How to Set Up Your Social Media Marketing Plan

You can dive into social media marketing headfirst and see what happens. Or you can take the time to research, plan, execute, and evaluate your approach. The Social Media Marketing Plan, shown here, is for people taking the latter approach.

Plan your work; work your plan.

Depending on its complexity and availability of support, think in terms of a timeline of 3 to 12 months to allow time to complete the following steps. Estimate spending half your time in the planning phase, one-quarter in execution, and one-quarter in evaluation and modification. To set up your own custom social media marketing plan, follow these steps:

1. Do market research and online observation.
2. Draft marketing goals, objectives, and your marketing plan using the form shown.
3. Get your marketing ducks in a row with in-house preparation.
   • Hiring, outsourcing, or selecting in-house staff
   • Training
   • Team-building
   • Writing a social media policy document
4. Complete preparatory development tasks.
   • Designing advertising creatives
   • Content overview (an outline of which marketing messages you want to send out when)
   • Measurement plan and metric implementation
   • Social media tool selection and dashboard development
   • Social media activity calendar setup
   • Programming and content modifications to existing website(s), as needed
5. Create accounts and a pilot social media program.
6. Evaluate the pilot program, debug it, and modify it, as needed.
7. Launch and promote your social media campaign one service at a time.
8. Measure and modify social media in a process of constant feedback and reiteration.

Don't be afraid to build a pilot program — or several — into your plan to see what works.