5 Secrets To Building A Social Media Marketing Business Plan

I still get a little confused whenever I hear a business owner say, “Social media isn’t important for my business,” or even worse, I observe them not taking their business's social media marketing seriously.

And while yes, in the past, if you built a business before social media you MIGHT be able to get away with doing little to no social media marketing . . . things are drastically changing in the business world.

According to Oberlo, approximately 75% of consumers are now checking out the social media accounts of a business before they make a purchase.  That means if you’re not taking your social media marketing seriously, you’re going to be losing out on three out of every four sales you could be getting for your business.

We’ve been able to amass over 250K followers across five social media platforms and used that exposure to build a million-dollar agency.  Today, I want to give you our 5-step recipe for how we do it, in hopes that it will help you build a social media marketing strategy that works for your business!

Use Your Social Media Correctly

One of the main reasons engagement is down for businesses on platforms like Instagram is that there is simply too much selling going on.  Every other business post is “buy this” or “sign up for this” or “have you opted into my masterclass” . . . it’s starting to become a huge turn-off for people.

If you want any statistic to show you that people go on social media to be entertained NOT sold to, just look at the daily usage time between TikTok and Instagram.  On average, people spend 24 minutes on Instagram a day, as opposed to TikTok, where people spend 64 minutes a day.

So why are people spending 3x the amount of time on TikTok as opposed to Instagram?  Because TikTok is entertaining, and quite frankly, Instagram is not.  With how many ads, suggested posts, and selling you’re bombarded with on Instagram, it’s no wonder people get tired of it and move on.

When you understand this fundamental concept, you can start to create a social media marketing plan that’s different.  Am I saying don’t sell?  No, not at all.  However, sell in places like Instagram stories that disappear after 24 hours and do it sparingly.

One of the things we’ve always prided ourselves on is the fact that we don’t sell on social media, really at all.  And I don’t think you have to either as long as people know who you are, what you do, you have a concisely written bio, and a link to your products and services.

People aren’t dumb, they know what it is you do and what you sell, you don’t need to be reminding them about your products and services every single day.  Rather, create content that is engaging and entertaining, using your products as services as a backdrop for your content.

This will increase your engagement and reach, and allow you to bring more people into your social media community, because the more people are entertained, the more they’re going to want to stick around.

Make Sure Your Social Media Is Optimized

We touched on this a little bit in the last point, but you want to make sure that your social media accounts for your business are as optimized as they can possibly be.  This allows you to back off of selling and helps people to find you and your business a lot easier.

Here is a list to get you started off of all the things you’ll want to make sure are optimized when it comes to your social media accounts for your business:

• Make sure your social media handles make sense and are easily found.  Stay away from numbers and symbols in your usernames if you can
• Always optimize the SEO portions of your social media; for Instagram, this is the bold text and for all social media bio it’s the copy in them
• Use the correct photos related to the content you create as well as make sure to fill in the alt text
• Write captions that use keywords people would use to search for your business and its products and services
• Use the correct hashtags that will make it easier to seek out your business on social media
• Use the link feature in your social media bio’s to go directly where you want people to go . . . make it as easy as possible for them

This is by no means everything, but this is at least a good list to get you started and will help you build the foundations of a really good social media marketing plan.

Create A Monthly Content Calendar

When I come across a business and its social media content, I immediately look back over the last 30 posts, because when I do, I can immediately know if they actually have a social media marketing plan when it comes to what they post, or if they simply post whatever they feel like in the moment.

Most post what they feel like in the moment . . . and that’s no way to run a business.

The week before the next month, we sit down and plan the content for our entire next month.  What days are we posting?  What type of content are we posting?  What’s the post going to be about?  Do we have any new products/services launching?  Are we going to promote those, and if so, where?

These are just a few of the questions that we ask ourselves, then, we get started on creating a social media marketing calendar for the month.  I can’t even begin to describe how much of a game-changer this was for our agency.  No longer do we have to wonder about what to post that day or what the post should be about because that’s been figured out long ago.

