Social media marketing can help increase brand awareness, brand recognition, and sales while improving your relationships with customers. A quality social media content plan can help you earn more followers and reach more people. When used correctly, social media content creation can help take your brand to the next level by reaching customers where they spend their time online.
Social media content should be included in your digital marketing strategy because it’s a cost-effective marketing tool that allows small businesses to compete with large corporations and form long-lasting relationships with customers.
Social media allows your brand to showcase its unique personality, but your followers still expect quality content that’s engaging and can inform and educate them about your industry, brand, and products.
Social media can increase the traffic your website receives, and it’s an essential sales tool. The more you increase your visibility online, the more opportunities you have to convert visitors into loyal customers. Every post you create is a new opportunity to advertise your business, but your content plan should include a healthy mix of promotional and educational or engaging posts that can attract more customers.
Modern consumers are bombarded with advertisements on a daily basis; they’re smart and don’t want to follow businesses that constantly try to sell them products. Instead, your customers want to purchase products and services from brands that offer value, whether in the form of entertaining or educational content or sales promotions.
What is a social media content plan?
Creating good social media content requires a plan. A social media content plan is part of your overall marketing strategy; it helps you effectively plan the types of content you post on different social media platforms depending on your audience. A content plan should consist of the use of multiple types of content, including videos, blogs, eBooks, videos, and content developed just for stories.
Depending on the types of social media platforms you use, you should also plan your captions or post copy. For example, if you plan to post a photo of a customer using your product, you’ll need to tell your audience what’s happening in the photo to help them understand the content you’re showing them.
Captions are also a great way to connect with your audience because you can ask them to leave comments or send shoutouts to individuals in your photos.
Social media content plans are necessary because they help you see all the types of content you’re sharing over the course of a month. They can also help you plan for the future. For example, if you’re planning a product launch, you can look at your social media content plan to determine the types of content you should create to announce the new product.
How to create a social media content plan
Developing a social media content plan can help you save time and make posting on social media more efficient. A well-structured content marketing strategy ensures your social media presence remains consistent and impactful across all platforms. Here’s how you can get started creating a social media content plan:
1. Learn about your audience
Studying your audience can help you decide what types of posts will perform best. It can also help you choose the right social media platforms to use. Not all businesses will be successful on all platforms. For example, B2B businesses tend to perform well on LinkedIn and Facebook, while e-Commerce brands perform well on Instagram and TikTok.
Things you should identify about your target audience include:
- Age
- Gender
- Education
- Income
- Interests
- Geographical locations
Learning about your audience can help you develop buyer personas, allowing you to build a content plan that will increase engagement. The more accurately you understand who you're speaking to, the more meaningful connections you'll build through social media networks.
2. Set goals
All of your business and marketing initiatives need goals to help you measure performance. Without clear objectives, it's impossible to determine if your social media tools are delivering real business value. A few goals you can have for your social media strategy include
- brand awareness
- website traffic
- sales and lead generation
- engagement
3. Perform competitive analysis
If your competitors are already successfully using social media, check on their profiles to see what types of content are performing well for them. After all, you have the same target audience, so the types of posts that do well for them will likely perform well for you.
However, always make your posts unique. Never steal designs or copy from a competitor. Instead, use competitor research as inspiration to develop compelling social media content that showcases your brand's unique perspective and value.
4. Gather content
Your brand probably has a few pieces of content already developed for marketing use. Grab all your content and see what you can repurpose for social media. For example, if your website has a blog, consider the types of blogs you can post on social media to increase web traffic and brand awareness.
You can repurpose different types of content by making new content out of them. For example, your blog post can easily be turned into an infographic or video. This cross-platform content approach maximizes the value of every piece you create while maintaining a cohesive message.
5. Develop a content creation plan
You probably don’t have enough content to repurpose for daily posts, so you must have a content creation plan that allows you to spend quality time creating social media content. You don’t have to be a skilled designer to create beautiful posts.
Instead, you can use a content creation tool that allows you to create unique content without hiring a designer. Set aside time every month to develop content for the next month to always be prepared with content in case you run out.
You can also utilize content your followers and customers create for you. User-generated content (UGC) allows you to ask your followers and customers to send you photos and videos of them using the products.
Of course, some of your followers will do this for free, but you may have to incentivize customers to send you photos and videos by offering them discounts on products. This approach saves creation time and builds community while showcasing authentic experiences with your brand.
