Always, always have a social media plan

Take a deep breath. Now let it out. It’s time to look at your social media plan for the year.

Are you on track? Have you put any of your plan in place? Do you even have a plan yet?

If you are part of a small office (like mine) you may not have yet taken to the time to evaluate your social media plan yet this year. So, let’s take the time today.

Your social media plan should be proactive, if you will. Often we find ourselves at the mercy of groups or clubs that want last minute posts about their event or fundraiser, or your coworker wants you to share a local business’ post about a discount that is going on today. How do you manage these last-minute requests?

Here are a few tips to ensure your social media plan is effective for both you, your schools and your community:

1. Schedule time for social media. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. I think it is crucial to a successful social media campaign (or just general use of social media for your organization) to plan and make time. So, make time for it. Spend 20 minutes a week and schedule a month’s worth of content.

2. Set standards. You should have criteria on what makes it on your page, when it goes up and how often it is posted. Stick to this. While those days come up that you need to share last-minute information, remind those eleventh-hour requesters that you can better promote their event, story or fundraiser ahead of time. Ask them to post to your page or share the info earlier.

3. Have enough, but not too much. You should encourage consistency within your organization. One school should not have separate pages for all groups while another only has one page for the entire school. Find out what works best, how those pages are being used and create some uniformity. If you have too many pages (one for each club in a school, and for the parent organization, and for the afterschool tutoring, and for…you get it), people won’t know where to go to get information or will miss information. Uniformity will help with this.

4. Share and share alike. You are busy. Your campus staff is busy. If you are going to post about your elementary school’s fundraiser, check out their pages. They have probably already posted the info. Look at the comments. Are there any questions that needed to be answered? Any other info that needed to be included? No? Share away. If so, share the status and include the answer in your post. And remind others they can share your content as well.