Post 6: Strategic Planning

    You always need a strategic plan for social media. A strategic plan is useful for taking a concept from thought to finished product. There are 15 different components to a strategic plan.

    1. Background Information: is needed to know what has already happened so you can go forward and be creative in the future.

    2. Brand Voice: is the voice and personality of the company, not your personal self.

    3. Vision and Mission: is seeing what you want to strive for and figuring out the key elements to get it

    4. Environmental Scan Analysis: includes many different factors that can help make decisions while evaluating the landscape. 

    5. Client or Company in Focus: is all the accomplishments, challenges, and key events that made the company what it is today.

    6. Social Medica Communication Audit: is a full and comprehensive analysis and evaluation of all content and platforms

    7. Situational Analysis: is taking all the data and information you have collected and combining them all into an organized set of information.

    8. SWOT: stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats. 

    9. Goals: this is what you overall want to achieve.

    10. Objectives: are statements of what you want to accomplish.

    11. Key Audience Members: these are the people that interact and respond with your content and channels the most. 

    12. Strategies and Tactics: this is the plan and the tools to execute it.

    13. Evaluation: even though this part may sometimes get overlooked, it is very important to evaluate everything you have done to make sure the strategy you are using is working.

    14. Budget: it's important to have a budget to be able to have all the resources and tools that you need.

    15. Calendar: using applications like Hootsuite can help you schedule everything out, and it is important to have everything scheduled out so that any time-sensitive or paid content is released on-time.