How to Plan and Manage Social Media Content

If you are unsure how to use social media for your business, we’ve got you covered! We take you through our top five tips in planning and managing your social content.

Consider your objectives

When planning what to put out onto your socials, a good place to start is to outline and review your key objectives. Are you trying to inform or educate your audience? What is your key message, is it about promoting your services or showing off a new aspect of a product? Ensure you and your team are clear about your objectives, and this should guide your content planning.

Timing: when and how often?

Depending on your social media goals, you may want to post up to 3-5 times weekly. This ensures you are staying active and engaging with your audience on a regular basis. If you are completely new to social media, it may be best to start off with 1-3 posts a week to start introducing yourselves to your target market.

From there, you can work your way up to posting more often as you become more comfortable with the platforms you are using. As for timing, consider your key demographic and when they are most likely to be using their devices. Are they shift workers, who may be more likely to check their phones in the morning? Are they working professionals, who may be checking their phone during lunchtime?

Be wary of posting too often (more than once a day), as this can flood your consumers with too much information at once and may cause some people to unfollow.

Tone of voice

Based on the nature of your company or service, your tone of voice will be different. Be sure to have a clear guideline within your team of what your brand voice is - whether that be professional and educational, or more fun and relaxed. Whilst there is room for flexibility and balance to mix it up a little, consistency helps build your brand awareness and give consumers an expectation of your brand’s personality.

Visually pleasing content

There is truth to the saying that a picture tells a thousand words. When you are planning and managing your content, it is important not to neglect the visual elements of what you are putting out there. Be sure to post visual content that is clear, on-brand and easy to read.

It can also be effective to incorporate different elements such as GIFs, videos and interactive stickers (on Instagram stories) to add colour and personality to your content.

Engage with your audience

It’s one thing to post content and get your message out there, but you also need to set aside time to engage with what comes back from what you put out into the social media universe.

Responding to messages or comments, liking and following other similar-minded content and interacting with your audience can help improve your brand presence as well as increase social engagement. Without your active engagement, you may be missing out on customers and potential opportunities.

Reporting and analysis

An important part of social media management and planning is reporting and analysis. With regular reviews, this can help you understand what consumers are best responding to, what they’re not enjoying and how to make changes in the future to improve.

It is also helpful to seek out weekly and monthly trends, as your customers are likely to behave differently in different seasons. Similarly, this will help you plan for future cycles, and get the most out of your social media platforms.