6. Create a calendar
Creating a content calendar can help you plan your social media posts ahead of time, helping to save you time. If you plan to post on social media daily, consider using a social media management platform that will allow you to schedule posts on all your platforms from one place.
These platforms allow you to track the effectiveness of your posts and analyze different aspects of your marketing strategy to help you make improvements in real time. A well-maintained calendar ensures your content marketing efforts remain consistent even during busy periods.
7. Evaluate content
After posting content, don’t forget about it. Re-evaluate your content regularly to help you determine which types of posts perform well and get the most engagement among your target audience.
You may be surprised by your findings, so use analytics tools to keep track of your likes, comments, and web traffic to ensure you’re utilizing the most effective types of content in your social media content plan. This data-driven approach to creating engaging content helps refine your social media content strategy over time, leading to better results with less effort.
12 Types of social media content to produce
Your success on social media entirely depends on the success of the content you post. Producing effective, high-performing content, however, presents a number of challenges for small businesses. It’s competitive, time consuming, and should ideally add value to your customer experience.
To help overcome these hurdles, content strategies usually include a varied mix of content types. When you include a rich assortment of these 12 different styles in your marketing strategy, you can create a more engaging experience for your audience.
Here are the advantages and disadvantages of each content format used by social media content creators, how to produce them, and the best platforms for them:
1. Written posts, blogs, articles, guides, and more
Advantages: These articles demonstrate your company’s knowledge and expertise, which can help build your credibility and reputation.
Disadvantages: There is a lot of blog content out there, so competition is thick—and you need a lot of creativity to create new topic ideas. Writing also takes a lot of time to generate content ideas, especially if you’re explaining complicated concepts.
How to produce: To help you think of compelling content, look at trending searches. This will give you insight into the questions people want answers to, which can spark ideas about what to write about.
Best platforms: LinkedIn and Facebook are perfect for these types of content, especially when it comes to articles that are 1,500 words or longer. You can post the whole piece, a short snippet, or a link to the piece. Twitter is also a great bet, but the limited character count means you can only include a link and small quote, which still can drive traffic to your website.
Pro Tip: Embrace the content calendar. Your social media calendar is a framework for the ongoing story you want to tell about your business and what content to share. When you take a holistic view of your social media or email marketing output, you can turn ideas and broad strategies into an actionable plan that can be tweaked as you learn more about what works best.
Use our content marketing editorial calendar to visualize when and how you connect with your audience. The calendar displays your scheduled and completed marketing emails, social posts, and digital ads. You can filter your calendar to display your marketing for a specific audience or all audiences.
2. Electronic books (eBooks)
Advantages: An eBook tends to be longer and more detailed than blog posts, which helps showcase your industry expertise. Far fewer businesses take the time to produce an eBook compared to blogs, too, so you avoid that heavy competition.
Disadvantages: Not everyone wants to read a whole eBook, and they take a lot of time to produce and find content that will appeal to your target audience. While they can help generate leads, people don’t always actually read them.
How to produce: An eBook is basically several blog posts compiled together as chapters from the same category. You’ll want to choose your best content or even hire a professional writer with experience writing eBooks.
Best platforms: Users come to LinkedIn to connect with colleagues and learn relevant information about their job or other interests, which makes it an ideal network to share an eBook. Facebook and Twitter are secondary options.
3. Links to external content
Advantages: If you don’t have time to finish a blog post or your writer is on vacation, you can always link to relevant articles, resources, and websites from other sources that you trust. Industry leaders are also excellent resources for content.
Disadvantages: When you link to content that you haven’t created, you’re effectively opening a door to another business’s social media experience. Readers may even find the other source more informative than your page. Content curation is a good digital marketing strategy to use on social networks, but it also can be time consuming. It is important to check your social analytics to be sure that curated content is engaging and effective, and not to stop your own content creation process.
How to create: Research different blogs using keywords similar to those on your website. (Keywords are words or phrases commonly searched on the internet.) Make sure to read every post and click around on the website, too. This will ensure you don’t share an article on social media accounts from a site that could negatively represent your brand’s views.
Best platforms: LinkedIn and Facebook are great marketing tools for any type of written content, even if it’s just links to the content. Twitter is a secondary option.
4. Images
Good images or video definitely increase engagement, and they endear your brand to customers. They can also keep customers from quickly swiping past your post and missing your message.
