While utilizing social media has quickly grown to be at the forefront of business marketing strategy, not all pages are made equal. In fact, the upkeep of your company’s social media can make or break a brand, keeping audiences aware of your existence and garnering further interest.
Traditionally, a social media strategy plan went as follows:
- Create profile page
- Post information
- Gain followers
- Success!
In today’s day and age, this simply won’t cut it. Luckily, sifting through the noise and operating a successful social media page rests in one simple thing: templates.
Social media templates are a foolproof way to keep content creative, organized, and up-to-date. As a system of spreadsheets and files that track your social media presence from conception to user clicks, templates are designed to save you time and energy.
And to make it even easier, we’ve compiled five must-have social media templates for your business to use.
Ideation/editorial templates
First and foremost, you need to sit down and devise what exactly you want on social media. This is vital to the image of your brand, as it shapes the content and quality you’ll be administrating throughout an ongoing period of time.
What kinds of posts do you plan to make? What is their focus, and when will they go out? Will you be utilizing multimedia, such as videos or audio files? Do you have blogs you wish to link up or other external domains to cross advertise?
You can keep track of all these editorial ideas through a simple Google or Excel spreadsheet. Vertical columns will include information like content title, content topic, author, date of publication, and publication platforms (what social media sites you intend to share on). Together, you’ve now created a simple content timeline.
Content calendar templates
A content calendar is your next time-saving template tool. After you’ve conceptualized and created web content, you’ll need to actually track it.
Much like the editorial template, this one will include easy-to-read columns intended to show what’s working and what’s not. What copy has been clicked on the most? What accounts do you post on too much? Which stories aren’t getting traffic? A content calendar keeps you aware of all these things.
Media strategy templates
Otherwise known as social media plan templates, these documents guide the very reasoning behind your online presence. A good social media strategy plan outlines your goals: What do you want to achieve through social media? Do accounts and profiles accurately represent the brand? Do you have accountability metrics in place to measure results? These types of questions – and more – you’ll want to address.
Profile aesthetic templates
A page is only as good as the impression it gives. This means you’ll need image templates to arrange and update social media images. Incorporate PowerPoint templates with design displays and image size trackers to best manage space. Outline a color scheme and stick to it. Keep things clean, professional, and modern.
Content uploading templates
Time is money, and you certainly want to be as cost-effective as possible. What better way to do so that by downloading a content manager template that can actually publish your tweets and updates for you?
The number one automated content publisher is Hootsuite, though others certainly exist that may better fit your ideal. Off of a .cvs file (TextEdit or NotePad), key in your content’s desired publication date and time, your exact message, and the URL destination. It’s that simple.
Together these templates will jumpstart your social media prowess and make your pages more popular than ever.
About the Author:
This post comes from Orange Digital, a web design agency in Brisbane. Not just a web design firm, their blog contains plenty of social media tips and tricks including ways to promote your business.
