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Today, I want to talk about social media planning and consistency. What is it, why it’s important, and how I can help you!
Note: I’m using “Facebook” throughout this article. This is for example sake only. The same concepts apply if your primary channel is Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. WHATEVER platform(s) you are using for your business, planning and consistency are essential!
What is Social Media Planning?
Social media marketing is only a piece of your overall marketing plan, but it’s becoming an increasingly larger piece as time goes on. It’s important to consider what your social media plan is for each quarter, so you can keep on task.
What does that mean?
It means that you should treat posting on your business Facebook page like anything else you have to do regularly in your business. You reconcile the cash register at the end of every day, you make sure the door is locked before you go home, you make sure customer invoices get sent out weekly (or monthly), you take deposits to the bank daily (or a few times a week.) Depending on your business, these things and frequencies vary – but whatever your business is, these are the kinds of things you do every day and week.
Posting to your Facebook page should be included in that list. EVERY week – not only when you have some extra time. But, we are all busy, and time (or lack of it) can be our worst enemy. THIS is why a plan is essential.
What is Social Media Consistency?
If your business has a Facebook page, think about how often you post to the page. Do you make sure you post three times a week, for example? Or do you stick a post up there randomly if you have a good sale going on or if something cool happens in the office that day, maybe once a month or so?
There have been lots of changes to the Facebook algorithm in the last few months, and consistency is more important than ever. The customers who like your Facebook page? They aren’t your customers – they are Facebook’s customers. And Facebook wants THEIR customers to have the best experience possible when they are on Facebook.
What does that mean?
It means that Facebook is going to show your posts to people ONLY IF they think people are interested in your information. If you only post to your Facebook page once a month, Facebook doesn’t know if anyone likes your information, because the last time anyone potentially saw it was a month ago.
Now, this doesn’t mean you have to post every single day. Posting daily is great IF you have time and IF you have interesting, valuable content to post. A restaurant posting daily specials is a great example, or a “deal of the day” if you have a product of some sort to sell.
But, valuable content is the keyword here – you don’t want to post just to say you posted. If you post daily but no one likes or engages with your post, Facebook treats it the same way as if you didn’t post at all – they don’t think anyone wants to see it, so they won’t show it to anyone.
How To Make your Plan
So, all of that sounds great, right? How do you make your plan and stick with it?
Think about your business and what will work best for you. What plan can you make that you can consistently follow, while offering valuable information to your followers that they will like and engage with?
I personally recommend posting a minimum of 2-3 times per week. You don’t really want to do less than that, if possible. I also don’t think more than once a day is necessary – you can post too much, too.
What kind of business do you have, and what are your competitors doing? You don’t want to look at what they are doing so you can copy it – but you can look at what they are doing and use it to give you insight into ways you can make yours different and better. Maybe they are doing a monthly giveaway for a free meal or service. Nothing says you can’t do it too, just don’t do it in exactly the same way. Get creative and make yourself stand out.
I offer some more in-depth organization tips in this post about how I keep track of my content planning. I think you find Trello useful for your social media planning needs, it’s a great system and it’s easy to use.