Advantages: Visual content is much more digestible and engaging than long-form blogs and articles. Smartphone cameras are sophisticated enough to take stunning pictures, and apps help you quickly edit them, add filters to them, and more.
Disadvantages: Image-focused platforms like Instagram have a lot of competition. If you want quality beyond a smartphone’s capabilities, a professional camera and editing software can cost a lot and be very time consuming to use.
How to produce: Pictures and images are some of the easiest content to create. It's as simple as grabbing your smartphone or camera and snapping a picture.
Best platforms: Images work well on every platform, but Instagram and Pinterest are by far the best networks for pictures. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Snapchat are alternative options. Attaching an image to a blog post can also help improve engagement and clicks.
5. Videos
With the advent of smartphone cameras, it’s never been easier to hit record. Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes it, and it can be a fun way to show off your wares. Plus, as livestreaming has hit the mainstream, consumer expectations for social video has shifted. Videos that feel rougher around the edges can feel more native to social platforms. Give it a shot and include them in your content strategies!
Advantages: Capturing videos is easy and convenient—and they’re more engaging than pictures. How-to guides, video tours, and product updates and demonstrations all make for great video content that can both drive traffic to your website and increase sales.
Disadvantages: It's inexpensive to make quick videos, but costs escalate if you want a high production level.
How to produce: Similar to images, video production has a range of difficulty. Where you decide to land on that spectrum will dictate whether you need specialized skills and equipment.
Best platforms: YouTube is the king of video content, but videos also perform well on Facebook. For shorter videos, Instagram is the best option, even above YouTube.
6. Video Stories
Advantages: Stories are images and short videos that last 24 hours before disappearing for good. They’re available on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. Keep users updated about events, offers, or other announcements—or give them a behind-the-scenes glimpse of your business. The possibilities are truly endless!
Disadvantages: The fear of missing out can be a powerful motivator, but their short life expectancy also means that some users might not engage with them.
How to produce: The option to produce image or video stories is in each social media network’s app. High-quality production is not needed, making them easy for any business to create.
Best platforms: Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have popularized this content type and remain the best options.
Understand the purpose of each platform
Different social media channels serve different purposes, and recognizing these differences is crucial for content performance. Knowing each platform's strengths helps you craft content that feels native rather than simply cross-posted.
Tailor your content to the platform
Each social network has its own culture and content preferences that should influence what you create and how you generate ideas for social posts. Many content creation tools now offer platform-specific templates to streamline this process.
Let's look at the different platforms and the content types that perform well on them:
- Instagram: This visually driven platform works best with high-quality images, short videos, and eye-catching graphics that stop scrollers in their tracks.
- TikTok: Success here comes from authenticity, participating in trending challenges, and creating short-form, entertaining content that showcases personality.
- LinkedIn: Share industry insights, company achievements, and valuable expertise that positions your brand as a trusted authority in your field.
- Twitter/X: Engage in timely discussions, respond to current events, and use concise messaging that invites interaction from your audience.
- Facebook: Focus on community-building content, local relevance, and posts that encourage meaningful conversation among your followers.
Repurpose smartly while maintaining platform context
While content creation services can help spread your core message across platforms, always ensure the format respects each channel's unique environment. What works on LinkedIn likely needs adjustment for TikTok.
Tracking engagement metrics across platforms can help social media managers identify where their audience is most responsive. This data should inform both your content strategy and advertising spend.
Remember that social media content can also impact your visibility on search engines when properly optimized with relevant keywords and hashtags. This additional traffic source makes strategic content planning even more valuable.
Bring your social media content plan to life
A well-executed social media content plan balances structure with adaptability. While having a strategic framework keeps your messaging consistent, building in flexibility allows you to respond to trending topics and unexpected opportunities.
Remember that your plan should evolve as you discover what resonates most with your audience. Don't be afraid to experiment with different formats, posting times, and content themes. The most successful social media strategies come from consistent learning and refinement based on real-world results.
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Key Takeaways
- A strategic social media content plan balances promotional and educational posts to provide real value to your audience while avoiding overselling.
- Understanding each platform's unique environment helps you craft content that feels native and performs better than generic cross-posted material.
- User-generated content builds community while saving creation time, showcasing authentic brand experiences that resonate with potential customers.
- Regularly analyzing engagement metrics across platforms reveals which content types perform best, allowing you to refine your strategy for maximum impact.