audience

  • Content Creation

    • THE ESSENTIAL SOCIAL MEDIA CHECKLIST FOR BUSINESS

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    Managing several social media platforms at once can sometimes be overwhelming and it can be difficult to maintain all aspects of your marketing strategy. Although this social media checklist will help you manage the business side of things, it may also help you arrange your time more responsibly. For many people, having a list that they can actively tick off, helps establish a realistic timeframe in which to complete these tasks during the day.

    Having worked out how much time you need to spend on social, you may want to split up these tasks into more manageable pieces throughout your day. I use a tool called Plan to arrange my tasks for the day, including my social media.

    Whether you’re new to using social media for business, or you’re a seasoned social media manager, having a checklist can be great for accountability and helps keep you and your team on the same page. Additionally, if you outsource some of your social media tasks, you can share the spreadsheet that accompanies this list with your freelancer, so that they can check off their tasks when they’re completed.

    Both the social media checklist doc and spreadsheets can easily be edited, so if you have additional daily, weekly or monthly tasks that may be specific to your business or niche, you can add them. As the social media industry changes frequently, there maybe new features that can be used in marketing, and you may want to add these to the list as well. We’ll update the checklist and spreadsheet regularly, but we may miss something!

    DAILY SOCIAL MEDIA CHECKLIST FOR BUSINESS

    RESPOND TO MESSAGES ON YOUR SOCIAL PLATFORMS

    Hollie

    Answering direct messages from your audience and customers is essential to building your brand loyalty. Your customers may ask questions regarding your niche and products which may be time sensitive. Responding quickly is in your own interest, as leaving your customers in the lurch may lose a sale or loyal fan!

    REPLY TO COMMENTS ON YOUR POSTS

    Nora

    Your audience is probably leaving comments on your social media posts or retweeting with their own thoughts and opinions and you should reply to as many of these comments as you can. This will improve engagement and maintain customer loyalty.

    CHECK FOR BRAND AND CAMPAIGN MENTIONS

    Hollie

    You can use a tool or social media management software to track mentions of specific keywords relevant to your brand. People may be contacting you about an element of your business and not tag you, so you should keep an eye on these things regularly.

    I use Hootsuite to follow specific hashtags and keywords for Twitter and Instagram, although Instagram now has a feature that allows you to track your keywords within the app.

    ENGAGE WITH OTHER PAGES AND POSTS

    Nora

    One of the main things you should remember about engaging with other pages, is to add value to their content without appearing spammy (you know what I’m talking about). A good way to engage is to contribute to conversations on social media posts with relevant comments and without being self promotional (unless for some reason its relevant). You’ll soon build up a reputation in your niche and get noticed by your target audience. Don’t forget to ‘LIKE’ content you also think is valuable and share articles written by your partners.

    CHECK YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CALENDAR

    Hollie

    Whilst you may schedule some of your social media posts for the week or even month, but you should view your social media calendar to check the times and content for your daily posts. If you outsource your social media scheduling, you should also take this time to check your already scheduled posts for mistakes or changes you might want to make.

    CHECK FOR TRENDING EVENTS AND CREATE IMPROMPTU CONTENT

    Nora

    To keep your social media posts fresh, you should keep on top of trending events and create impromptu based on these events. Checking for trending hashtags in Twitter can often give you a good idea of what’s popular in your part of the world, or where in the world your audience is. You can also see what events your competitors and partners are talking about.

    CURATE, SCHEDULE AND POST

    Hollie

    To see what’s going on in the news, in our niche as well as personal interests, I use the RSS tool, Feedly. Feedly makes curating and managing your consumption of content easy, by separating everything out into categories. Once you’ve found relevant articles, schedule or post them on the relevant platforms or schedule them using a social media management tool such as HootSuite.

    WEEKLY SOCIAL MEDIA CHECKLIST FOR BUSINESS

    VIEW YOUR ANALYTICS

    Nora

    Each week, take a quick look at your insights and analytics for each of your social media platforms. Check to see how your social media posts are doing, so you can tweak and improve your content for the following days and weeks. Don’t panic if you have a post that doesn’t do well, try making small changes to your content and see if your analytics improve. This also may be a good time to experiment with different hashtags for Twitter and Instagram. If the ones you’re using aren’t really working for you, change some of them and reassess next week. You can see how your hashtags work for your Instagram posts within individual insights.

    ENGAGE WITH PARTNERS AND INFLUENCERS

    Hollie

    Give your partners shout outs, compliment their newest blog post (whilst adding value, of course) and keep in touch so that your audience knows about other companies you’re involved in. It also keeps connections alive and promotes good business practices.

