How To Write Your Next Social Media Plan

How To Write a Lean Social Media Plan

Creating a social media plan used to entail a 20+ page document delivery AND an accompanying slideshow that took approximately 90 minutes to present. That is CRAZY to think about now because that process kinda stunk. It was a 12-hour process at least and typically involved a really quick turnaround.

Want to know the worst part? That was considered a best practice. Audit your client channels, audit their competitors, assess their current content, calculate engagement rates, do a ton of industry research, blah blah blah. It was mostly a charade—the real meat was contained in the final pages: what’s the path forward?

We recently reworked a client’s social media plan and got it done in way less than 12 hours. Sure, we were a little nervous to present it to our team and felt like we were missing something. But our team loved it—and so did the client.

And all we did was answer 4 simple questions.

Here’s the framework we used 👇

1. What are we trying to achieve? Think quantitative data points here, but honestly even something like, “make our Instagram grid prettier,” works. That one’s just kinda hard to measure. But you do you.

2. Who are we trying to reach? If you have audience personas floating around, chuck those in here. You have to define who you’re talking to before you can start to do any real, impactful work.

3. What resources do we have available to us? This is oftentimes the most overlooked part of a social plan. It’s the level-setter. You have big, crazy dreams (don’t ever lose those btw), but you may not have the team or support to make it happen. It’s easier to scale those ideas down than the other way around.

4. How are we going to measure success? This is where your number and data geeks are going to shine. Think about your answer to question no. 1 and assign appropriate results. Want to reach more people? You’ll want increased impressions. Want to create more leads? Track your conversions/conversion rate.

Your answers to the above are your bones. Everything else—the fleshy bits and whatnot—is going to fall in place once you get those thoughts out. Move on to your social channels next. Which ones allow you to best address the above? Same with post types/buckets and post frequency. Then, voila, you’ve just put together a lean but actionable social media plan in less than a day. Now, to those other pesky items on your to-do list.

Instagram Things To Know

• Instagram story scheduling is coming.

  • That sigh of relief you just heard came from every social media manger on the planet, collectively experiencing a modicum of relief.

• Whoa, chill out Mosseri: IG is also adding GIFs in comments

  • Adam, you dropped this: 👑

• Put your Instagram engagement in perspective.

  • Things have been weird this year, y’all. It’s not just you. There have been so many tweaks to feeds and confusing advice about which content performs best—we’re all just trying our best.

Things We Saw and Liked Around the Social World This Week

• We’re seeing more and more vertical videos like this on LinkedIn. Are you doing this too, and is it working for you?

• There’s only one correct way to answer the phone now

• A heartwarming story of interdepartmental creative success

• Social media managers posting content of themselves to their brand profiles

• Social algorithms explained (finally!!!)

We’ll Just Chalk This One Up to a Big Ol’ “Yikes”

Uhhhhh so this is how NOT to structure your team

• Also, things not mentioned here that social teams do beyond posting:

  • Strategy

  • Engagement

  • Community management

  • Customer service

  • Strategy

  • Reporting & analytics

  • Paid media

  • Did we mention strategy? Should be included here if not

• Somehow, the worst part about this is that they DELETED this post. Own it, cowards.