I believe this is a huge reason why businesses struggle so much when it comes to social media marketing . . . they simply don’t have a plan and/or don’t know how to create an effective one.

If this is you and you need help, we build custom social media marketing plans for business owners on a monthly basis and would be happy to help.  Click HERE and we can talk more about it!

Social media marketing isn’t something that should consume all your time, but it is going to be an important part of building a brand and gaining exposure for your business, so you need to make sure you’re doing it right.  This allows you to be efficient with your social media content, then get back to doing what it is you do best.

Build Relationships & Expertise

When you’re building your content calendar, you want to make sure you have a social media marketing plan that has three specific elements to it:

• Entertainment
• Relationship Building
• Expertise

We touched on this before, but I’ll say it as honestly as I can: if your content is dry and boring, people aren’t going to stick around, which means people are going to buy what it is you have to offer.

You need to be able to entertain people, and if this is something that you struggle with, then I’d suggest you do some market research on TikTok when it comes to your competition . . . especially the competition that is doing well.

What kinds of content are they creating?  How long are their videos?  How often do they sell?  Ask yourself as many questions and analyze their content as much as you can, that way you can take the nuts and bolts of what they do well, then apply it to your brand and get similar results.

The second piece of the puzzle is to focus on building relationships with the audience that comes into your social media community.  This means doing things like answering comments, doing lives, answering your DM’s, and adding value before you expect someone to buy something in return.

We already established that people go on social media to be social, so keep it simple.  If someone shows you love, show appreciation.  If someone asks a question, answer it.  It really isn’t rocket science, just do right by people and you’ll find more and more people trickling into your communities.

The third is expertise.  Now, I don’t think this is as important as the other two, but people do need to know that you’re actually knowledgeable in whatever product/service you’re offering.  This is especially true when it comes to service-based businesses . . .

Because let’s just be honest, there are a lot of “fake” business owners running around social media, claiming to have all of these results, when in actuality, they don’t.  And the last thing you want to do is get lumped in with them, so create content that shows you know what you’re talking about.

Tips are great, and ultimately, if people are coming on a business page, they have a problem and believe that your business and products might be the solution to that problem, so make sure to provide those solutions in your content.

When you do these three things effectively with your social media marketing content, you give yourself the best chance at growing new audience members, as well as nurturing your current audience into potential buyers.

Have A Place To Funnel People

We already established that social media isn’t meant for selling, which begs the question: how do you get people to buy your products and services?  This is where having someplace OFF social media to funnel people becomes important.

Most people have an email list, and if you don’t, I’d highly suggest you start building one.  Another great option for product-based businesses is SMS/text marketing, as it gets ridiculously high open rates.  You could even funnel people over to your website.

The point is to have someplace off social media that you own, and can take your warm/hot leads so that you can start to introduce them to the products and services that they’re most likely ready to buy.

You want to funnel people somewhere that you own because social media is great, but at the end of the day, you could wake up tomorrow and Instagram could be gone.  If you’d built your entire business on Instagram and nowhere else, your business would be in a lot of trouble.

This is why we always preach to have more than one social media platform for your business as well, that way you’re diversified in case something ever happens.  Our goal was to always be in as many places as we could handle without burnout.

That’s led us to build a huge business, but also not worry when things happen like Instagram going down, because we have four other social media platforms as well as a blog, email list, text list, and website to connect with people.

If you’re not sure where to start, I would focus on building out your email marketing.  It’s the most cost-efficient option and gives you the best return for your time.  Then you can build out as your business grows and you’ve got more help.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this blog will help you create a social media marketing plan for your business that allows you to create content that builds an audience while funneling your leads to a place where you can sell in a natural way.

If you have any questions about how to implement this process, you can always reach out to us on Instagram @michaelandjill or book a call with us HERE, and we’d be happy to help in any way that we can!