How to use the 60-day social media plan

template
Your goal is to deliver high-quality, relevant content that will engage
your audience, establish brand trust, and drive business—but how
can you tailor your social content to break through all of the noise,
provide value to your audience, and ultimately impact your bottom
line?

This 60-Day Social Media Plan Template is designed to help you re-
invent your social marketing strategy so that what you share aligns
with the interests of your audiences and contributes to overall
business value.

You will learn how to:

 Create an effective social strategy that aligns with audience

interest
 Diversify your content and build a robust content calendar
 Determine business value driven by social

Use the social media plan template below to track your progress as
you work through the plan. By completing just all tasks assigned for
a specific period of time within the 60 days, you can fully transform
your social marketing strategy.

Day 1. Day 2. Define Day 3. List out Day 4. Day 5. Analyze

Establish goals your success your Brainstorm the competition
for social metrics challenges solutions
media

Day 6. Day 7. Audit Day 8. Create Day 9. Day 10. Optimize

Determine your content a list of Determine your your social
your strengths relevant brand voice profiles
and keywords
weaknesses

Day 11. Day 12. Listen Day 13. Day 14. Day 15. Choose
Develop your to your Research Connect with your content types
buyer persona audience industry other
trends and departments
topics

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Day 16. Day 17-20. Day 21-24. Day 25-28. Day 29-32.
Develop a Brainstorm Gather Create your Optimize your
posting content ideas resources content content
schedule

Day 33-36. Day 37-40. Day 41-44. Day 45-48. Day 49-52. Engage
Create a call to Connect to Amplify your Invest in your with your
action more resources efforts best content audience

Day 53-56. Day 57. Day 58. Day Day 59. Revisit Day 60. Celebrate
Track your Compare Report out and readjust your
content results to goals your strategy transformation

als established and metrics defined

Day 1: Establish goals for social

Establishing clear social marketing goals is the first step toward

transforming your strategy. Think of exactly what you want social to
achieve. Here are several examples of goals you might establish:

 Drive website traffic

 Raise brand awareness
 Boost brand engagement
 Generate new leads
 Nurture leads
 Build a community around your business
 Establish authority and industry expertise
 Improve customer support
 Shift brand sentiment

The objective here is to give purpose to your social efforts. Once

you’ve established your social goals, the content you produce and
share should continually support those goals.

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There are several methods to help you write out specific social
media goals, including the Objectives and Key Results (OKR)
method.

The OKR method asks you to set a broad objective statement and
list out key results that describe what successfully achieving that
objective looks like. Here is an example of a broad objective
statement supported with clear standards that define meeting that
objective.

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The objective here is to boost brand engagement. To fulfill this, we
must increase the number of likes, shares, mentions and comments
by 20% by the end of the fourth quarter.

Day 2: Define your success metrics

How are you going to define the success of your social efforts?
Decide which metrics will provide the right type of data so that you
can determine whether or not social is supporting your business
goals.

As you identify your success metrics, set clear standards for your
social campaigns so that you know when success was achieved. If
you are tracking audience engagement, what exactly do you
consider to be successful engagement rates for your social content?

Depending on the type of content you produce, where you share

and the goals you set for your social marketing efforts, the metrics
you track will change.

Day 3: List out your challenges

The task is simple: make a list of the challenges you face when it
comes to social media marketing. Think of any barriers that are
keeping your social content from making its biggest impact.

As you list out your challenges, write out simple explanations of how
these barriers are impacting your marketing efforts or overall
business success. Here are a couple of examples to help you get
started.

Challenge 1:

Although we consistently post on social, we are not achieving ideal

engagement levels.
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Challenge 2:

We have seen a dramatic drop in our social content’s organic reach.

Day 4: Brainstorm solutions

Round up your marketing team and brainstorm possible solutions to

the challenges you previously listed.

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Be sure to provide evidence to justify how you know this will be an
effective solution so that you’re prepared when the time comes to
gather resources and advocate for your budget.

Solution to Challenge 1:

We can use influencers to engage with our social content and drive
conversation.

Justification: Ninety-one percent of brands using influencer

marketing report it to be effective. With loyal followings, influencers
can boost engagement and keep relevant conversations going on
social.

Solution to Challenge 2:

We can invest in paid social media advertising to run highly

targeted campaigns and reach the right people.

Justification: Social media spending in the US alone is expected to

increase to $47.9 billion by the end of 2021. Marketers are investing
more in social ads to reach buyers with purchase intent through the
appropriate social channels.

Day 5: Analyze the competition

If you are running out of ideas, try running a competitive analysis.

