Do you feel like social media is a time suck? Having a strong social media plan template can make all the difference in being efficient and productive.

IE 188: How to Create a Social Media Plan Template with Andrea Jones

Social media can feel incredibly overwhelming. You can spend hours on different platforms and feel like you’re not accomplishing anything. Is it really worth it? Are you just wasting your time? 

Today I’m talking to Andrea Jones about how to create a social media plan template that will not only save you time but help you grow your business. 

You will walk away with five pillars to help you plan your content and a great strategy to help you continue to grow your business in only 10-15 minutes a day! 

Andrea Jones is a social media strategist who is passionate about helping entrepreneurs, change-makers, and creatives figure out their social media in a way that makes sense for them. 

She loves to help those who feel overwhelmed by social media and aren’t sure how to handle doing “all the things.” (Tip: You don’t have to do all the things!)

Turn Off The Notifications

Andrea doesn’t have any of her notifications turned on on her phone. She doesn’t get alerts from Instagram, Facebook Messenger, or even from her emails. It’s a huge distraction and not having that distraction allows her to enjoy social media more. 

As business owners, entrepreneurs, and creatives we have a lot of work to do. We are pulled in a million different directions. Social media is a small piece of that and it’s an easy place to get stuck. 

Turning off notifications was a small way that Andrea pulled herself out of the endless scroll that we all sometimes get stuck in. 

This also allows you to be more intentional with the time you spend on social media. 

Building Your Influence

How do you come up with a social media plan? 

The very first thing you want to start out with is an outcome or goal. What do you want to get out of social media? 

It’s easy to get stuck in a number of followers, or even just wanting “engagement.” At the end of the day, what you really want is to build your influence and your business. 

You can have an influential business with only 100 incredibly dedicated followers. Don’t get caught up in the numbers and vanity metrics. 

Think about your why and your goal for your business. That will indicate how you should spend your time on social media. 

The Two Parts of a Social Media Plan

There are two general and structural things you want to consider when creating your plan.

1. The content. 
2. The growth strategy. 

You want to make sure that your content is always linking back to your big “why.” 

You need fresh people coming to your account regularly. These are the people who will be building up your community. Different people at different levels are what will build up your tribe. 

When you’re building up your plan, you have to focus on both of these parts. 

Growing Your Tribe 

If your goal is to get more podcast listeners and you are posting about that on your social media, you might not see many likes or comments, because you are telling your social media audience to go listen to your podcast. And they might not be podcast listeners. 

If you decided that you’re going to find your soulmate, you’re not going to sit and home and wait for someone to come to you. You’re going to put yourself out there, whether through an app or mutual friends, etc.

You have to also put yourself out there on your social media. You have to start a conversation and create a relationship with people before asking them to follow you, listen to your podcast, or buy your products. 

You want to look through hashtags for people who may be interested in your business, communicating with followers of larger accounts who have a similar niche to yours, going through your current followers, and seeing who they are following and engaging with. 

This is an ongoing networking process. 10-15 minutes a day is all you need to spend working on this growth strategy. 

The 5 Pillars of Content

There is a social media template that will work for everyone. There are five pillars to this template: 

• Promotional content: This involves talking about what you do, sharing your lead magnets, selling your products and services, etc. 

• Educational content: These are facts, tips, fun facts, did you know, etc. This establishes you as an authority and influence in your space. 

• Community content: This showcases that other people in your space are also talking about these topics. This could be a post or article from someone else. 

• Entertainment content: Most people don’t log onto social media, hoping to see an ad, so think about how you can bring a level of entertainment to your business. Think behind the scenes content: drama, celebrations, even what you had for dinner. 

• Engaging content: This is two-fold: it brings the community together by having a conversation (by asking a question, using a poll, etc.), and it trains the algorithm to love your content. Seeing activity on your posts shows the algorithm that your content is valuable. 

You want to start with a good balance of all 5 pillars. This can change as time goes on and your business grows. You might reach a point where you only are using 1 of these pillars. 

Starting with these five pillars is a great way to do a reset and see what’s working with your social media content plan. 

Repurposing Content 

You can’t do everything. There are two platforms that are front-runners for Andrea: Instagram and LinkedIn. These are the platforms where you can grow your audience the fastest. 

Here’s the catch: if you log onto LinkedIn and you hate it and have no desire to use it, then don’t use it. You have to enjoy a platform in order to use it regularly. 

Think about what works for you and what you want to be doing. Also, think about where your audience is hanging out. 

Think about ways you can repurpose your IG stories into content for your main feed and vice versa. The people who pay attention to stories are different than those who pay attention to the feed. 

Repurposing this content also allows you to cut down on the overwhelm of creating too much content. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel every single time. 

You want to be interacting with other people’s content that way that you want them to interact with yours. 

• Like and comment. 
• Respond to stories with a DM. 
• Answer polls. 

You never know where this type of networking and relationship-building might take you. 

Commit to Time Limits

The reason most people get frustrated with social media is that they are spending way too much time on it and not getting a good return on their investment. It makes them feel like they aren’t making any progress. 

The parameters that Andrea recommends are:

• Set a time limit. 
• Limit yourself to one hour of social media content creation per week. 
• Spend 10-15 minutes a day actively growing your audience. 

Commit to this plan, and you will find yourself feeling less overwhelmed by social media, and you will see progress. 

Deciding to Outsource

If you can afford to outsource, there are a few things you should look for when thinking about hiring someone. 

• Find someone who is excited about your niche and topics. 

• Find someone who has a process in place for taking your ideas and turning them into social media posts, or find someone you’re willing to teach.

• Find someone who has a proven way to show you results.

Interview a few people and find someone who fits your needs and go from there. 

If you want to learn more about things like the five pillars of content you can check out Andrea’s Social Media Success Framework, which is her approach to social media, content, analytics, growth strategies, and more. You can also follow her on Instagram.