Mediaboss Marketing

Updated Feb. 1, 2021

Concerned the impending demise of cookies will make audience behaviors harder to track across social media? Not sure if your business needs to make time for TikTok? Curious if misinformation and declining user trust make social media an unsafe space for your brand? Youre not alone.

Social media can be a tough nut to crack. The rules, opportunities, audiences, and value propositions vary greatly from one channel to another and can shift gears without notice.

The one thing to conquer those social media concerns is a channel plan an advanced directive for how your brand manages its content on these evolving platforms. It also spells out what you should (and shouldnt) expect to achieve.

Many brands mistakenly assume they must distribute content anywhere and everywhereto maximize its reach. But plastering your brands content across every social network, trendy news site, and video platform is not a channel plan. It holds no regard for whom it reaches, how they might be impacted, or how that impact might reflect on the business.

Remember: Yourcontent marketing strategyshould define your social media marketing strategy. Evaluate each social channel against your business goals and audience needs. Turn this evaluation into an actionable plan so everybody on your team will know where, when, and what they should post on each channel and what their efforts are meant to achieve.

Heres how to create and implement a channel plan for social media marketing that will enable you to do just that.

The channel-planning process involves three steps: (1) understanding the platforms value proposition, (2) creating your brands use case for engagement, and (3) ensuring everyone on your team works from the same set of guidelines. Lets look closer at each one.

Each channel and its core communitys engagement preferences play major roles in deciding if your content is a good fit. Your audience might be open to connecting with your brand in a Twitter chatbut reservesSnapchatfor personal conversations. Authoritative long-form content might play well onLinkedInor Medium, whilememes, mash-ups, and captioned photosare more appropriate for platforms like Instagram.

Its important to familiarize yourself with the characteristics of each channel and its corresponding community before joining the conversation. Use this helpful tip sheet from Aaron Agius as a primer for matching the content to the best distribution channel to achieve your brands goals.

With a short list of potential channels in hand, map existing content assets to their most appropriate distribution channels. Remember to consider the content experiences audiences expect, determine if you have the resources to meet those expectations, and evaluate the potential to deliver meaningful business results with your efforts.

Answer these questions (adapted from CMIs Social Media Survival Guide) to decide if a channel is the right fit for your business. Your responses also can provide clues as to how to position your content to compel the audience to act:

Who uses this channel and what are they using it for?

Will it help us meet our objectives?

Does it fit with oureditorial mission?

What results do we want to achieve?

What kinds of content work best on this platform?

If your responses dont reveal a compelling opportunity to engage on that channel or if the platforms environment isnt suited to your brands unique content vision and mission, take a step back and reserve your teams resources for channels that are a better fit.

While your companys goals are important, you also need to establish the right tone, the right topics, and the right conversations to ensure the content delivers the experience your audiences want.

Everybody who posts your brands content should understand and align with a set of social media guidelines to maintain a consistent voice and quality standards.

I recommend reviewing your company style guide to refine your social personality and instill factual accuracy and precision. That includes correct usage (and spelling) of unique terms like company trademarks, product names, personnel, and service offerings.

Also consider how to draw attention to your social media content, including the use of hashtags. Wally Koval, former CMI team member and author of Accidentally Wes Anderson created from his popular Instagram account by the same name, has pointed out that pursuing too many audiences at once can dilute your contents impact. He suggests aiming for five to 10 of the most relevant hashtags including two or three unique to your brand.

Take note of topics or issues your team should avoid discussing on social media, as well as any legal or regulatory policies they must follow. For example, if you dont want to risk falling afoul of the EUs GDPR rules, North Coast Medias Bethany Chambers suggests documenting these criteria in your social media guidelines:

Consumption preferences and audience trends: Are there industry events, media innovations, or consumer behaviors on which your content distribution can capitalize (e.g.,livestreamingvideo consumption habits, device-specific capabilities like memojis, popular memes)? How might these impact the tone/velocity of your distribution? Are there controversies oralgorithm shiftsthat might causeyou to reconsider their value to your brand?

Current events: Trending topics can present timely distribution opportunities. For example, important, culture-related topics like diversity and inclusivity, racial sensitivity, and gender equality are at the forefront of the U.S. medias conversations right now. When brands use their social content as a podium to express their values and lend their support to important issues like Chase and Fubu CEO Daymond John did by co-creating Black Entrepreneurs Day, a Facebook livestream event that featured roundtable discussions, audience Q&As, and musical performances it can earn them a critical boost in visibility and relevance in social media conversations that may have been closed to them.

Team resources: If you only have an editor or two managing the content marketing process, the bandwidth for consistent distribution and conversation monitoring may be limited to a few outlets; however, if you have a full team of writers, editors, and other distribution partners at your disposal, the extra manpower (or womanpower, see above) affords increased flexibility and control to manage content across many more channels.

Now that you have the information to determine where, when, and how to distribute your social content, building the plan is simple. Create a matrix of the channels that make the most sense for your brand and note engagement specifics for each one. When all the fields are filled, you have a template that can be referenced easily, updated as necessary, and shared throughout your organization.

In my experience, it can be useful to outline as much information as possible in your initial plan so your team can refer to it when new opportunities emerge or a snap decision needs to be made. But its perfectly OK to start simply then build on or refine your data fields as you learn whats working and what isnt.

The following is a snapshot of recommended information for your initial channel plan. (You candownloadand customize the template [go toFile > Download As >and select the format.]):

Editors note:While CMI was used as a reference for this template, the content does not reflect its channel plan.

Click to download

You may also want to consider including:

No matter how far and wide your business intends to extend its reach, successful content marketing distribution often comes down to having a strategic, systematic, and scalable approach. This model ensures that everyone works from the same social media blueprint, but its not the only way to get the job done. Let us know what processes you use to determine where, when, and how you share your content and spread your brand influence.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Original post:
Social Media Content Plan: Strategy Tips and Template