Social Media Planning

Why use Social Media?

45% of the world’s population are on a social media platform. In Australia 60% of the population use Facebook with 50% on it daily.

Social media helps you connect and communicate with your customers. And people search on social media – Facebook gets used for almost as many searches as google. With more than 40% of digital consumers using a social platform to research a product or brand.

Which Platform to use?

The platform you use depends on where you customers are, you want to be on the same one they are. However, you can’t be effective on all of them so pick 1-2 and focus on those.

Some common social media platforms are:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn

Which platforms do you use?

Why plan your social media?

Consistency

Planning means that you can be consistent on the platform, regularly showing up means more people will see and get to know your business. The more they see your business the more it will stick in their brain.

How often do you think ‘ah I saw that on FB’ and go looking for a product or service that you have seen on there?

Time

Planning social media takes less time.

You don’t have to think about what to post every day, its already done for you.  You show up to work and your social media will happen. You still need to be there to interact with people if they comment, however the battle of working out what to post when is taken away.

Trust

Being consistent builds trust in your business, consistent posting and responding to comments builds trust and a relationship with your customers.

How to plan your social media?

The first step is to look at your business, what you want to share and also look back at what you have been posting to see which types of posts get the best interaction. Are there any events you have coming up or promotions within your business that you do on a regular basis?

For me on Facebook I post design tips, examples of my work, logos I’ve worked on, testimonials, chat posts etc. I then look at how often I want each of these to be posted and start filling my calendar with this information. Basic to start – I simply write the post type, then get more detailed before taking it onto the computer to schedule.

What type of posts would suit your business?

I find planning is easier with pen and paper, that is why I created the Social Post Planner.

Remember you are there to serve your customers, it’s not about giving content that you love – what do they love. These two things may be the same, however they can be very different which is why you need to know your audience and customers.

To find out what they want to see get their feedback, do some market research before planning your posts, Instagram stories are perfect for polls and asking questions.

What are some questions you could ask your audience?

How often should you post?

How often you should post depends on the platform.

Facebook

  • 1-2 posts per day is pretty standard, posting more can look spammy.
  • Try and space them over the day rather than posting in quick succession.
  • At a minimum post 3 times a week.

Instagram

  • 1-2 posts per day, some information sources I found said up to 4 times per day
  • You can always use stories if you want to post more or want to share things that don’t perfectly fit your brand.
  • Stories are good as they only last 24 hours, if you want to keep what you have used in your stories then you can ‘highlight’ them at the top of your profile.

Stories on all social platforms are increasing 15 times faster than feed-based sharing.

When to post?

Look at the times that your people are online to work out the best time to post [this can be found on Facebook when looking on a computer browser under – insights > posts]. Please note the times are American so you need to convert them into Australian time.

Then when you are scheduling posts you can use the information to pick times to post when more people are online and likely to see what you post.

When scheduling I post Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings and in the afternoons on Tuesday and Thursday. And at random times on the weekends. This gives me space to post ad-hoc if something comes up in the week that I really want to share, I know when there will be space that it doesn’t coincide with a post that has been scheduled to go out.

How you chose to schedule for your business will depend how often a day you are sharing posts and the times of day that your customers are online.

How often and when will you post to social media?

[all statistics are based on articles found in January 2020, they may be different when you read this blog; websites I found this information on are available on request]

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