Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

In today’s day and age, social media marketers can find themselves buried under what seems to be piles upon piles of never-ending work. Keeping up with the demands of publishing content for your own business or company can be incredibly difficult and exhausting to manage. What are we to do? Lucky for you, we have an answer to that! By just scratching the surface, action planning, which is a phenomenal project management technique, not only allows us and our teams to hold each other accountable for what tasks are to be accomplished, but they enable us to stay on track with our goals by measuring our progress through Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. Keep reading to learn what it takes to craft your own, unique action plan! 

 

Understanding Action Plans

What’s the tea with these action plans anyway? According to Dr. Amy Jauman’s Social Media Project Management book, action plans outline the content creation journey and list each step needed to develop and share content. 

• Importance of Action Plans: What’s more, in developing your action plan, you, as well as those who are part of the plan, can prepare for and designate the necessary amount of time needed to finish your specific activities for both the content creation and sharing process of a campaign. As a result, and by sticking to high expectations, you and your company can be highly efficient in both your content development and delivery process. 

• Benefits of Action Plans: One key benefit of your action plan is that you and your team get the most bang for your buck by mitigating effort and saving time by being more productive in prioritizing your work. Additional benefits that action plans have the capability of bringing to your social media marketing campaigns also include, but are not limited to: 
  1. Enhanced brand recognition 
  2. Increased follower count
  3. More traffic to your website
  4. Better customer service

Key Components of an Action Plan 

Now that we have a better understanding of why action plans are beneficial, we must lay out the fundamental elements of what make up an action plan template.

• Project and Campaign Goals: This step should highlight what will be accomplished with your set goal during the duration of the project. For example, your project and campaign goal might look something like this: “Post a video showcasing the benefits of our new organic cotton shorts on TikTok to get 100 likes within four weeks.” 

• Action Items and Steps: This step includes any actions needed to complete your goal within your specified time frame. For instance, an action item can be seen in your action plan as: “Film and edit TikTok video on our new organic cotton shorts” or “Have team review the video before uploading to TikTok.” 

• KPIs: Using KPIs will help you measure the progress you and your team are making in completing specific tasks. To illustrate, your KPI may look like this: “Publish 3 differently themed videos of our organic cotton shorts to TikTok every week.” 

• Resources Needed: What resources will you and your team need to complete your action items? Will you need specific filming equipment, access to a certain location to film your content, or specific individuals to film, edit, and voice-over your TikTok videos? 

• Responsible Individuals: Create a section in your action plan that shows who is responsible for what task. For instance, “Johnny is responsible for filming Adam and Nick talking about our new organic cotton shorts for content by next Tuesday.” 

• Completion Dates: These dates make it clear when a specific task must be completed. 

 

Social Media Action Plan Protocols

Now that we have the basic skeleton of our action plan, we need to understand the following protocols when crafting them.

Actions that must be taken include stating the length of time it will take to complete each task, thinking of the resources needed to help aid in reaching your goal, knowing who is responsible for which task, and by what date each task must be completed by (some of the steps are highlighted in more detail in the above paragraph).

• In your planning phase, give yourselves enough time in your action plan to monitor any engagements you will receive regarding your posted content.

• When implementing your action plan, be sure to allocate enough time for posting news regarding your social media content.

• Assess your finished action plan to make sure that the resources you picked, such as specific team members, filming/photographing locations, and tools, will allow you enough time to complete the steps by their set completion date.

• After carrying out your action plan, see if there were any workflow improvements during the completion of your tasks, and take note of those for future projects.

 

How Regularly Should You Revisit Your Action Plan? 

So, now that we have our action plan created, how often should we revisit it? Daily, weekly, monthly? According to The University of Kansas’s article, Developing an Action Plan, they recommend that newer businesses create their plan during the first six months to a year of starting. For those who have been around for a while longer, it is recommended to update your action plan at least once a month. 

 

What If Your Action Plan Runs into a Snag?

Though we often hope for things to go smoothly, they don’t always go according to plan. For instance, what if you crafted a spectacular action plan, but as your campaign proceeds, you fall behind in reaching certain tasks? Well, the LinkedIn article, What are the best strategies for adjusting your action plan when faced with unexpected obstacles? recommends that you consider the following six steps:

1. Evaluate the scenario
2. Revisit your goals and make changes as necessary
3. Approach your strategies from different angles  
4. Discuss the obstacle with your team
5. Take this situation as a learning opportunity
6. Take recognition of the achievements you have already made 

 

Final Word

Wrapping up our conversation on action plans, I hope that you at least feel a bit more confident in your understanding of what goes into a proper action plan. We’d love to hear what other insights you may have on action plans in the comments below! 

 

Author: Sam Cuellar

Digital Marketing graduate from DePaul University, Marketing and Sales Coordinator at the National Institute for Social Media, and professional bass player with a passion for music, traveling, and weightlifting.