Plan your social media strategy with this step-by-step template (available in Word, Google Docs and as a PDF). This free template will guide you through the process of setting up social media goals, choosing the best social networks to focus on, analyzing competitors and more.

You can use this template as a tool to help sell social media packages to new clients, get buy-in for increasing your social media marketing budget, or to plan and implement a social media strategy to grow your own business.

Why Use a Social Media Strategy Template?

Social media can be a powerful marketing channel. But it’s not enough to share links to new blog posts you publish. Or automatically retweet every piece of industry news. People expect variety, engagement, and native content that’s tailored to each social network.

At the same time, there are so many networks now that it can be hard to figure out which ones are worth focusing on for the best ROI. Or engagement techniques that work on each platform.

This template will help you plan, organize and implement a social media marketing strategy that will drive actual business results. (Not just likes and follows.)

Whether you’re just starting out. Or if you have a team of social media managers covering multiple platforms. You can customize this template to get the most from your efforts.

What’s Included

Here’s what’s included in this social media strategy template:

1. Setting clear goals and social media KPIs: These will act as your North Star as you plan and implement your social media strategy.
2. Foolproof methods to choose the right social networks: Learn how to use competitive research, Google Analytics and other techniques to pick the best networks to invest in.
3. Strategic engagement and promotion plan: Setting up a plan of attack to maximize your reach and engagement, and ensuring you have the right tools for the job.

How to Use This Template

1. Download the free Social Media Strategy Template on this page
2. Log into your existing social media accounts (if any)
3. Follow the instructions in this template and fill in the blanks
4. Implement the strategies from the template
5. Refer to the template frequently to stay organized and improve your results

How to Get The Most Out of This Template

Planning out your strategy is an important step in getting as much value as possible from social media. However, it’s only a jumping-off point. Here are some other tips to improve your results:

• Make sure the content you’re producing is top-notch. It’s hard to build a following if you’re always sharing low-quality content. Or selling all the time. Consistently publish great stuff and watch your follower count grow.
• Be sure to actually engage. Social media is a two-way street: the more you interact with people, the more chances you’ll have to develop new fans and customers.
• Use the other social media templates I’ve provided to help streamline your processes.
• Finally, remember that social media is only one part of a well-rounded marketing strategy. Additional areas to explore include SEO, content marketing and email marketing.