Having an online presence is no longer an option for businesses especially small ones if they need exposure.

With billions of people actively participating online, It isn’t a crime for businesses to try to connect with them.

While there are many ways to connect with your potential client online, this article focuses on the use of social media.

People spend time connecting with friends and family online on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even more professionally on Linkedin.

In fact, 90% of businesses claim social marketing has increased their business exposure.

With 75% claiming that traffic to their businesses increased.

So if your business isn’t on social media or it is and you aren’t using it properly, then you need to rethink your social strategy.

Below are effective guidelines on how to create a social media plan for small businesses.


How to create a Social Media plan for Small Businesses

Social media can be very tempting when it comes to interaction. You just want to burst in and start telling people about your business. In the process without laying any plan out, you might just lose your way and purpose.

So to get started, you need to be very informed and carefully create a plan that works for you.

To do this you need to:

Set your goals and objectives: When it comes to goals and objectives, there are a lot of things that social media can do for you.

Brand awareness
Driving traffic to your website
Information sharing
Lead generation
App installs
Sales
Customer service and more

Above are some goals that can be achieved through social media. Before you venture into social media for your business, establish the goals you are planning to achieve with it.

Ensure your goals are very specific, measurable, relevant and attainable.

Carryout a Social media audit: If your business already has a social media handle, you need to audit it. What this means is, you need to find out those that are connecting with you through your social platforms, what network they use, the devices, and most importantly how strong is your brand as against that of your competitor. Check out Hootsuite social media audit template as a guide.

Choose the right Platform: The first mistake many businesses do is thinking that they can get enough exposure if they can be found on a lot of social media platform.

This is very incorrect.

Every social platform has their strength and the kind of business that can operate successfully using them.

Moreover putting your business on multiple platforms can be really stressful because

You won’t be able to manage all of them
It will be a waste of resources and
Waste of time.
Check out my article on effective social media marketing for small business.

Create or Improve your accounts: Whether you are new or an existing user of social media for your business, Once you have discovered the best social networks for your business, create a profile that works with your goals and objective. For those who are already on social media, update your profiles to fit into your goals and objectives.

Spy on Your Competitors: Most times when just starting with social media for your business, you might look confused on what to do. Questions like — What should I Post? How should I tell my brand story? Or What kind of content you need to share? — would pop up. Get inspiration from competitors. Check out their social media pages and see how you can incorporate the same with your goals and objectives.

Create a content distribution calendar for all your handles: This is a very important aspect. Draft out date and times you want to share content on all your handles for consistency.

Choose a Social Media Management tool: Managing social media account traditionally can be really stressful and time-consuming. If you really want to save time and still remain consistent in your content distribution you need tools.

There are tons of social media automation tools out there for you to choose from.

Some good ones are:

Bufferapp
Hootsuite
Crowdfire
Dlvrit
IFTTT
Zoho Social
These tools offer queue automation for content, RSS to social media automation, content re-posting and so on. You can schedule the time and day you want your content to be shared.

Monitor Trends and Opportunities: Social media is not a one-way thing, you need your social eyes and ears open as well. You want to know what your audience or customers are saying about you and what they want.

You can do this by incorporating what is call brand listening or Social Monitoring. Tools like Google Alerts, Brand24 and BrandWatch can be very effective. There are other brand listening tools out there to help you.

Pay attention to your social media Insights: Social Media platforms comes with integrated analytical insights that show you metrics on how far you are achieving your social media goals.

While most times people look at the comments, likes and shares of their content as a great way to measure their success rate on social media. Businesses need to pay attention more to these metrics

Reach
Audience engagement
Website Traffic
Leads Generated
Revenue Generated
Conversions

Deciding what metrics to measure is easy. Just ask yourself

How the metrics meet up with your goals?
How will it help you in decision making?

Analyse and adjust your strategy: Once you have recognized the metrics you want to measure. Take an analysis of its impacts and then adjust your social marketing plan based on the information gotten from your analysis.

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