We get questions from people all the time about social media. How do I use social media to grow my business? How do I know what to post and when to post it? What makes a “good” social media post for my business? The answers to these questions are not complicated. However, the execution can be cumbersome if you don’t have a well-documented plan for the content, the deployment, and the measuring of your success.

The first step in conquering social media is to have a calendar. It is not enough to operate under the rule that you or your team will simply find something to post once a week. An effective plan includes the theme, the message, the intended audience, and the tentative posting date for all posts over the course of the next 30 days.

Insider Tip: It’s important to have a documented, clear, shared plan for your team that foreshadows the next 30 days at a minimum (60-90 days is preferred).

Now, that may sound impossible to come up with ideas so far in advance and stick to them. But, the purpose of the plan is to provide a roadmap to guide your team in narrowing down the ideation process each week. Taking the upfront time to sit down for strategic planning is key to ultimately see increased efficiency in the execution and distribution of your brand message across all channels.

Real-World Example

Let’s take a local spin studio, for example. The overall social media marketing goal for a local spin studio is to boost their brand message through sharing fun energizing content while ultimately staying top-of-mind in their local community. This strategy, if pulled off, will result in more riders per class.

For the social media coordinator on their marketing team, it’s much easier for them to design a compelling post when they can toggle to the existing, approved content calendar and see that this week they’re focusing on a post for Wednesday (posting date) around continuing to promote the studio’s “Summer Sizzle” campaign (theme) with a discounted class package if purchased either in June or July (message) for riders who bring at least two friends to their next ride (intended audience). With all of these parameters already decided, that person can then infuse their creativity into the language and photo they choose to use for the post.

Insider Tip: To effectively measure the success of a campaign like the above, it’s imperative to create a promo code that the riders and their friends can use when they sign up for class. The number of times that shared code is used will help your team attribute success to the social media post!