You can find no shortage of social media templates online, but very few offer the flexibility and ease of use needed to keep pace with an evolving social strategy. In light of this, we’ve isolated the crucial elements of a standout social media plan template to help you build a lasting presence across multiple channels.
Consistency is key in social media strategy
According to data from a CMO survey, social media spend is expected to almost double by 2023. Marketers are well aware of the value that a social media presence brings, yet this increase in spending doesn’t often translate to a more lucrative strategy.
In fact, a quick Google search can turn up hundreds of instances of major social media gaffes from leading brands. These issues happen all the time, and it’s not hard to see why: when you share content on a social platform, you’re opening yourself up to the scrutiny of thousands, if not millions of consumers. A consistent level of content quality is essential to reaping the benefits – and avoiding the pitfalls of building a thriving social presence.
That’s why some experts are now saying that it’s time to go back to the basics of social media strategy to redefine priorities and build a better framework for growth. It’s essential that your social strategy is built with a solid foundation to ensure all content adheres to guidelines for quality, tone, and style, regardless of the size of your following.
You’ll need to answer questions like:
- Does my team have the resources to reliably create content to share across a growing number of channels?
- Are we applying best practices to each social post, ensuring brand consistency and prompting engagement?
- Can we source a dizzying carousel of visual mediums, new ideas, and thought-provoking discussion to stand out from the sea of other brands competing for new eyeballs?
This might seem a tad bit overwhelming, but don’t worry. Whether you’re revamping existing processes or building out an entirely new strategy, a social media template can help you start off on the right track.
How social media templates can help
Social media strategy takes no small amount of time, resources, and planning to successfully leverage, especially if your team doesn’t have a dedicated social media manager.
A consistent social media plan template that scales with your following will keep your efforts grounded in best practices and ensure a high level of quality across multiple channels. That’s why we’ve created a reliable and responsive template to help you build an audience with ease.
You can view that social media template and others like it on our Wrike Templates page. Now, let’s dive into the key elements of a standout social media template.
Key elements of standout social media templates
To deliver cohesive social media campaigns, you’ll need a mix of the following:
- Organized folders and projects for storing work
- A social media calendar template for publishing
- Visibility into broader organizational efforts and campaigns
- A social media template for reporting data and analysis
- Task automation for recurring work
#1: Organized folders and projects for storing work
As any social media manager can attest to, it's easy to lose track of social copy when you’re writing upwards of a dozen social posts a day. With an organized filing structure and attention to project visibility management, you can create folders or projects specific to each campaign you run, compiling key objectives, details, and content, all in one place. This is essential in securing a single version of truth, or a central hub of information designed to align overall strategy.
Research has shown that less than half of an organization's data is actively used to make decisions. By organizing your social media efforts into separate projects, you can quickly search and access metrics from previous campaigns, ensuring consistency of brand voice and identifying top-performing strategies.
#2: Social media calendar template
A content publishing calendar is an essential element of a scalable social media template. Visualizing your publishing schedule in a calendar ensures you have an even distribution of scheduled content for each day of the week.
While some of the content you produce can be planned in advance, a key aspect of social media management is reacting to real-time events and conversations. That’s why the most effective social media calendars are responsive, allowing you to plan for the future while still leaving room for last-minute changes.
#3: Visibility into broader organizational efforts and campaigns
The most effective social media strategies rely on a mix of content from product, marketing, events, and other internal teams to promote broader business objectives. In order to promote these objectives, your social media template should provide visibility into the priorities of other internal teams.
It may be tempting to build out your social media plan in the confines of an excel sheet. But once your organization starts to scale, you’ll have greater difficulty with both accessing and providing real-time information into social campaigns. That’s why you’ll want a social media template that promotes visibility across teams with shared calendars and other collaborative features.
#4: Social media report template
Once you’ve set your social media strategy in motion, you’ll want to start tracking key metrics to evaluate performance and respond to larger trends. According to social media expert Jenn Deering Davis, Ph.D., here are the top metrics to keep an eye on:
- Volume: Including following and brand conversations
- Reach: Including organic and paid post impressions
- Engagement: Including likes, comments, and shares
- Influence: Including influence scoring and social capital
- Share of Voice: Including conversations and competitor traction
Beyond performance metrics, you’ll also want to consider metrics that evaluate the success of your execution. How many social campaigns launched on-time compared to those that were delayed? How many hours did you spend drafting new content? These metrics can help tie your performance with larger business objectives.
#5: Task automation for recurring work
A recent survey found 91% of marketers agree that automation is crucial to their cross-channel marketing efforts. And they’re not wrong: modern technology currently has the ability to automate up to 45% of existing work processes.
While social media management systems enable you to schedule posts across multiple platforms with ease, you’ll also want a system to automate the campaigns and strategies behind those posts. With a social media plan template that includes automation capabilities, you’ll worry less about administrative upkeep and focus more on executing your greater strategy.
Kick-start your standout social media strategy with a standout template
If you want to build a lasting house, you can’t neglect the foundation. Keep these essential elements in mind when choosing a social media template to kick-start your strategy.
Check out these posts for more useful templates in marketing and beyond:
- Building an Effective Creative Brief Template
- Using Templates in Project Management (Infographic)
- How to Build Your Own Event Planning Template in Wrike
