Yeeha – who else is excited about 2018???  This is the perfect time to start planning your social media strategy for your business.  Where will you focus?  What types of content will you produce?  How will you measure if social media is working for you?

In this article, you will learn the steps to reviewing your past year and also how to approach your strategy for the new year.

#1 Review what worked for you in 2017

Keep doing what has worked well and add some new tactics.

I recently wrote an article about what social media strategy was working in 2017 and I talked about video.  In my post about what is working for better Facebook Engagement, video was also a number 1 tip.

Take a look at your Post Insights and see what works for you.

Review your recent Facebook post Engagement rate to see what types of post are getting the best Engagement.

If you want to do a deeper dive into your Facebook Insights – check out this post:  How to Do a Deep Dive Into Your Facebook Insights in 6 Steps.

Put more weight on what has worked in the last 3 months because social changes so much throughout a whole year.

Review where your traffic is coming from on your website with Google Analytics.

For this site, social traffic decreased but other types of traffic increased.  Also, we had a sales increase of over 30% overall so some of the other methods we used to increase sales during the year, worked.

Make sure you know how to measure your Social Media ROI 

 

#2 Plan your initiatives and goals for 2018

Depending on your business type, you might have events, product launches, or special promotions already outlined for the year.  Outline the timeline for these promotions and know when you have to have images, videos,tweets, blog posts and other marketing material in place.

You may also decide on some core areas you want to focus your energy on.  For example:

Growth:

Goal: 20% growth across the board for all social sites and website visitors from social media

What to measure:  Followers, Fans, LinkedIn Connections, Website Clicks from social media

Engagement:

5% increase in engagement on social media

What to measure:  Retweets, Likes on Posts, Shares, Comments, Website Clicks from social media

Program Participation:

2% more participation in specific programs

What to measure:  Newsletter signups, Website Clicks from social media, optins to special announcements, meeting attendance

 

If you want more sales from social media, review the areas where you did get sales from social media in 2017 and model that.

 

#3 Choose your social sites and types of content you will focus on

Don’t try to do it all unless you have a big team.  Focus on one or two social sites and pick what types of content you want to create.

I did more Facebook Lives that I then repurposed into YouTube videos and other social posts.  I’m going to be doing even more video this year.

 

#4 Put your social media measurement systems in place

Social media absolutely works to drive traffic and get more leads and sales.  But if you don’t have a way to measure it, you don’t know for sure what is working.

Google Goals are one of the best ways to measure where your leads and sales are coming from.

 

#5 Map your tactics and execution plan

Have your tactics outlined generally but be prepared for shifts in what is working on social media.

Tactics can include:

• Social posts – don’t forget to reuse your best content
• Polls, surveys – ask your audience questions to get them involved and find out more about how you can serve them better
• Videos – Facebook Live, Instagram, LinkedIn video uploads, YouTube
• Contests – Give something away
• Facebook Ads – my favorite way to grow my email subscribers
• Coupons or limited time discounts

Make sure you understand the real path someone will take to do business with you. If email marketing works best for you, then use social media to get people onto your email list.

I outline a Facebook Marketing Launch Plan that talks about the phases of a product launch but this can also apply to any type of initiative.  How far in advance do you want to start posting about it?  What will you do to promote it?  And how will you measure it?

For example, we will be re-opening Social Media Manager School in January so we have started planning now.  Here’s what we are doing at a very high level and each of these steps are broken down further into additional steps:

1.  Start advertising the Social Media Manager School Starter Kit in December with Facebook Ads.  Track the conversions with the Facebook Pixel.  Add 2000 new subscribers by January 15th.
2. Create a new video series free training that will be available on January 20th.  Write 20 tweets, 5 Facebook and LinkedIn Posts, 1 Facebook Live, and 1 blog post about the new training.  Have content done by Jan 15th (except for Facebook Live which is done that day)
3. Email Affiliates about the new training and plan on Jan 4th.  Start emailing full list about the training on Jan 15th (with detailed email plan)  Have 5000 people sign up for the training – track where the signups came from.

Typically we put our social media posts into a Google Doc and our launch plan straight into a shared Google Calendar.

We might map out our email plan in an Excel spreadsheet or just a Google doc.  Here’s an example of our launch plan from a few years ago.

There can be much more to a planning your social media strategy than this but it’s a good start.  Social media can be a moving target.

Watch the main metrics that you need most and don’t get too overwhelmed with trying to do everything.  It’s better to do a few things well, than nothing at all.

How about you – what’s on your schedule for 2018?  How are you going to use social media to help promote your business?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

 

Want to get a better handle on your social media strategy?  Sign up for Social Media Strategy School!