    REVIEW AND CREATE YOUR CONTENT

    Nora

    Based on your analytics, make improvements to your planned social posts. If certain posts have been successful, try and use this as a template to create even more engaging content. You may need to change your image, develop your copy or change angles completely!

    STAY UP TO DATE WITH SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING UPDATES AND TRENDS

    Hollie

    Not only do social media platforms change ridiculously quickly, with new features or changes to their algorithm, but these also affect how we use social media for marketing purposes. Find some time once or even twice a week to read about updates to the platforms you use, up and coming platforms and suggestions on how to use social media for your marketing.

    MONTHLY SOCIAL MEDIA CHECKLIST FOR BUSINESS

    ANALYSE YOUR SOCIAL INSIGHTS & COMPLETE A KPI

    Nora

    Take a comprehensive look at your insights based on the goals you’ve set for your company. What can you improve? Are all your social platforms fulfilling your expectations? You might want to record the numbers in a KPI (Key Performance Indicators) report.

    UPDATE YOUR SOCIAL STRATEGY DOCUMENTS

    Hollie

    Based on your analytics, you can create or update strategy documents for the upcoming months detailing the strategies you can implement to improve your metrics and achieve your company’s goals.

    UPDATE YOUR SOCIAL PROFILES

    Nora

    Take some time once a month to update your profile cover art and make improvements to your bio where necessary. You may want to change your profile cover to promote a social media campaign you’re running at the time. When you update your profile cover photo it will get posted on your timeline, which gives your page an additional boost.

    LOOK AT COMPETITORS FOR INSPIRATION

    Hollie

    As well as spending time researching new methods for improving your social media posts, you should also take a look to see what your competitors are posting about. You can also get a good idea of their new products and whether they’re providing their audience with valuable content.

    UPDATE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CALENDAR

    Nora

    Each month I create a new sheet in my social media calendar spreadsheet and fill in some of the important dates that are coming up that month. These may be specific holidays relevant to your audience or niche, or start dates for specific social campaigns. When I come to creating images and copy for each platform, I can consider these specific dates.

    CREATE NEW CONTENT

    Hollie

    After you’ve analysed content from the previous month(s) you can begin to create content for the following month(s). Perhaps some of your posts didn’t do as well as expected, how can you improve the images or copy to increase engagement or clicks. Once you’re happy with your content, add them to your social media calendar and schedule what you can.

    You can get your social media checklist for business by filling in your email address in the space above and you’ll get your templates to your inbox!

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  • Design

    • CREATE ENGAGING IMAGES WITH THIS SOCIAL MEDIA GRAPHICS CHECKLIST

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    There are lots of tools out there to create your own social media images, but if you really want to make your mark on social, you can outsource your images and have a designer create your images by following this social media graphics checklist.

    WHY ARE SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGES SO IMPORTANT?

    Hollie

    Using social media images have been shown to improve social media shares, earn more retweets, and get more engagement. Your social graphics are also a great way to show your companies values and shows your audience what your brand is about.

    UNIFORMITY AND BRANDING

    Nora

    To make sure your audience recognizes your social media graphics, you need to keep certain aspects of your images uniform. Many experts recommend keeping your companies logo in the same location on every image and using your brand colours or text.

    Although you probably won’t use all of your brand’s colour or type fonts in every image, using 1 or 2 of them throughout your graphics will create a connection between your business and your social campaign. When your audience sees your images, they’ll instantly recognize your brand.

    To make sure your designer and team use a consistent theme for your social media graphics, you might consider creating a style guide for your brand.

    Buzzfeed’s Proper Tasty videos have the same visual style, making their recipes instantly recognizable on Facebook.

    TYPE FONTS

    Hollie

    If you haven’t yet established type fonts for your business you can use several tools that can help you use find fonts that work together visually. Choose the main font for headlines, another for subtitles and a font that is easy to read for the body text.

    For example, you might use a similar version of a font such as italics or bold for your subtitle and use a contrasting font for the body. Try to keep the body text as simple as possible, so that it’s easier for people to read. There are several fonts that fit the bill including Georgia, Helvetica, Open Sans and Verdana.

    BRAND COLOURS

    Nora

    Selecting your brand’s colours is an important part of establishing your brand. You might employ a designer to help you choose colours that reflect the values and niche of your business.

