The social media marketing checklist your business needs in 2017

As social media marketing becomes more challenging and time-consuming, it’s time to get more organised when managing your brand’s social presence.

It’s not easy handling a brand’s social presence, but its successful management can lead to great results. Social networks keep growing and they are heading into a more mature phase, which means that the challenges grow for every brand that tries to stay competent.

There are many reasons for a brand to invest in social media marketing and the results depend on the set goals:

• Increase awareness
• Reach a new audience
• Boost engagement
• Increase traffic to the site
• Explore new business opportunities
• Gain new leads
• Work with new clients

No matter what goals you set for the new year, you still need to stay on top of your brand’s social media marketing and the right checklist may help you with all the tasks you need to do at the beginning of the year.

Brainstorming

This is the initial stage that you’ll think of all the new ways that can boost your social media marketing.

• Explore the latest trends and see if any of them fits in your own strategy
• Learn more about the new platforms or examine whether the old ones are still suitable for your audience
• Be creative and think outside the box
• Come up with new content ideas and experiment with them on each platform
• Ask for help from other team members to broaden your perspective

Planning

Right after your brainstorming session, it’s time to evaluate your planning to see whether it’s effective enough to help your social media marketing.

• Go back to your content calendar and see whether it was effective enough to use it frequently
• What needs to be improved to the existing content calendar?
• Decide on the channels you’re using. Should you add new ones?
• Examine whether the frequency of the content has been effective up to now
• Organise your goals and your KPIs
• Do you know how to justify your social marketing efforts?

Implementation

Now you’re ready to check the practical aspect of your social media marketing. The evaluation of the implementation phase helps you understand whether your plan has been successfully in action.

• Are you happy with the way the posts are published?
• Is the content calendar followed?
• Is the engagement the one you expected?
• Are you replying to the users’ comments?
• Are you monitoring your brand’s social accounts?
• Do you use all your social accounts consistently?
• How is the collaboration between the team?
• Is there a plan to deal with urgent situations?
• When was the last time you dealt with a crisis and how can you avoid another one?
• Do you need to use social media for customer service?

Measurement

The last but still important stage in the evaluation of a social media marketing plan is to examine whether the measurement is effective.

• Start by going back to your initial goals. Are these met? Are they realistic?
• Keep your social reports up-to-date and prepare them for the year ahead
• Check each platform’s native analytics to stay updated on their insights
• Use your own analytics platform to have an overview of your social media marketing performance
• Find the best performing platforms and raise the expectations in the new year
• Find the platforms you need to focus on and come up with new content ideas to improve their performance
• Plan the year ahead with new KPIs
• Consult with the team on the best ways to track the KPIs
• Align social media marketing KPIs with your wider marketing strategy

Although the checklist and the questions you need to answer seem to be time-consuming, the actual process is faster than what you think. This can even be an annual task, helping you create a successful social media marketing strategy, with a clear plan, goal and measurement. You can still add it to your new year’s resolutions. 

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