Even if you're not a "digital native," you should know how to use social media to your advantage. Social media is an essential part of how businesses operate today — so much so that some brands rely heavily on their online presence for revenue generation! As such, it's important for business owners, managers, and social media professionals to understand how these tools work to maximize their effectiveness in promoting business goals.
Check out these tips to help you plan your business’s new social media strategy and posting schedule:
1. Define Your Audience & Your Message
Your social media plan should begin with clearly understanding your audience and what you want to communicate. Knowing the answers to these questions will help guide the rest of your social media strategy, including which platforms you choose, how often (and when) you post content, and how much time is spent engaging with others on those channels.
To get started, take some time to consider these questions:
- Who are my target customers? What do they care about? How do they interact online?
- What kind of content can I create that will be interesting and relevant for this audience?
- How will I measure success in reaching this goal — and make sure it happens again!
2. Define Your Goals for Social Media
Define your social media goals. Social media goals differ from general business goals and should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). For example:
- [Goal 1] "I want to increase my Facebook followers by 10% in one month."
- [Goal 2] "I want to increase interactions on Twitter by 25% in three months."
- [Goal 3] "I want to double the number of times we post on LinkedIn in two months."
- [Goal 4] "I want to increase the number of website visitors from social media by 20% in a month."
The above goals are specific, measurable, and time-bound. They can be achieved by creating a strategic plan and executing it effectively.
3. Establish a Brand Identity
Establishing a consistent brand identity across all platforms is critical. It's not just about making sure everyone uses the same fonts and color schemes; it's about creating an image for your company that people will recognize and remember.
Social media can be a great way to show off your brand identity, especially if you want to create an image that stands out. You'll want to make sure that every post is consistent with what you've done in the past as well as how others perceive your company/product/service — and if they don't know who or what they're looking at yet, then this is probably where they'll find out!
4. Follow Posting Best Practices
These three best practices will help you develop an effective posting strategy for your company’s social profiles:
Frequency
If you post too much, your content becomes annoying and loses effectiveness. If you're not posting enough, people will forget about your brand. The sweet spot is between one and three times per day for each social media platform (except LinkedIn).
Length
Social platforms all have different rules for how long posts can be. Here’s a rundown of the major platforms and their maximum post lengths:
- Twitter posts have a maximum length of 280 characters, including hashtags and links.
- Facebook posts can be up to 33,000 characters, but around 80 characters generates the best engagement.
- Instagram captions can be up to 2,200 characters, but 125 characters is generally best.
- Instagram Stories can be up to 15 seconds before cutting, and Instagram Reels can be up to 60 seconds (or 90 seconds for some users in beta).
- LinkedIn company status updates can be up to 700 characters, while articles can be up to 1,900-2,000 words.
- TikTok videos can be up to 10 minutes; however, 15-20 seconds drives the best engagement. Captions on TikToks can reach 2,200 characters.
- YouTube videos can be as long as you like, but 15-20 minute videos drive better engagement. Shorts, however, can only be up to one minute long.
Timing
Post at peak hours when engagement is highest — usually between 9 am and 5 pm in the US — and avoid posting during peak times for other countries like Australia or Japan because it might get lost in translation (or just fall flat altogether).
For example, if 50% of your audience is based in Australia, don't post after 10 pm Australian time because there's a good chance they'll miss it! Use tools like the HubSpot Marketing Hub, which allows users to schedule posts across multiple platforms so they go live when they should — no matter where someone lives.
5. Beware of Information Overload
Refrain from overloading your visitors' feeds with too many posts at a time.
- Use hashtags sparingly and only when it makes sense for your brand, product, or service.
- Posting too much can overwhelm potential customers, so keep it to one or two posts per day at most (and even that might be more than enough).
- Remember that if you post multiple times in one day, each post has less time and attention from the audience before they move on to something else — so make sure each post is valuable enough for them to read! Otherwise, people will get sick of seeing all these updates in their feeds and stop checking back because there's nothing interesting going on, which means less engagement from followers & fewer opportunities for conversions (aka sales).
6. Use a Social Media Calendar
A social media content calendar can help you plan, build regular posting dates, and avoid being caught off guard by events.
If you're new to social media planning, start by deciding what types of content are most important for your business.
Are there events or topics that happen regularly? If so, plan to post about them on those particular days each month. This may include product launches or sales offers (if they're seasonal), company news updates, and awards won (if they're annual).
Do any specific campaigns have a limited time frame? Make sure you set aside some time every week for these campaigns to take advantage of potential customers who might be interested in them but will only see them if they follow along closely with everything else happening at once!
7. Plan for the Future
Planning for special events and holidays is a great way to ensure you're prepared when they arrive. If your content is scheduled in advance, it will be easier to share on social media platforms when the time comes.
Planning ahead also helps with emergencies. If an unexpected event requires immediate attention, such as a natural disaster or crisis, planning ahead can save time and effort when responding quickly becomes essential.
HubSpot Social Media Tools
Social Monitoring
Use HubSpot's social monitoring tool to track your brand's mentions across the web and respond to them in real-time. You'll also be able to see which posts drive the most traffic back to your website so that you can focus on those types of content in future campaigns.
Social Listening
The same goes for listening — this feature allows you to monitor what people say about your brand without manually checking every social network! You can use this information when developing new blog posts or creating content for other channels as well.
Social Publishing
The last step is sharing all that great stuff with the world! With HubSpot's publishing platform, it'll take just a few clicks before reaching hundreds (or thousands) of readers across different platforms, all from one central location.
Interact with Customers & Grow Your Business Through Social Media
Social media is a great way to interact with customers and can help grow your business if you plan it well. Social media offers you the opportunity to build relationships with current and potential customers, share information about your company, products, and services, as well as promote special offers or events that are happening at the moment.
Social media has become essential to most businesses' marketing strategies because it allows them to stay connected with their existing customer base while reaching out to new ones in real time.
Social media planning is a huge topic, and there are many different ways to approach it. We've covered the basics here, but you can explore many more aspects on your own if you want to take your social media strategy further. The most important thing is to find what works for you — and keep track of it all!
