Everything today is on social media. An average user spends about 3 hours daily on social media channels. So, it makes sense for businesses and individuals to promote themselves on social media. As a brand, you’d want to be available where your customers are spending the most time.
Unfortunately, not everyone can create a unique brand identity on social media. Social media marketing is more than a random series of images.
This is why we’ve come up with a comprehensive social media checklist. The checklist contains strategies you should follow, content you should put out, and distribution channels you should use.
Let’s begin.
Social Media Checklist
We’ve broken down our social media marketing checklist into 4 parts:
- Strategy checklist for social media
- Content checklist for social media
- Distribution checklist for social media
- Community checklist for social media
All these checklists can help you boost your social media marketing game.
1. Strategy Checklist for Social Media
Having a clear-cut strategy for social media marketing. Here’s everything your social media marketing strategy should include:
A. Define Clear Goal
It is essential to write your goals on paper or open a fresh Google doc. Your goal can be something like “Generate 500 leads in this month, or publish 3 posts every week”.
Once you have a clear outline of your end goal, you should share this goal with the team and the necessary upper management.
B. Track Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
Key performance indicators are the measurable values that help to know how effective your social media marketing strategy is. You should make a habit of tracking KPIs to see what you need to change in your social media strategy.
C. Focus On The Right Platform
Not every social media channel is going to generate results for you. You need to make a list of platforms that would work best for you. The platforms you choose can differ based on the type of work you do and the industry you work in.
Some businesses spend their entire lifespans leveraging a single social media channel. Some businesses, on the other hand, use a combination of multiple platforms.
D. Create a Buyer Persona
As a marketer, you should know about your audience and their pain points. Target those pain points with your marketing efforts, and generate results. Build a buyer persona, and use the persona to come up with specific marketing campaigns.
With the help of a buyer persona, you can build campaigns that target specific customer issues.
E. Define Key Visuals and Brand Voice
Your content is the voice of your brand. The voice should be similar across all content forms and channels. Whatever content you publish, always make sure that you’re consistent with the brand voice.
Prepare your social media marketing content according to your target audience. If blogs and written content is your primary method of reaching out, you can use several content creation service or tools to ensure your tone is consistent.
2. Content Creation Checklist
Nothing would dazzle your customers as much as quality content. Brands leverage social media posts to engage with their audiences in creative ways.
Build a content creation checklist to nudge your social media marketing efforts in the right direction.
A. Build Strong Profiles
Before you start with content marketing, your business/individual profile should be incredibly strong.
Complete your profile on all social media channels with all the necessary details.
B. Create a Content Bank
You can’t hope to find success by posting on social media haphazardly. You need to publish a series of content all with a clear target in mind.
Before you start any campaign, you need to make sure you have all the content lined up. Having quality content that can last you till the end of the campaign is a great option to perform the best you can.
C. Save Time With Content Templates
You can use content templates to make your content more visually pleasing. Content templates can save your time and mental work, thus you can utilize the remaining time on other important tasks.
D. Collect a List of Hashtags
Hashtags help you reach the exact audience you want. While the use of hashtags has dwindled over the years, they should still be a part of your checklist.
You can use several tools to find hashtags that are perfect for you and your brand.
E. Stay Organized With a Content Calendar
To succeed with social media marketing, you need to make sure the content you create and publish is on the mark.
Your content calendar could include the timeline for when your team creates content. Ideally, a content calendar should include both content creation and content publication schedules.
F. Experiment With New Content Types
You wouldn’t want to see the same feed on your social media every day right? So, why would you do that to your target audience?
If you want to capture the attention of your target audience, then experiment with different types of content.
Be as innovative as you can with the content you publish. Publish reels, videos, podcasts, Image albums, and more.
3. Distribution Checklist
How you share your content with your target audience makes all the difference. Make a content distribution checklist, and make sure it includes:
A. Post When Your Audience Is Active
It makes sense you post your content when your audience is active. If you’ve been publishing content when your audience is sleeping, it won’t do your brand any good.
You can experiment with posting at different times, and stick to a schedule that drives most engagements, leads, and results.
B. Use Influencer Marketing
Every small and big brand should use influencer marketing to boost its social media presence. More than just social media presence, it can also generate a great deal of revenue.
Reach out to influencers that have a huge pull in your industry. Make a deal with them to market your products and services. It’s economical, and it’s effective.
C. Repurpose Content Across Platforms
You should post popular content across multiple social media platforms. For example, you can post a popular Facebook post on Instagram.
Content that performed well on a particular platform will work well on another platform.
D. Motivate Employees To Share Brand Content
You can motivate your employees to post brand-related content on their profiles. Doing this can extend your reach & generate quality leads.
If you are running a small business with limited resources. You can rely on employee-generated content for additional leads.
E. Boost The Best Posts
Posts that did well organically can bring in a great number of leads if you promote them. There are two ways to boost your best posts:
- Run ads using social media platforms.
- You can hire influencers, and marketers to boost your social media profile.
4. Community Checklist
Having a strong, reliable, and loyal online community is something every brand can dream of. Customers engage with brands on social media more than any other platform. Make a community checklist for social media marketing, and make sure it includes:
A. Monitor Your Brand Mentions
If your brand is mentioned somewhere, you’d want to know about it. Set up Google alerts whenever your brand is mentioned somewhere. Responding to mentions can make sure you build a brand reputation.
Positive brand mentions help to increase the online reputation of your brand and vice versa.
B. Reply To Comments And Direct Messages
You should answer both positive as well as negative messages. To build a loyal community, you should always reply to the complaints and concerns of your customers.
C. Take Part In Industry Discussions
If other experts in your industry posed open-ended questions, then you should try to answer them. It is important to know that public discussions are great public arenas and here you can generate potential sales.
D. Discuss Hot And Trending Topics
Check hashtags on social media platforms like Twitter to stay on top of recent trends.
Try to address social issues, create engaging content, and target relevant hot topics. Being a part of trends is a great way to generate leads and revenue.
Engagement with other industry experts and potential customers can help to improve your brand value and ratings.