    Once you’ve chosen the main colour for your brand, you can easily find an aesthetic colour combination using tools such as Paletton to find complementary colours or Color-Hex for similar colours and to browse colour palettes.

    To help your audience recognise your brand, it’s important to keep the colours of your social media images consistent throughout.

    Marmite consistently uses their unmistakable yellow and black colours through their Instagram content. There’s often strong product placement too, with a jar of Marmite in almost every post.

    SOCIAL IMAGE SIZES

    Hollie

    Each platform has its own size guidelines for images, so it’s important to create your graphics for the social media platforms you’ll be using. Optimised images will look much better and also shows professionalism. Of course, cross-posting across platforms is a common occurrence now, and it is possible to reuse certain images over several social media platforms.

     

    Here’s a list of sizes for shared social images as of 2018:

    CHOOSING CONSISTENT IMAGES AND FILTERS

    Nora

    If you’re using images, either stock or your own photos you should try and keep them thematically similar. They should be a visual reflection of your brand, whether you’re a company or a person. Your images are also a good way to show your businesses character.

    If you’re using overlays for text in your images, you should consider keeping the location of the layer the same in every image, which will help to further your brand’s recognition.

     

    Similarly, if you’re using filters or effects, choose 1 or 2 for your social images and continue to use them throughout.

    By following and creating visually consistent social media images you can establish templates that will not only create brand recognition but will allow the quick and continuous creation of your social media images.

    Download your free social media graphics checklist to make outsourcing your social media images a breeze.

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  • Content Creation

    • KICKOFF YOUR CAMPAIGN WITH THIS SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY PLAN TEMPLATE

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    Although it’s nice to be spontaneous on social media, if you’re using social for your online or physical business, you should really prepare your content in advance.

    WHAT IS A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY PLAN?

    Hollie

    Before you start posting, you need to know WHAT you’re promoting, WHERE you’re promoting it and to WHOM you’re promoting it to. To make sure all these questions are answered, create a strategic plan to keep you (and your team) focused on your goal.

    A social media strategy plan can be used to help you plan a specific campaign for your product or business across various social media platforms.

    Your campaign or strategy is just a collection of social posts that all share a similar call-to-action, theme and also hashtags to promote an event, product or maybe a specific blog post.

    WHAT’S YOUR GOAL?

    Nora

    So first you need to set your goals. What’s the purpose of your campaign? Maybe you want to increase your audience? Or maybe you just want to improve awareness of your brand.

    When you’re setting your goal, make sure that they’re S.M.A.R.T!

    S.M.A.R.T is an acronym that stands for the following:

    SPECIFIC

    MEASURABLE

    ACHIEVABLE

    REALISTIC

    TIMELY

     

    You should bear in mind these 5 points when setting your social media campaign goals.

    CHOOSING YOUR AUDIENCE

    Hollie

    Selecting your audience is important in order to direct your social posts, including for example,  ‘targeting’ posts on Facebook. You also need to know what kind of language to use with your audience. You need to use different words for a younger audience than with an older one. You also need to know who you’re targeting your product towards in order to make your images too!

    WHICH SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS SHOULD YOU USE?

    Nora

    Some social media platforms are better at promoting certain things than others. For example, if you’re promoting something very visual like a physical product, you might want to use Instagram or Pinterest. However, if you’re trying to promote a video course for new business owners, you might want to use LinkedIn, and target a more ‘professional’ audience.

    PLANNING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN SCHEDULE

    Hollie

    You need to decide the best time to promote your campaign and this might depend on your campaign goal. If you’re promoting winter jackets, you would obviously want to begin your campaign when winter begins. It might also affect the amount of time you have to post before your campaign starts (and ends), for example, if you’re promoting a sale, special event or challenge.

    Social Media Calendar Template

    Organize and outsource your content in 2018 with this social media calendar.

    MEASURING YOUR RESULTS

    Nora

    In order to know that your campaign was successful, you need to set specific metrics. Once you’ve set your goals and chosen the social media platforms you want to use, you can decide on the best metrics to track. You also need to learn how to analyse each platform, and also have a good understanding of how your content is usually received.

    CREATING AND SCHEDULING YOUR CONTENT

    Hollie

    Once you’re ready with your campaign plan, you get to work writing the copy for each post, bearing in mind the right tone and character length for each platform. You also need to create your post images or send a brief to a designer to make them for you. Schedule your content using our social media content schedule template to make sure you don’t forget anything!

    You can get your free social media campaign strategy plan template by filling out your deets below. Check your inbox for your template along with tips and advice on how to use it!

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