I’ll bet most of you reading this have never even thought of creating a social media plan. You just dove right in and started tweeting. Of course ideally, we should always create plans before starting out on any marketing activities. Here’s why your tech company needs a marketing plan. And social media is no different.
But what should you include in a social media plan?
Firstly you need to chose which social media platforms are appropriate for your business. There are hundreds to chose from but in Ireland we tend to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and Google Plus. Here’s an infographic showing the breakdown of social media usage in Ireland as of December 2019 to help you decide. (Snapchat is included in the Social Messaging report.)
I’ve previously written about the social media channels best used for B2B tech companies. So LinkedIn, Twitter and Google MyBusiness (you might know it as Google maps) are the main ones. Although we can no longer ignore Instagram. Irish Instagram account ownership now stands at 43%. I don’t think we’ve quite reached Snapchat for us techy B2Bers yet but it’s worth keeping an eye on!
Here’s the other items you need to include in a social media plan:
- Who will manage which accounts (if more than one person involved) or which days
- Agree your target market
- Define objectives
- Create content marketing plan (who will write blogs and how often)
- Define Twitter lists
- Choose status update frequency
- Select accounts with content you might share
- Chose hashtags to focus on
Here’s a Hootsuite (one of my fave social media management tool) article on how to create a social media plan.
You will also need to define your social media policy. A social media policy outlines how your company and your employees should conduct themselves online. Here’s the link to that blog post!
Updated 28 July 2020: What to include in a social media plan was first published in May 2018
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