Be careful not to mimic your competitors’ content, but use their
social strategies for inspiration.

Your brand and its competitors have similar ideal customer

personas, so focus on the type of content that is most engaging,
both within your own social efforts and those of the competition.

Here are a few questions to consider as you analyze your

competitor’s social marketing efforts.

 Which marketing channels are my competitors using and are

they successful in those channels?
 What are my competitors talking about and are those topics
generating high audience engagement?

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  Are there areas within our social strategy where we are
outperforming our competitors?

Social analytics solutions are an effective way to compare your

efforts against your competitors. Using Sprout’s social media
analytics, you can directly benchmark your efforts against one or
more competitors.

Start your Free 30-day trial of Sprout Social

You can pinpoint days when competitors experienced peak

engagement and can dive deeper into what content was shared on
those days to understand the type of content that resonates most
with target audiences

Optimizing your profiles and brand voice on social media

Day 6: Determine your strengths and weaknesses

Take a deep dive into your social strategy and determine where you
are successful and where there is room for growth.

It might even be a good idea to conduct a survey among your

marketing, sales, customer service, and product teams to gauge
where they see areas of success or room for improvement.

For each criteria regarding your social marketing strategy,

determine whether it is one of your strengths or weaknesses. This
will help identify what you should focus on over the next five weeks.

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Day 7: Audit your content

Run a social media audit to identify your best-performing content

and most popular channels. Take time to understand what’s working
and why. Your metrics can help you identify which posts effectively
cater to the interests of your audience.

If your posts aren’t engaging and resonating with your followers,

your social media content strategy needs to shift. Use your audit to
review the content you’ve shared and identify which posts had the
biggest impact.

You can use Sprout’s Post Performance report to parse through your
most popular posts across platforms like Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

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For others like TikTok or Snapchat, there are alternative options for
tracking your content performance. For instance, with TikTok, you
can track engagement manually with a spreadsheet or other
analytics tools.

Day 8: Create a list of relevant keywords

Use social media listening tools to identify the keywords most often
associated with your brand. These keywords can help your team
throughout the content brainstorm and creation process.

Social listening can help you uncover hidden conversations about

your business.

For example, our team of analysts found that #staysafe was one of
the most used hashtags while using social listening to dig into retail
trends for the back-to-school season. This content topic is unique
from the standard back-to-school shopping discussion. Using this
data, retailers can stay up to date on the concerns of their
customers and develop a strategic social media plan to mitigate
those worries.

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Day 9: Determine your brand voice

When it comes to building a social audience, consistency is

key. Creating a brand voice will enable you to keep a consistent
voice among all of your social channels.

This voice should align with the interests of your audience and
match their communication style, while staying true to your brand.
Start by choosing three words that characterize your brand. If your
brand was a person, how would you describe them? After you
choose these words, describe what that means for your brand and
create do’s and dont’s to guide content creation.

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Day 10: Optimize your social profiles

While much of your time is spent on planning and creating content,

the information included on your profiles is vital to the success of
your social marketing efforts.

When you’ve determined your brand voice, you can build out your
profiles to align with that voice.

At a quick glance, your profile should speak to your brand with

relevant visuals and engaging copy. Here are a few tactics to
optimize your social profiles.

1. Use a consistent profile picture

If you own multiple social channels for your business, it is important

that your profile picture is consistent across every channel. Most
businesses will use their company logo or variations of their logo
that have been designed specifically for their social accounts.
Staying consistent across your profiles will increase opportunities for
brand recognition.

2. Complete every section of your profile

If there is a field for information, take advantage of the opportunity

to tell your brand’s story. In creative and succinct ways, you should
be able to describe what your business does, the offerings you can
provide and how you add value to the lives of your customers.

3. Add keywords to boost SEO

On Day 8, you compiled a list of keywords relevant to your industry,

brand and its offerings. Use these strategic keywords in every
section of your profile to boost SEO. They should appear in your bio
copy, in photo names, interests and experiences.

Section 3

Week 3
Finding and listening to your audience to better understand your
industry

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Day 11: Develop your buyer persona

Transforming your social marketing strategy may require you to

either revisit your current buyer personas or to create new ones
from scratch.

Buyer personas help you better understand current and future

customers, so that you know exactly who you are marketing to and
can create relevant content and offerings. Start by writing down
everything you know about your target customer and perform
research to fill in any gaps. For a robust buyer persona, try to
capture the following information.

 Demographics
 Backstory
 Lifestyle
 Career
 Purchase Behaviors
 Finances
 Goals, Challenges, Pain Points

Day 12: Listen to your audience

Listening to your audience can help you gain insight into the minds
of your followers, so you can be more strategic in your social
marketing efforts.

