Do you want to know the secret to success for your small business in 2022? The secret is planning. You need a plan. Planning out your social media strategy lets you know what you need which makes getting it done that much easier and faster. 

 

Why You Need a Plan

 

The average person in the US spends 2 hours and 25 minutes per day on social media. The platforms are shifting. TikTok is coming for Facebook. It is growing faster than any other platform by leaps and bounds. Content marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing and can generate more leads.

 

The top 4 reasons people will unfollow a brand include poor quality of product or service, poor customer service, irrelevant content, and too many ads. You need a plan to make sure you don’t fall into these traps. 

Start with an Audit

 

A great first step is to start with an audit so you can  understand what your insights are telling you. Your insights will tell you everything about your audience. Are they male or female? How old are they? Where do they live? All of this information is available to you in your insights. Why is this important? If you find out your audience is mainly young Hispanic females and you’re spending most of your time on Twitter, you’re missing out. That’s not where that audience is.

 

Determine a Monthly Theme

 

This is very helpful in planning. You can use the National Day Calendar to help with this. They have all the special months, weeks, and days of the year listed to help you plan out timely themes. 

 

Create a Content Calendar

 

A good content calendar will go a long way in helping you plan your social media strategy. Ideally, you want 5 to 6 options per week with a 2-week rotation. That way you are only posting the same type of content twice a month. 

 

Mark Special Occasions and Holidays

Again, check National Day Calendar for important days. If you are a hot dog vendor and you miss National Hot Dog Day, that’s a problem. As a social media company, we want to make sure we take advantage of Social Media Day. Going through and marking out all these days will help you fill your content calendar and give you ideas for fresh content. 

 

Create a Location to Save Ideas

 

You need to have a place to park ideas so that later when you are looking for content you can come back to them. Pinterest is great for this. We have boards for each type of client we serve. We have a realtor board for realtor ideas and a wedding board for our wedding vendors. Having a place to store your ideas until you are ready for them helps ensure you never run out of content.

 

Ideas for Content Categories

 

You are going to want a couple of options for each day of the week on your 2-week rotation. 

 

Tips and Tricks

 

You can post tips and tricks in your industry. It’s ok if they’re simple. Everyone doesn’t know what you know. Ask your customers what they want to know about. Make sure whatever you post is relevant to your brand.

 

Write a Blog

 Are you blogging? If you aren’t, you should be. It sets you up as the expert in your industry and it’s great for SEO. The magic number is 50. Once you hit 50 blogs, the traffic really ramps up. We’ve seen this with our own blog. Consistency in your blog will help you dominate on Google.

 

Promote Your Other Platforms

 

Another great idea for content is to promote your other platforms. Share an Instagram post telling people about your YouTube channel. Ask your Facebook followers to follow you on Instagram. Social media is great for promoting your platforms to your other audiences. Facebook doesn’t like YouTube so maybe skip that one but you can tell your YouTube audience about your Facebook.

 

How-Tos

 

Sharing a simple how-to video can be great for your social media. Consistently on YouTube, how-to videos are the most searched category. If you are a realtor, tips for how to stage your home when you’re selling may be a good fit. As a social media company we’ve done videos on how to create a branded intro for your YouTube channel and how to schedule social media posts. Consider your own how-to posts.

 

Spotlight a Vendor, Employee, or Local Business

 

Talk about the people you work with in a Team Tuesday post. Highlight local businesses that add value to your community. Support other small businesses. Any vendors you are friendly with are also good to highlight.

 

Client Testimonials

 

People love a good client testimonial. They want to see who is endorsing you. Consider Yelp. They’ve made a business out of third party endorsements. Do you read the reviews on Amazon? It’s human nature to want to know what other people think of a business before you use them yourself, so post those client testimonials. It’s awesome if you can get it in video form.

 

Quotes and Motivation

 

These are great if used sparingly. You don’t want a quote every day but every couple of weeks works for most businesses. 

 

Humor

If you’re funny, be funny. When we added humor into our posts we got more traction. If you’re not funny, however, don’t force it. Being authentic is more important but if you can be funny, do it. 

 

Trends

 

Pay attention to the trends in your industry. If you’re a wedding vendor, you absolutely need to know what the Pantone wedding color is for 2022. It’s important to your industry so it’s important to your clients.

