5 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Marketing Plans
Having detailed social media marketing plans will help make posting to Instagram, Facebook, your website, and any other of your favorite platforms systemic. One of my favorite quotes is, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Planning is not my strong suit, but planning for everything in your business will help you stay on track with your goals for your teacher business! So no matter what happens (even a global pandemic), you have a system and process in place to help you be consistent in showing up on social media. Today, I’m sharing my five must-haves for a social media marketing plan!
How to Start a Social Media Marketing Plan
Just the phrase “social media marketing plan” sounds a little daunting, doesn’t it?! Well, it doesn’t have to be! Start creating your social media plan with mind mapping. (If you’ve been around a while, you probably realize that I pretty much start anything in my business with mind mapping!)
Here’s how you can mind map your social media marketing plan. Take your business pillars, or main content areas, and write them down. Then, underneath them, write down the different types of content you can share (tips and tricks, testimonials, tutorials, favorite products/methods, etc.). Underneath or next to each of the types of content, do some brainstorming of topics you can cover. For example, if one of my pillars were classroom management, for my social media marketing plan, I would have some ideas for tips and tricks like attention getters, free positive rewards, and ask three before me. Under favorites, I might have the doorbell, the zen chime, my door hanger product, and my classroom management planner. You get the idea.
Once you’ve broken down your content and brainstormed ideas, you can decide on a social media schedule to pepper each type of content into your social media marketing plan calendar.
Social Media Marketing Templates
Before we make a social media marketing plan calendar, let’s talk templates! Can I tell you how much easier templates make our lives? For example, I have a social media marketing plan template for Instagram, so all I have to do is plug in new content and mix in pictures I snap of my family and daily life, and I have my IG posts planned for the week!
Whenever you’re creating something new in your business, I want you to come from the mindset of “What would this look like if I were to pass this off to an assistant or team member?” Using templates, systems, and processes will make the hand-off way more manageable than just posting randomly. If you are feeling inspired, write down your thoughts in a note on your phone or computer, but add it to a later post when you’re working on your social media calendar. That way, you stay focused on the task at hand, and the process is replicable.
I love using Asana to organize my business. My team and I keep all of our systems, plans, and essential info in Asana. We can collaborate, share updates and projects, and be on the same page. Trello, Monday, and AirTable are other options for digital workflow organization systems. Using one of these tools will help you store, organize, and create your plan and templates!
And don't forget you can grab your CEO Teacher® Tools here. We have small business templates designed specifically with teacher businesses in mind. And the best part is these templates are created for teachers, by a teacher!
Social Media Marketing Calendar
Okay, so we've got our social media marketing template and our social media marketing outline, now it's time to plug it into a calendar! Again, using a tool like Asana is excellent for this because you can set dates that the posts are due and post then!
Think about mapping out a month's worth of content at a time. Or, if you're just getting started with creating a social media marketing plan, start with a week. Batch-working your social media planning will help you get more done in less time!
Once you have that content mapped out, try to decide how you will repurpose your content. For example, I post 5x each week on Instagram and FB. The majority of what I post on Instagram gets repurposed as a FB post later in the next couple of weeks.
Having a social media marketing calendar will keep you ahead of the game so you can plan for special events, holidays, launches, and having a variety of posts that are balanced between teaching, life, and everything else you're sharing.
Your Facebook Marketing Plan
One of my best tips for making a social media marketing plan for Facebook is putting a few LIVE videos in your social media plan. I know live video can be scary, but it is SO GOOD for your Facebook presence, and you can even retarget those who watch your videos in your FB Ads.
As mentioned above, I repurpose a lot of Instagram content for my Facebook page. Most of the time, I will copy and paste the Instagram caption into Facebook, tweak a few things, and schedule!
If you didn’t know, Facebook has a great scheduling tool, so you can pre-load a bunch of posts to go live at certain times. I use this built-in tool every day to keep things running smoothly and be consistent in my social media marketing.
Also, don’t forget about your FB Groups! I have a monthly social media marketing plan calendar with all of the posts I need to make on FB in my groups and my page. I just made this in an excel spreadsheet! This way, I can look at a glance at everything I need to prepare and schedule those posts all in a couple of sittings.
Your Instagram Marketing Plan
I have a love/hate relationship with Instagram, but I think it is a great way to connect with your community and build your online presence! Do you NEED it to be successful? No. Would I recommend using it as part of your social media marketing plan? Yes! Aaaand You can grab your Teachergram Growth Guide right here!!
For my feed, my preference is to go with a curated look. Curated feeds bring me so much joy, and I knew I needed that for my social media plan. I work with a designer who made six BEAUTIFUL quote templates for me to use. If you decide that you like the curated design too, I suggest making a few templates that you can use consistently in your brand colors and fonts. Keeping things on brand and consistent will help you stand out and make it easier for you when creating your social media calendar.
If you’re dipping your toes in the teacher business world, check out A Teacher's Map of Online Business Secrets. This workbook will help you make sure your branding is on point so that you can commit to your colors and style and attract your ideal customers!
I use Planoly to schedule my Instagram posts. I’ve tried several platforms and really like this one. It gives you a great space to plan and move around your unscheduled posts to find a look you love, and it gives you recommended posting times that will help you with engagement. It has great analytics too! I prefer my Stories to be off-the-cuff, so I don’t use the Stories planning feature in Planoly, but the option is available if you want it!
Now it’s time to get busy! Mind map your content, make a calendar and some branded templates, and schedule those social media posts! I can’t wait to see how you take these tips for creating a social media marketing plan and connect with your ideal customers so they can know, like, and trust you. Your hard work will pay off with email list leads and sales! Comment below with any questions about your social media marketing plan, as I’m happy to help!
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