to measure how well your content supports your business objectives. By regularly reviewing your analytics data, you can make data-driven decisions and optimize your content strategy for better results.
Be Consistent on Social Media
Consistent with your posting and engaging with your audience are important aspects of creating a monthly strategic social media content plan. You can keep your audience engaged by consistently posting content and building a community around your brand. Consistency also helps in building trust and credibility with your audience. It’s all about positioning and standing out in today’s world. People want to connect. Engaging with your audience is important because it helps to build those relationships and create a sense of community around your brand. By doing this, you can create a more personal connection with your audience and improve the effectiveness of your social media strategy. Furthermore, it also helps you to understand your audience better and provide them with content that is tailored to their interests and preferences.
This Week’s Action Steps:
- Define your goals: Clearly define the objectives of your social media content plan, such as increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, or generating leads. SMART goals are a great method!
- Conduct a content audit: Review your past social media content to identify what has worked well and what hasn’t. Use this information to inform your future content strategy.
- Identify your target audience: Understand your target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points to create content that resonates with them. We have a tool for that here.
- Make a list of 3-5 industry trends: Keep an eye on industry trends and news to create timely and relevant content that will engage your audience. Sign up for TWO newsletters – your competitor and an industry thought leader.
- Grab your baseline analytics. Use analytics tools to track the performance of your content, and make adjustments to your content strategy as needed based on the data.
- Block off 1 hour a day to go engage with your audience
In Conclusion:
Creating a strategic social media monthly content plan is essential in achieving your business objectives and engaging your target audience. By following the steps outlined in this episode, you can create a social media content plan that is tailored to your specific needs and that meets your goals. By staying organized and using analytics to track the performance of your content, you can make data-driven decisions that will help to improve the effectiveness of your social media strategy. No more flying bling!
Remember to keep in mind that social media and trends change. the. time. So, it’s important to review and adjust your plan accordingly often.
Schedule a call with me today if you need help with your social media strategy or someone to take over your entire social media presence. We have an entire team of experts ready to help you achieve your goals.
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