My Social Media Action Plan

When it comes to running a business it is very important to have goals.  It is equally important to be very clear with your goals in terms of specific details, a means of measuring the success of your goals, and setting up a timeline in which to carry out those goals.  Otherwise you might as well wish on the first star you see and hope for the best.

This month I have three goals I will be working on. Today's post focuses on my first goal; creating a social media action plan.  I have accounts on facebook, twitter, google+, and pinterest, and I have been posting to each of them, but not consistently and not with a deliberate thought as to the content.  As a visual learner, I am all about charts. I am also an old school type of person.  I didn't see a template I liked so I grabbed a piece of notebook paper, my trusty ruler, and the all-important colored markers.

For facebook, twitter, and google+ I am starting with six categories for posts; humor, me (something related to my shop), question, informational, quote, and share (blog posts and items by others I like). Below is just the first week. I plan on one post from each category once per day on each of the three sites. I figured out how to schedule posts for facebook and twitter, but not google+ yet (other than blog posts, which will post automatically), so those I will be entering as I do them, or until I learn how to schedule those, as well.  The "me" posts and the "share" posts are blank as I haven't planned those yet. I staggered the time and the day for the posts.

I have the quotes written on a separate piece of paper so I can keep track of which ones I have already used and I made a separate bookmark folder to keep track of links for informational posts. The images for my humor posts are saved on my computer.

I will be working on next week's schedule throughout this week, so I am not working into the wee hours on Sunday night, like I did last night. I'm sure this will get easier and more automatic as I go.  The plan is to add more posts throughout the day as I get a handle on my new system.

For pinterest I plan on posting three pins in three separate categories per day. (I usually post more, but this is my minimum goal and I will be keeping track of these, as well. I have made a list of my boards, so I know which ones I need to post on for any given day).

Of course, a good plan needs to have some form of measure to judge its success...or failure, so it can be tweaked as needed.  Below I have listed my beginning followers/fans for each of the sites, plus I added my Etsy followers and shop likes.  At the end of the month I will again record the numbers and take note of any changes.  I will also keep track of the best post per site (noting the category, day, and time of day).  This may take longer than one month for any definitive results, but I haven't done this yet, so I am curious to see how this turns out.

I would love any comments you may have on my action plan. I'd also love to know how you keep track of your goals. If you have a blog post on this topic, please share your link below.