Social media action plan: How to create it

Sigh Ahhh the action plan.

Some call it “getting your hands dirty”, “rolling up your sleeves” or even “bending the spring”.

Regardless of what we call it, an action plan is the “making it happen” part of your social media strategy (and marketing in general).

It is what will actually help you achieve the goals you have set.

In this article we will show you a methodology that you can use at this stage of strategic planning for your social networks, how you can communicate these actions with your team and how to transform these actions into effective tasks.

If you want to go directly to a specific part of the article, here is your navigation menu:

• What is a social media action plan?

• The main components of an action planThe 5W’s and 1H methodology

• Create a strategic plan to communicate with your team

• Focus on 1 quarter at a time

• Divide actions into monthly, weekly and daily tasks

• Put it all together – article summary

What is a social media action plan?

It is common for there to be confusion between an action plan and a social media strategy. But these two, despite complementing each other, are different.

The action plan is part of the social media management strategy – especially because, as our Social Media Coordinator says: a plan without action, is just a dream.

And the purpose of an action plan is to define in detail what actions we are going to carry out in order to achieve the social media objectives that we have defined.

• Before we move forward (and before you panic too), it’s important that you: Prepare a briefing ;
• Benchmark your competitors and brands that inspire you;
• Audit your social networks ;
• Prepare a SWOT analysis ;
• Define the objectives you want to achieve;
• Build your brand’s buyer personas ;
• And define which channels it should be on.

With this information you will be able to define your action plan.

The main components of an action plan

Now, to define an action plan, in addition to already having your strategy defined, you will need clarity, organization and focus.

And to help you with this, we will show you the 5W’s 1H methodology.

The 5W’s and 1H:

The 5W’s 1H is a technique with a series of questions that you should ask when defining an action.

Who

It’s safe to say that “who” is the most important question you’ll need to ask to help you define your social media action plan.

Not only must you define who you want to reach with your actions (your buyers personas) but also who will carry them out (your team, whether internal or external).

This will make your communication easier, since instead of talking to young adults, between 23 and 30 years old, with interests in water sports, you will be communicating to 26-year-old Joana that she likes canoeing, but has difficulty finding the perfect equipment.

After that, ask yourself who will be involved in the actions you are going to implement? Who are the key people to carry out the task from start to finish?

Make sure you assign your tasks depending on the team you have. And most importantly, to the people you know are capable of doing it (this will become clearer when you define your “what”).

What

At this stage, it is important to ask yourself:

• What are you going to do in your actions?
• What will your campaigns or publications be about?
• What are we going to communicate in our campaigns?
• What will keep your customers coming back?
• What could be an obstacle for us?

Remember to look at your goals to help guide what you should include in your actions.

With these answers you will now be able to look at who will delegate the tasks within your team and what type of resources you will need.

Why

Knowing why you are doing your actions is important not only because it gives you context for the actions you are going to perform, but it also effectively rationalizes what you have to do.

By asking yourself why at every stage of your action plan, you will automatically understand whether a certain action makes sense for your brand, goals, and audience.

Based on the insights you obtain from this answer, adjust what you defined, especially in the “What” question.

This question is simple, and if asked regularly during the action plan, it will avoid embarrassment and delays in the future, as you won’t find yourself saying “Well… after all, it doesn’t make much sense to do it like that”.

Where

Where will you implement actions to help you achieve your goals?

Here, it is important to define which channels are for each specific action.

Depending on the channels you choose, you will have to consider adapting your copy, tone of voice, content format and publication time.

For example, when planning a Christmas campaign you can define the concept, promotion, and products to be promoted at the macro level of the brand, and then think about specific actions per channel:

• A giveaway on Instagram;
• A community on WhatsApp to share tips and gift ideas;
• A promotional video for YouTube (channel and advertisements);
• Reels for Instagram;
• etc

Analyze your previous campaigns with Swonkie reports to understand their performance and be able to adjust everything for the next actions.

When

The “when” question is divided into 2 sections.

• The first concerns the question of “when will they start to be planned and built?” If you are going to run a seasonal campaign (like Christmas, for example), thinking about when you are going to plan it will impact the level and relevance of outputs you will produce. This is because, naturally, if you start planning your campaign 2 weeks in advance, it probably won’t have the same quality as if you plan it longer.

• The second concerns the question “when are we going to start the action?”. What days/months will you launch your campaign? And at what time will you publish the content?To do this, you can understand the best time to reach your specific audience through Swonkie’s advanced reports .

Finally, defining when is also extremely important to coordinate with other departments what you will need from them.

If you require paid ads, the traffic manager needs to have all the necessary content and information before the campaign’s start date. If you need approval from the sales department to offer a discount or promotion, you need to speak to them before you start creating the content. And so on.

“How much”

Despite not originally being part of the 5 W’s methodology, the “How much” question is the one that will define whether the action plan is viable or not, or whether it will have to be adjusted to fit the budget.

And if a plan without action is a dream, an action plan without a budget is an impossible dream.

Therefore, always ask yourself how much you will need.

Create a strategic plan to communicate with your team

When planning your actions, it is essential to write them down and write them down in a formal document, so you can share them with your team.

In this document you must state your action, clearly described it, and respond to all the previous points.

Focus on 1 quarter at a time

Once you have your actions defined, you can focus on executing them over periods of 3 months at a time.

Why? Because most industries operate (or are impacted) by a competitive and fast-paced environment (especially if they work with social media or technology), it forces them to constantly adapt and plan.

Another reason why you should focus on quarters is the great flexibility it gives you in adapting actions that are not having good results and in allocating or adapting resources to different actions, if necessary.

Divide actions into monthly, weekly, and daily tasks

Finally, once you have listed all your actions, create tasks and distribute them over the months, weeks, and days.

This way you will be able to ensure that you can measure your results and that you are investing your time in what actually needs to be done to make progress and achieve the desired results.

See the following example of how you can divide a goal into actions, and actions into tasks.

If the objective is “Increase visits to product page X by 35%”, then you will need to define actions and tasks:

Monthly

• Action: Launch one promotional campaign per monthTask 1 – Define the discount
• Task 2 – Develop the campaign concept
• Task 3 – Select influencers and content creators
• Task 4 – Plan and send 4 newsletters

Weekly

• Publish 10 posts on Instagram:Task 1 – Brainstorming session
• Task 2 – Creation of the editorial calendar
• Task 3 – Creating copies
• Task 4 – Creating images
• Task 5 – Schedule publications

Daily

• Manage the communityTask 1 – Monitor what people are saying about the brand
• Task 2 – Reply to all messages and comments
• Task 3 – Comment and follow accounts relevant to the brand

Putting all the pieces together – article summary

If you only have 5 minutes to read this article, here is a small summary:

• An action plan is different from a social media strategy. The action plan is part of the social media strategy. And as an action plan involves, concretely defining the actions that will be carried out in a given period of time, you must ensure that they make sense, have a purpose, and that you have a team and budget to implement them.
• You can use the 5 W’s e 1H methodology (Who, What, Where, When, Why, How much)
• After defining your actions, you should write them down in a document to be able to communicate these actions with your team.
• Finally, define which tasks are necessary to perform each action and distribute them by month, week, and day, as shown in the example above.

Is it clearer? So now all we need to do is make it happen!