Social media plays a significant role in marketing for Black Friday, and now that even more businesses have transitioned online, it's more important than ever to nail down your Black Friday social media strategy. Keep reading for a step-by-step guide to planning and running this year's Black Friday social media campaign for your small business.
Step 1: Define measurable goals for your campaign
It's always smart to define your goals before you plan anything else around your campaign. Ever heard of SMART goals? By considering each aspect of the SMART acronym when writing out your goals, you improve the chances of accomplishing them.
Specific - be specific about what you want to accomplish. Answer the what, why, how, when, and where questions.
Measurable - ensure you can accurately measure your goal. What metrics are you going to use? Common metrics for social campaigns include engagement and reach.
Attainable - set an attainable, realistic goal for yourself. Think about whether you have all the tools and skills necessary to accomplish each goal.
Relevant - be sure that your goals are in line with your company strategy.
Timely - think hard on the timeline of your goals and when you're projecting to accomplish them. Remember to be realistic!
Step 2: Decide which social media platforms you're going to use
Where are you going to publish your campaign materials? Choose which social networks you'd like to use.
Additionally, decide whether you're going to promote your content. You can choose to boost your content on Instagram or Facebook, set up a Facebook ad campaign, or advertise your business on Pinterest.
Step 3: Draw out your content calendar and content plan
Creating a content calendar helps you plan out your content in advance. When planning your content strategy ahead of time, you can avoid typos and mistakes, save time, and create higher quality content.
Having a content calendar full of scheduled social media posts also gives you some wiggle room to fit in more content as you see fit. You already have everything planned out, so you can move things around to accommodate as needed.
Here are the steps you should take when planning out your Black Friday and holiday content calendar:
Decide what your calendar needs to track
You should record the date and time for each post in your content calendar, but decide if you also need to track the copy, the images, the tags, hashtags, location tags, or categories. This process will be unique to your business.
Figure out how often you're going to post
What does your daily, weekly and monthly social media cadence look like? Are you going to post once per day to Instagram and four times per week to Facebook? Maybe a few times per day on each social channel? Decide on a consistent, realistic posting rhythm that works for you and your business.
Decide on workflow
How often are you going to work on social media throughout the week? The month? Decide how often you're going to revisit your content calendar, whether or not you need to run any posts by approvers or co-workers, and generally how much work you should put in to keep things running smoothly.
Step 4: Create your social media content
Now that you've figured out the basic needs of your content calendar, start creating your content. Brainstorm some ideas, and then go into Ripl and start creating!
Use Ripl to create professional social media posts for your Black Friday campaign. See below for a few of our Black Friday template collections - click on them to start creating your own!
Don't forget to include your businesses' branding and logo in your social media content.
Step 5: Schedule your social media content
Scheduling your social media content ahead can save you time during the busy holiday season. Think about it: the last thing you want to be doing the week of Black Friday is getting online to post your social media posts every few hours! You can get that valuable time back by preparing ahead of time.
Ripl allows you to schedule your social media content to all your social channels in advance. Use the calendar in the Ripl app, or be sure to use your external content calendar simultaneously to keep track of what you're scheduling.
Step 6: Go live!
Once you've scheduled out all your content and you're satisfied with how your content calendar looks, the next step is to go live with your campaign! Once your campaign has begun, be sure to monitor your social posts on a regular basis, respond to comments and DMs, and follow that workflow that you originally set in step 3.
Step 7: Measure your social media performance
Remember those SMART goals you came up with? Be sure to measure your performance to goal once your campaign comes to a close. This will help you determine if your campaign was successful, and you can learn valuable insights to help you plan your next social media campaign.
Now that you know how to plan your Black Friday social media strategy, use the same approach for the rest of the holiday season! Check out our social media calendar for the remainder of 2020 to get planning.
