If you own a small business, having enough resources is always a struggle, especially when it comes to marketing efforts.

Here are eight key elements of a social media plan to help you get started.

1. Determine your goals

What are you trying to accomplish with social media? Is it brand awareness? Are you trying to drive more people to your website or blog? Are you selling a product or service?

Establishing your goals will help guide the social platforms you choose. It will be especially important when you start developing and sharing content to those platforms.

2. Define your audience

If you’ve already started your business, you should have a good idea of your target audience. Once you know who you’re targeting, you will want to research what social platforms that community is spending time on.

3. Choose your social platforms

Before we get into which social platforms to choose, it’s crucial to note that you shouldn’t take on more than you can manage. To start, it might be best to create two to three social profiles that you will be able to manage.

When trying to decide which platforms you should be on, think back to the audience you’re trying to attract. Pinterest and Instagram are visual platforms, so if your business creates great images then you should consider having a presence on these platforms. Having a Facebook presence is often a safe bet since it’s the largest social network where you can reach the most people.

Once you’ve created social accounts, make sure the “about” section of your profiles is completed so people know what your company is and what kind of content they can expect from you.

4. Create a content plan  

Before diving into writing social posts, it helps to create a content plan. This is simply deciding how often you want to post to each platform, the key themes you want to post about, and how much of that content will be unique content you want to post.

5. Create a content calendar—and post

When you’re the sole person responsible for social media, creating a content calendar helps you plan out content and stick to the frequency you laid out.

Once you’ve developed a content calendar, take advantage of inexpensive (even free) social media management tools out there. These tools make it easy to schedule content so if you only have a few hours a week to devote to social media, you can schedule all content for that week and not have to think about it again.

6. Visuals are important

Finding good images to use with your posts can be a pain. But remember, it’s often the most important aspect of creating good social content. Tools like Canva make it easy, especially for non-graphic designers, to quickly create images. They also have a ton of great templates to choose from.

7. Don’t just share. Engage.

If you want to be successful in social media, then you need to do more than just publish your content and hope that people will see it. You must build a following and gain authority, it’s also important to engage with the community you’re trying to attract. Here are a few ways to help you engage:

• Find relevant sites and blogs and follow their social profiles.
• Like, comment, and share content from those sites and blogs’ social profiles. People (and companies) appreciate it when others share their content. It also lets people know that you’re on social media, engaging and sharing content they may find relevant.

8. Measure and optimize

Most social platforms have analytics that you can access for free (i.e. Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics). Make sure you take advantage of the data available to you so you can see what content has the most engagement (likes, comments, shares, retweets, etc.) and URL clicks. Understanding what your followers are responding to will help you create better content.