How to Set Up Your Social Media Marketing Plan

Build a social media marketing plan for your company. This is the first of four pages.

Page 2 of your social media marketing plan.

Page 3 of your social media marketing plan.

Reproduced with permission of Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing.
The final page of a social media marketing plan for your company.

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.