 

Teach a Skill

 

Teaching a skill gives you evergreen content. People can come back and watch it over and over. We can teach you how to remove the background from a photo on Canva. We can teach you to do it without Canva. These skills are something we can teach to add value to our audience.

 

Showcase or Review a Product

 

We love doing this with our team. We have reviewed apps, ring lights, tripods, and more so that you don’t have to slog through all that. You can start with the best possible product because we’ve done the research. 

 

What You’re Reading or Learning

You can’t be a business owner and not continue down the path of education. You have to constantly be learning. Share that with others. What podcast or book are you into right now? Your audience would love to know that information.

 

User-Generated Content

 

It’s amazing to me how many businesses don’t pay attention to when they’re tagged. Look at those notifications because that is free content that gets high engagement. People love to be reposted. When a business shares their post, they like it and their friends and family are likely to share it and become your next client.

 

Polls and Questions

 

Take a poll or ask a question. This content is good for engagement. People love to give their opinions and this allows them to be heard and gives you important information about what they are interested in. It’s especially good for stories.

 

Evergreen Content

 

If a post performed well 6 months ago, it will most likely perform well today as long as it’s not seasonal content. If the information is still relevant, you can reuse the post. Don’t recycle your content too often or too quickly, but every once in a while it is ok to reshare a piece of evergreen content so you’re not having to constantly reinvent the wheel.

 

Lists

 

Top 3 lists are especially good for social media content. This could be top 3 tips, top 3 books you’re reading, top 3 apps, top 3 mistakes, or any other list that is relevant to your business. 

 

Behind the Scenes

 

Nitty-gritty does great for behind the scenes. Yes, polished video is awesome but unpolished video is also good. People like to see a day in the life. They like to see what you’re doing. It makes them feel connected to you. Tell your story.

 

Contests, Promotions, and Giveaways

 

You don’t have to do these all the time, but having a promotion or giveaway once a month isn’t a bad idea. It doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg either. I’ve often said that most people would slap their mama for a $5 ice cream cone. Many times you will actually have better participation with a smaller prize because when the prize is too big people assume they won’t win. Just make sure that whatever you give away is relevant to your business. 

 

Community News

 

Community news is relevant to your business. Especially if you’re a local business, you need to know what’s going on in your backyard. Sharing that information with your audience will add value to them.

 

Call to Action

 

It’s absolutely ok to promote yourself. You don’t want to oversell, but you do want to make sure that people know what you have to offer. You are in business to make money. If you’re good at what you do, you’re doing people a disservice not to tell them about it. Keep the Pareto Principle in mind. Sell 20% of the time and 80% of the time educate, inform, and entertain.

 

Don’t Sell Too Much or Too Little

 

If you’re a realtor and every post is a listing, that will wear your audience out. If you’re a realtor and none of your posts is a listing, you aren’t making full use of your social media. You have to remember to promote yourself without making your social media one big ad. Remember, it’s called SOCIAL media. The point is to make connections, not to just talk at your audience.

 

Collaborate with Others

 

Collaboration opens you up to a whole new audience. For instance, if you are a realtor in Pelham and Alabaster, you can promote Donut Joe’s. They are a unique small business with a rabid following and it’s part of what you’re selling as you sell the Pelham/Alabaster area. 

 

Schedule it Out

 

Part of executing a great social media plan is scheduling it out. The quickest way to be inconsistent is to manually post daily. It takes so much more time and energy to post every day than it does to sit down once a week and schedule it all out. You can schedule with Facebook Business Suite, Hootsuite, Planoly, and Tailwind, depending on the platform. 

 

Don’ts

As you are planning your social media strategy for 2022, there are some things you want to stay away from. These are the don’ts of social media.

 

1. Don’t post the same thing to different platforms on the same day.
2. Don’t use your personal profile like a business page. 
3. Don’t have multiple accounts for the same business. It’s confusing.
4. Don’t ignore your engagement.
5. Don’t ignore bad or negative comments.
6. Dont’ post a URL as your caption.
7. Don’t forget to use video!
8. Don’t use bad images. There is no excuse. (Hello, Canva.)
9. Don’t write too much. 40 characters is great.
10. Don’t overpost or underpost. Once a day for most works best.
11. Don’t make it all about you but make sure you are in there sometimes.

 

Plan to Succeed

 

Planning is huge and it’s the first step to success in 2022. Ready to take that first step and schedule an audit, call today. We’re here to help.