Using social media listening, you can learn a lot about your audience
(even when they’re not directly interacting with your brand) to
inform a more effective strategy.

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Here’s what you should listen for on social media:

 What your audience is talking about and what they are sharing
most often
 What your audience is saying about your brand, industry,
products, services and competitors
 What your audience is sharing on forum-style platforms like
Reddit or Quora.
 How your audience engages with influencers, trending topics
and relevant events

Day 13: Research industry trends and topics

To create relevant content and establish your brand as an authority

on social, you must stay up to date with what’s happening in your
industry.

Join conversations surrounding high-interest topics. Perform ongoing

research to make sure that the content you produce and share
aligns with the current interests of your community. Here are a few
resources that may help guide your research.

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Newsletters

As social marketers, research is one of our most valuable skills.

Instead of browsing aimlessly through content, rummaging through
thousands of social profiles or running endless Google searches, an
easy way to streamline research is to sign up for a solid mix of
newsletters.

Newsletters provide insights into the state of the industry, changes

in technology, updates to social networks and emerging trends and
best practices.

Here are a few newsletters that social media marketers should add
to their resource list:

Social Media Examiner helps you discover how to best use social
media to connect with customers, drive traffic, generate awareness
and increase sales. Their newsletter shares articles, expert
interviews and reviews of the latest industry research.

Social Media Today focuses on original analysis on what’s happening

in social media today. Their content is platform focused, providing
social marketers with insights on how to adopt new features and
where other brands are finding success.

SocialMedia.Org is a membership organization for leaders in the

social media marketing space. Their weekly newsletter, The
Shortlist, highlights member stories as they share what they’re
working on and what they’re keeping an eye on in the space.

Webinars

Webinars can have a huge impact on social marketing strategies by

generating new leads and prospects, nurturing existing relationships
and demonstrating expertise in our industries. During webinars,
many businesses will live-Tweet along with their users to answer
questions and keep the online conversation going.

Webinars can also provide a way for us to learn, which can spark
content ideas during our brainstorming sessions. Social Media Today
provides a wide variety of webinars specific to social marketers. You

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can register for upcoming webinars or watch from their library of on-
demand sessions.

Forums

Forums provide an effective way for marketers to identify the topics

that are spurring the most conversation online. Quora is a great
resource to discover topics of interest, ask questions and engage in
conversations relevant to your brand. As a brainstorming tool,
forums can help social marketers build social content plans that
address questions people are already asking.

Blogs

Adweek (and publications like Digiday and Marketing Land) are

terrific because they give you the anatomy of the latest, most
creative campaigns out there, and also fill you in on the most recent
news. The Mission (and Medium generally) is great to turn to for
thought leadership and gauging the pulse of our industry and the
visionaries in it.

Day 14: Connect with other departments

As you continue researching industry trends and topics as

inspiration for your content creation, connect with other
departments within your organization.

Remember that marketing is just one aspect of the business and

other teams can provide insight about your organization that can
help you brainstorm content ideas.

For example, try speaking with members of your sales team. Our
sales teams are often the first points of contact for consumers, and
they can provide insight into customers’ needs, challenges and
successes. This insight can help us generate content that addresses
these needs or highlights successes.

Your human resources team can also provide insight into ongoing
employer brand initiatives. Collaborate with HR to investigate how
employees and potential hires are engaging with your brand on
social. Their understanding of your workforce can help you identify

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what content is most effective for this important group of
stakeholders.

If you’re having difficulty working across social media with your

team you should look into a social media collaboration tool to
streamline your efforts.

Day 15: Choose your content types

Start thinking about the types of content that will benefit your brand
the most, while keeping your audience engaged.

Refer back to the buyer personas you created to determine if an

image linking to a blog post would perform better than a Twitter
chat or a Facebook Live broadcast. Consider the resources available
to you to determine if you can create a high quality how-to video, or
if you need to scale down your efforts and create an infographic
using the same content.

For the best results, diversify your content to keep your audience
interested. If you post the same type of content day after day or
week after week, your audience will inevitably disengage.

Here’s a list of possible content types you can start incorporating

into your social marketing strategies:

 Memes
 GIFs
 Infographics
 How-to’s
 Polls
 Contests
 User-generated content
 Photo and video
 Livestreaming
 Audio

Before you start searching for content to share on social, you need
to figure out what your audience actually likes. One way to do that is
to look at past social media posts to see which were most
successful.

