8 Mind-Blowing Social Media Management Strategy Templates

Add business value in everything you do on social. Here’s a quick and convenient list of the most popular social media management templates out there.

Marketing budget spent on social media will double before 2020. If you’re gonna spend that much, you’d better align your social media strategy with business goals. You should know how to measure social media success. Sadly, most marketers are not there yet.

The impact of social media on business is most often measured using typical ‘vanity metrics’ such as number of friends, followers or likes. ‘Audience size’ and ‘website traffic’ complete the top three ‘most important’ metrics. Which is a shame. Likes and website traffic may stroke your ego, but in isolation they won’t bring you any closer to marketing success.

Turning tweets into actual loafs of bread is a skill that will actually bring tangible success. But very few companies have mastered it. Just 14% tie social media efforts to actual sales numbers. So there’s room for improvement…

Hit the ground running - use a template

To help you get your social media strategy goals straight in the shortest time possible, here’s a list of the most popular social media strategy templates on offer. After you’ve read this quick overview, you’ll be able to tie social media KPIs to business goals (and turn tweets into bread) like very few can.

You’ll notice the list containing strategies from many different companies is a bit irregular. That is because there are no standards to tying social media to business goals. Every company uses a different categorization and has its own approach. Where necessary, we’ve rewritten wordy passages to fit our more accessible format. Otherwise, we’ve tried to stick to the original wording as much as possible.

One word of caution: this post is strictly about aligning social media activity to business goals. If you want to know how to execute social media related tasks, check out our post on content marketing execution checklists. Or remind yourself of the difference between execution strategies and management strategies, if you’re in the market for that.

So there you go. Half a day’s worth of saved time, in the shape of 800 words. Vanity metrics go out. Relevant, measurable social media goals come in. Some days, things just seem to fall in place…

Social media strategy template Quick Reference Guide

TDK Technologies

Increase market share: sales, leads, sales reviews, churn, CLV.

Enhance the company brand: exposure, reputation, engagement, reach of thought leadership.

Improve business intelligence: prospects and clients, competitors, and industry, technology and management trends.

Reduce costs of doing business and enhance productivity: top talent recruitment, internal communications, company morale, marketing ROI.

Terrence Ngu Teck Kong

Increase Exposure: Reach, Impression, Views.

Increase Traffic: Page views, Unique Visitor, length of visits.

Increase Engagement: Likes, Shares, Comments, Pins, +1, Retweets, Favorites.

Garner Marketplace Insight: Survey Entries, Comments.

Develop Loyal Fans: Fans, Followers.

Generate Leads: Hard lead, Soft Lead.

Grow Business Partnership: Contacts.

Improve Sales: Orders, New Customer, Sales Revenue.

Scoop.it

Acquire thought leadership and influence: retweets, comments, forwards, posts and pins.

Establish or promote brand reach: FB interaction, email CTR, YouTube views, pins and repins.

Convert awareness to action: consideration, conversion.

Increase customer sentiment score: comment sentiment, user comments on company behalf.

Hootsuite

Brand awareness: reach.

Thought leadership: consumption.

Word of mouth: shares, retweets.

Leads: actions.

Sales: conversion.

Jay Bear

Consumption: page views, video views, document views, downloads, social chatter.

Sharing: shares, tweets, likes, +1s, and pins, email forwards, inbound links.

Lead Generation: form completions and downloads, email subscriptions, blog subscriptions, blog comments, conversion rate.

Sales: online sales, offline sales.

Simply measured

Create awareness: brand content impressions and reach, top of mind, share of voice.

Generate demand: number of engagements, type of engagement.

Drive Conversion: brand offer link clicks.

Delight Customers: earned mentions, customer care response times.

Inspire evangelism: customer influencer references, word of mouth, NPS.

Marketingland

Increase brand awareness: total number of likes or followers, total brand mentions/retweets, influencer brand mentions, site entrances, app downloads.

Drive website traffic: total web visits, visits driven by social media, time on site, overall engagement of social users.

Drive visitor loyalty: pages per session, average session duration, percent of new sessions to your site.

Improve conversion rates: total site entries, total conversions, assisted social conversions.

Carter Hostelley

This template takes a slightly different approach. It encourages us to focus on different metrics in different stages of social media ‘maturity’. Work your way down the list and rely on different metrics as you gain more social media experience.

Activity-Based Goals: Number of blog posts, tweets per day.

Audience-Building Goals: Number of email blog subscribers, followers on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Engagement Goals: social reach of your content, retweets, mentions, likes, comments, contact with industry influencers.

ROI Goals: leads, landing page clicks, social media marketing return on investment.

You now have an overview of what’s on offer. Pick your favorite template, stick to it, and you’ll be on your way to a more structured and more effective social media presence.

It feels good to know everything you do on social media adds business value. It feels good to use a social media strategy template.