6 Steps to Creating a Social Media Marketing Plan

If Facebook were a nation, and unique monthly users were its citizens, Facebook would have the world’s largest population at 2.45 billion. YouTube would come in second with 2 billion people, and the countries of China, India, and Instagram would have to fight it out for number three.

Let that sink in for second. For the first time in history, brands have direct access to literally billions of potential customers, and they can tailor their content based on volumes of data about people’s interests, lifestyle choices, worldviews, and demographics.

Social media represents a tremendous opportunity. That said, to do it right, you’ve got to have a strategy. In this LinkedIn Pulse article, I’m going to give you a 6-step plan to launch an effective social media campaign.

Here’s what that looks like:

Step 1: Understand Your Target Audience

Step 2: Identify Your Goals

Step 3: Spy on Your Competitors

Step 4: Choose Your Platforms

Step 5: Plan Your Content Schedule

Step 6: Track Your Results

Step 1: Understand Your Target Audience

The first step in launching a social media campaign or coming up with any marketing strategy for that matter, is to understand your target market. The better you understand your market, the more likely you are to post content that resonates with them and encourages them to like, share, and engage with your brand through comments.

If you don’t have the budget to hire a marketing research firm, you can gather quality data by conducting surveys. You can send surveys via email or use on-page polls where a small window slides up from the bottom of the screen asking visitors to answer a few questions.

Note: Hotjar offers on-page polling, and Survey Monkey allows you to create and distribute surveys via email. There are other options available, but those two works well.

Of course, if you’ve just launched your business and you don’t have enough traffic to get quality data, you can use Google to search for published studies that tell you a little bit about the kind of people who buy from your industry.

You can also take a look at your competitors pages (something we’ll go into in more detail about in step 3) to get a feel for what they post and how their audience responds.

Step 2: Identify Your Goals

What do you want to accomplish with your social media presence?

Sure, you ultimately want to increase sales and make more money, but you can approach this larger goal in a variety of ways. Here’s a list of smaller goals that work toward the ultimate aim of increasing sales.

Raising brand awareness: Brand awareness has multiple benefits, which is why big companies spend so much money getting their name in front of you. Nobody consciously decides to buy a bottle of Coca Cola because they see a happy person on a billboard drinking it, but just being aware of the brand decreases sales resistance. Plus, consumers are willing to pay more money for brands they recognize. Since you don’t have an $100 million ad budget, nationwide TV spots are out, but social media is in.

Audience engagement: Engagement, which is defined by likes, comments, and shares, is a close cousin to brand awareness. The more people spend time engaging with your brand, the more likely they are to remember you when they need a product or service like yours. It’s all about staying top of mind so that when they’re ready to buy, they think of you.

Lead Generation: Social media can be a great source for sharing lead magnets, which can help you capture contact information from prospective customers. 

Sales enablement: Social media posts, along with other types of content marketing such as blogging, have been shown to reduce the sales cycle (i.e., people choose to buy quicker) and increase the amount of money they spend. Why? Familiarity builds trust. Trust closes deals.

Conversions: A social media conversion occurs when someone reads or interacts with one of your posts and proceeds to do something you want them to do (e.g., clicks on your ad, signs up for your newsletter, makes a purchase).

In all likelihood, your social media pages will feature a variety of content, each designed to achieve different goals on this list. The content mix you choose will depend on what you’re trying to accomplish.

Step 3: Spy on Your Competitors 

You can learn a ton with a little espionage. Visit and follow your competitors’ social media pages, taking note of:

Platforms they use: Are they big on LinkedIn but quiet on Twitter? There may be a good reason for that (based on where their/your target market hangs out). Then again, they may be ignoring a powerful channel for their message, so you can’t make any assumptions based on this info alone.

Content they post: Do they post mostly original content? Other people’s stuff? Articles? Videos? Customer testimonials?

Audience response: What gets the most engagement? What gets shared, liked, and commented on? These are sometimes called “vanity metrics,” but they’ll give you a good sense of what’s working and what isn’t.

Step 4: Choose the platforms you want to focus on

Refer back to your demographic research and figure out where your target audience hangs out. If you’re selling retirement planning software, chances are your market is not hanging out on Snapchat.

Remember that you only have so much time to spend managing various social media channels, and even if you hire someone to do it for you, your resources are limited. Conduct a competitive review to see where your competitors hang out and where they get the most love from their audience. Then consider the data you have about your target audience and choose which platforms to place the bulk of your attention.

Now, what if you sign up on multiple platforms and notice, to your surprise, that you’re getting tons of engagement on a platform that didn’t seem promising? Run with it! You just found yourself a nice little niche, and chances are you’re ahead of your competitors.

What’s important is to let the data drive your decisions about where to focus your attention. For instance, if your target market is younger Gen-Z’s and your 15-year old daughter tells you that Facebook is dead to her generation, she may be right about the general sentiment but wrong when it comes to potential buyers of your particular brand. In other words, trust data over common knowledge.

Pro tip: Apps like Buffer allow you to post content to multiple platforms at the same time.

Step 5: Plan Your Content Schedule

Here’s the fun part. It’s time to decide what you want to post and when you want to post it. That means choosing a mix of formats (articles, blogs, pictures, videos, infographics) and planning them out using a scheduling calendar. You’ll also want to think about how much original content you want to create vs. what you want to share from outside sources.

Shameless plug: MRMcentral is a project management platform designed specifically for Marketing Departments, and it has a well-designed, easy-to-use calendar where you can plan your social media content schedule.

You’ll notice, as you begin to track your results, that certain types of content get a better response than others—and the results will sometimes surprise you. Pay attention to the metrics, be flexible, and adjust your calendar as you go, sliding in timely stories (if appropriate) when they pop up in the news cycle.

Step 6: Track Your Results

One of the best things about social media is that, if you’re doing it wrong, you’ll figure it out pretty quickly. That’s because you’ve got all sorts of metrics at your fingertips—much more than the more surface level vanity metrics (likes, comments, shares).

Getting into all the various metrics and how to access them is beyond the scope of this article, but here’s a link to Hootsuite’s article that explains how to track 19 Social Media Metrics that Really Matter.

Pay attention to the numbers and adjust your plan accordingly.

Looking Forward

Does this all seem a little overwhelming? Well, there’s no shame in hiring a social media manager to handle it all. In fact, a good one is well worth the expense because they’ll stay on top of all the latest changes to each platform’s algorithm. Just be sure to hire someone who knows what they’re doing. Also, make sure you’ve got someone politely responding to comments and critiques as well as removing the deeply offensive comments and spam.

Now, if you want to manage it all yourself? Have at it! Social media will give you a fascinating glimpse into the psyche of your target market. And if you practice patience, take a scientific approach, and pay attention to the numbers, your content will raise brand awareness, promote engagement, and drive business to your doorstep.