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Pull all of your unique social media analytics with a tool like Sprout
Social, Twitter Analytics or Facebook Insights. Below is an example
of how to view your published posts with Sprout (available with a
free trial).

Make sure you’re sorting your posts by the metric that is most
important to you, whether that’s clicks, responses or total reach.
Once you have an idea of what kind of content works best, you can
move onto the next step.k 4

Filling out your social content calendar to increase reach and

engagement

Day 16: Develop a posting schedule

Your publishing cadence depends on a handful of factors including

your company, your audience, the campaign in question and the
social networks being used. We cover this more in our guide
to creating a social content calendar, but here are some suggested
guidelines on how often to post:

 Facebook pages: 1-2 per day

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  Twitter: 3-10 times per day
 Instagram: 1-3 times per day
 Instagram Stories: 2-5 times per day
 Pinterest: 3-20 times per day
 LinkedIn: 1-2 times per week

There’s a good chance your post frequency will depend on the size,
experience and authority of your social media team, so don’t feel
like you have to send out less than stellar content to meet these
guidelines.

Your brand’s analytics can be extremely helpful here. You can use
Sprout to see how often you post on each social network, then
compare that against how much engagement you received over that
same time period.

Look for trends between publishing rate and engagement. The

screenshots above are from our Facebook Page Report, but you can
do the same for Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn posts as well.

Day 17-20: Brainstorm content ideas

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Now’s the time to gather your inspiration and plan out content you
know will resonate with your audience. The key to effective
brainstorming is to put yourself in the mindset that inspiration can
come from anywhere.

Think of what your business does well and how you can turn that
into an engaging content piece. Look through some of your older
content and see if you can repurpose or reformat it for a different
channel.

Based on the conversations you’ve discovered are popular among

your audience, how can you contribute to those conversations with
fresh content? Here are some of 2020’s most popular types of
content.

Live streams

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and LinkedIn have

introduced features to support live streams from brands and content
creators alike. Fifteen percent of adults ages 18-34 report watching
multiple streams per day. Creating a live series can increase
consumer attachment by showcasing your brand voice and
personality in real time.

Video

Sixty percent of businesses use video as a marketing tool and 74%

say that video has a better return on investment than static
imagery. Even if you don’t have the budget to hire a videographer,
don’t rule this medium out. Tools like Canva and Biteable have
democratized the creation process. Anyone on your team can make
professional, on-brand videos, even while working remote.

Interactive content

Think of ways in which you can start a dialogue with your

customers, engage your customers through polls or surveys, or
create a contest and move your audience into action.

Quizzes, for example, have serious appeal and can generate a ton of
social media shares for your brand. People are excited to discover

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new things about themselves, which is why quizzes are so effective
on social media.

User-generated content

Marketers have been able to amplify user-generated content to

increase brand awareness, promote products and services, and use
the digital world-of-mouth concept to build brand trust and increase
sales.

In fact, consumers find user-generated content to be 9.8x more

impactful than influencer content when making a purchase
decision.

Day 21-24: Gather resources

Once you’ve determined the types of content best suited for your
business and have decided on a publishing cadence, start gathering
your resources.

Think back to the types of content you decided to incorporate into

your social strategy and what resources are needed to bring them to
life. Here are several questions for you to consider as you start
collecting your resources:

 Have you decided on the type of creative assets you’ll use and
how you’ll store them?
 Who within the company needs to be involved in order to
create this specific content piece?
 Do you need any sort of creative support for visual elements?
 Do you already own content (guides, e-books, blog posts) that
can easily be repurposed for social?

Day 25-28: Create your content

It’s time to get to work! Start the creation process and set
reasonable timelines for project completion.

Be sure to build social content that speaks to your customer

persona, stays true to your brand voice, and can easily fit within the
posting schedule you’ve established.

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Day 29-32: Optimize your content

During the creation process, it is essential for you to optimize your

content so that your efforts don’t go unnoticed in consumers’
crowded social feeds. Every net new content piece you create
should be able to be repurposed for another use down the line.

Consider your video strategy. A video can be broken down into short
clips, quote graphics, still images, and more. Think through your
options while creating content so you can fill out your calendar with
less effort going forward

Here are a few additional tactics to optimize your social content to

maximize your reach and increase engagement:

 Include hashtags
 Shorten links
 Include images
 Adapt content for various social channelsnting and boosting
your social media content calendar for the best results

Day 33-36: Create a call to action

Not all of the content you share on social needs to encourage

customers to take action.

