⚫️🟡 How to Create a 2024 Social Media Plan - Part 1

Hey, welcome to Mind Your Marketing. The weekly newsletter that gives you actionable social media advice for your brand.

Today’s article is part one of a two-part series on social media planning for 2024.

Enjoy below!

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Yearly planning for social media can suck.

But it doesn’t have to.

See, most brands run into issues with social media when they are:

1. Reactionary — constantly looking for trends and playing catch up with their social content

2. Non-aligned with company goals — this causes frustration from the social team, who feel underappreciated, and builds resentment on the executive side because they see social as a cost center.

3. Don’t have a system — winging it on social leads to sporadic posting, relying on ‘creativity’ and time availability.

These problems are all solvable through building a social media plan. Below, I’ll walk you through the exact steps you can take to build a social media plan for 2024.

1. Understand where your customers are

The first step in any social media plan is figuring out what platforms your customers are on. You, as a marketer, are in the attention, attraction, and conversion game. So, it’s imperative you lean into platforms where you can facilitate all three.

So, how do you select the right platforms?

Start by building buyer personas based on your company’s past sale data. Talking to existing and previous customers about social media is the fastest way to collect relevant data. Alongside that, look at the general statistics on platforms and see which best aligns with your buying audience.

Be careful not to discount the context of each platform when making a decision. When people open LinkedIn, they’re in a business/career mindset, while when they open TikTok, they are looking for entertainment. Understanding the contextual use of each platform is something to consider before you begin creating content.

2. Understand how customers use your product in different situations

Go one step deeper than basic buyer personas. Start to think about how, when, and why your customers would use your product. Are they looking for convenience, status, love, etc.? Once you understand the potential situations a customer uses/wants your product for, you can create content to tap into that.

3. Align on KPIs with your executive team

Sit with your executive team and clearly define what metrics assist the business in hitting its goals for the coming year. Because if you have these KPIs in place, it helps you (and the executives) from becoming distracted/reactionary.

How to do this?

Outline your goal and what it is contingent upon. For example, if you have agreed to increase impressions by X amount, then (i) understand what content you need and the frequency that you will post. Also, (ii) outline the necessary budget needed for boosting to maintain a baseline.

Then, do a labor-adjusted CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) calculation. That is, how much labor + ad budget did it take to get you 1000 impressions? The goal, from that point, is to get the CPMs down while having total impressions increase.

When you do this, you’re showing your executive team you’re budget-conscious and thinking about how marketing impacts the overall organization.

4. Use a system for creating content

To keep things like your labor-adjusted CPMs low, you need to implement a system. Creating and scheduling content can become a major drain on energy and resources for your company if it’s a free-for-all.

So, how do you implement a system? Well, you can download the Social System 1.0 to help you create content consistently.

5. Moonshot Marketing

What is moonshot marketing? Well, it’s something that has a low chance of succeeding, but if it works, it has outsized ROI. This can be things such as getting on a leading podcast, speaking at a conference, having a video go viral, etc.

The key with moonshot marketing to write out what one huge win would look like and then spend a small percentage of the yearly time/budget on accomplishing it—I like aiming for five percent. You don’t want the moonshot to detract (too much) from your other efforts.

That’s it for part one. Check back next week for part two, where I’ll go over audience + community building, influencer marketing, crisis management planning, and more.

P.S. If you want to connect on social media, where I share tips throughout the week, follow me on X (Twitter) or Linkedin.

Start using the Social System 1.0

If you’re struggling to create content, try our Social System 1.0.

This is a notion template you can copy for yourself and start to use to create content and grow your following. Grab the system below!