A Social Media Plan to save you hours of work

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe - Abraham Lincoln

In our professional lives, we have lots of tasks to complete. You’ll have to-do lists, emails, meetings, and that’s all before fitting in some actual work! How can we ensure that we’re efficiently using our time and still maximizing on results?

When it comes to social media, the key is an effective social media strategy and an actionable activity plan.

Think strategy first, plan second

A strategic marketing activity plan for your social media allows you to focus on the important factors that are going to help you meet your business objectives, and not get weighted down to the unproductive elements. Spending time and effort to create a well-structured plan can make all the difference between success and failure.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail - Benjamin Franklin

SOSTAC is a widely used marketing & business planning framework that can be adapted for businesses of all sizes. In our Social Media Strategy course, we use the SOSTAC methodology as the framework to create an effective social media strategy.

SOSTAC stands for:

• Situational Analysis - where are we now?
• Objectives & KPIs - where do we want to go?
• Strategy - how do we get there?
• Tactics - the details of channels, activity
• Actions - who does what and when?
• Control - your plan for measurement

Our downloadable Activity Plan Template will help you to plan your social media activity based on the SOSTAC methodology.

How to use the template

Click to view the Activity Plan Template and download your own copy to make changes. You can download as a Google Sheets document to save to your drive, or download and save elsewhere as an Excel file.

The Activity Plan contains six columns:

• Business Objective
• SMART Objective
• Strategy
• Tactics
• Actions
• KPIs

Start by adding your overall business objectives to column A.

Add your SMART objectives to column B. You may have more than one SMART objective per business objective, so you may need to split cells. You’ll see some example SMART objectives already in column B to get you started, just remember to make these SMART objectives SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-based).

Add your top-level strategy to column C.

Add your different tactics to column D. You may have multiple tactics under the same strategy. If this is the case, split the cells and add these tactics in as separate line items.

Add specific actions required for the tactics to column E. If you’re working in Google Sheets you can assign the action to different people in your team using the comments function.

Add your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to column F. You can set these by referring back to your SMART objectives.

Now you’re ready to execute your social media strategy. You can download our Content Calendar Template to start creating some social media content.

Find out more about the SOSTAC methodology and how to create an effective social media strategy on our Social Media Strategy.