You may even find that some of your most popular posts are those
that simply showcase your brand personality or provide a good
laugh for your audience. Take Baggu, for example. Their Instagram
strategy relies heavily on user generated content, but with a twist.
They go beyond standard product shots, showcasing their brand in
fun and creative ways that align with their seasonal product prints.

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If the primary goal of your social marketing is to generate new leads
and guide people into your sales funnel, you need to give your
audience a clear next step. Include direct CTAs on those posts that
you are using to drive action.

Day 37-40: Connect to more resources

Connecting your audience to more resources can benefit your brand

in a couple of ways.

First, by connecting your audience to more resources (especially

owned resources) you are establishing your brand as an authority on
your space while inviting them to engage further. The more they
learn about you and stay engaged with your brand, the more likely
they are to convert.

At Sprout, we often share links to some of our favorite blog posts for
our audience to learn more about the social networks, best
marketing practices, and trending topics.

Day 41-44: Amplify your efforts

Once you’ve started promoting your content on social, think of ways

you can amplify your messages to reach a larger audience.

Here is a short list of methods to consider in order to extend the

reach of your content:

 Leverage an employee advocacy tool

 Give incentive for customers to share on their social
 Use influencers to extend the reach of your content

Day 45-48: Invest in your best content

As you promote and amplify your content, you may quickly notice
that some content performs better than others in terms of
engagement and conversion.

Extend the reach of these high-performing pieces through paid ads.

You can target a highly specific audience, attract qualified traffic
and leads, and grow your customer base.

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The algorithms for social networks like Facebook and Instagram are
now starting to favor paid content over organic content, making it
increasingly important to invest in paid to give your content a
fighting chance for discovery.

Which social media network you choose will depend on three

important factors:

 Where your target customers are most concentrated

 Where your target customers are most accessible
 Where your target customers most actively engage with ads

Day 49-52: Engage with your audience

80% of consumers expect brands and companies that have a social

media presence to interact with their customers in meaningful
ways.

It’s important to engage with and respond to your audience.

Engaging with your audience in a two-way dialogue builds brand
trust and adds authenticity to your brand. As you monitor your
audience’s reaction to your content, you can also gain valuable
insight into the effectiveness of your content.

Read through comments on your social posts and respond to

questions and insightful comments. The comments section is a great
tool for social marketers looking for feedback on their content and
can even inspire ideas for future content. orting on your social
media results and celebrating your success!

Day 53-56: Track your content

Content share tracking is an effective way to gauge engagement

and track the movement of your content across social channels.

You can track all of your content with the Sprout Social Post
Performance Report. Use the Post Performance reports to analyze
published content down to the individual post and understand its
performance with your audience.

Below is an example of how to view your cross-channel post

performance with Sprout (available with a free trial).

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Day 57: Compare results to goals

Think back to the objectives you set at the beginning of these 60

days.

For example, if your objective was to boost brand engagement, you

needed to increase the number of likes, shares, mentions and
comments by 20% by the end of the fourth quarter.

Using a social media analytics tool, you can compare month-over-

month engagement for all of your social profiles to determine if you
are on track to meet your social marketing goals.

Day 58: Report out

Share the results of your social marketing efforts with your

marketing team and leadership. If you’re new to reporting or need
to brush up on best practices, here’s a suite of resources that can
help you create a routine reporting system.

This is your opportunity to showcase the goals you’ve established

and your progress toward them. You should use hard evidence, like

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the data you’ve gathered through listening, and social analytics, to
report on the success of your social marketing efforts.

Depending on your goals, you may want to build a custom report

that zeroes in on what matters to your team. With Sprout’s report
builder, you can customize performance reports to meet your exact
business needs. Once you’re happy with your report, you can
customize your branding and export it as a .PDF or a .CSV file for
easy sharing.

Day 59: Revisit and readjust your strategy

The most savvy marketers know that marketing strategies are in

constant flux. Revisit your strategy, revise your marketing goals,
and adapt your strategies based on the data you’ve collected.

Day 60: Celebrate your transformation

Congratulations! You’ve successfully made it through the 60-day

social marketing transformation program.

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Celebrate your new strategy and the effort you’ve made to enhance
your social marketing.Plan with Sprout Streamline all of
your social media plan with a robust social media markool

This social media plan was created to help social marketers refine
their strategies. Our goal is to provide you with actionable steps to
transform your social marketing strategies to help you create
content that is purposeful, engaging,and ultimately delivers real
business results.

Keep in mind that transforming your social media strategic

planning doesn’t have to end with these 60 days—continue to
identify challenges to your social marketing strategy, analyze your
competitors, discover ways to optimize your content and social
profiles, and remember to always revisit and adjust your strategies
as needed.

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