Reach Solutions
Nigel Black
arrow
16 November 2018
arrow
6 min. to read

Effective social media planning is hard, but we’re sharing our seven day posting plan to help you save time and to get ahead of the competition.

Every month billions of people use social media to connect with friends, family – and businesses. If your business is not on social then you’re missing the opportunity to engage with a huge audience in a very personal way.

You probably think that you know social media – you have personal accounts and so does almost everyone you know. But using it for business can be surprisingly tricky to get right.

One of the most common mistakes businesses make is to jump straight in without some kind of content plan and schedule in place. You can’t treat your business page like a personal page, where you might post or react to something on impulse. To keep people engaged you need to post regularly – at least once a day on channels like Facebook and LinkedIn, perhaps more on Twitter – so this will take a little planning. Do not try and ‘wing it’ as your posts will likely peter out and your page will suffer.

To help and inspire you we’ve put together an example seven-day posting plan:

Monday: Participation post

Don’t make the conversion just about your business. The best way to connect with someone is to listen to them, converse with them, and ask questions. So engage visitors by asking for their input on an issue or topic. “Let us know what you think”, “Share your opinions”, etc.

Tuesday: Promotional offer

Share details of an offer that you are currently running. If it’s an enticing offer it will share itself. Always try and enhance such posts with visual elements. Images are good, video is better. Shoot your own photos and videos wherever possible rather than borrowing them elsewhere.

Wednesday: Service or product outline

Remind visitors of a product or service that you offer. Perhaps something that’s not immediately obvious. Just remember not to go overboard with direct advertising posts, as it may deter users from liking your page. Balance promotional posts out with ones that provoke and inspire.

Thursday: Client story

Why not engage your followers by relating a recent success story? “A customer contacted us with this unusual request… we were able to help by…”. That sort of thing. Keep it concise – it shouldn’t be a case study.

Friday: Staff story

Share positive stories about ‘the team’, so that your customers can get to know your staff better. By showing the people behind the business you make things more personal and ultimately this helps to build the customer relationship.

Saturday: Industry news item

Write about or comment on a development which may affect your business or the industry in which you operate. This probably won’t be of too much interest to your customers but serves to demonstrate that you’re not operating in a bubble.

Sunday: Content share

Share other people’s content via links. Just because you didn’t create the content yourself doesn’t mean it can’t generate goodwill for you. Just make sure that it’s relevant to your audience, and try and add a brief commentary to the links you share to give them some context.

Hopefully that gives you some ideas for your posting plan. Once you have the ball rolling you need to make sure it doesn’t stop! Ideally you need to factor social media in as another ‘task’ that needs attention. Delegate where necessary (you can easily grant your colleagues admin access to your channels). It’s likely that some of your employees will already be social savvy and they may enjoy the friendly competition of seeing whose posts receive the most likes and shares. Maybe start a ‘social climbers’ league table.

You should aim to try and foster an online community on social media – see our expert help post on this for further advice.

Contact Us

Start your journey with Reach today.

Our focus is on making your life easier, so we'd love to hear from you and answer any questions you may have about our advertising solutions.

Reach Solutions
© Reach Solutions 2024

Reach Solutions for Agency

Reach Solutions for SMEs