Maintaining a basic social media presence is relatively easy—you post a couple times a week, you reply to some comments, and you’re done. But growing your social media presence in a way that drives meaningful results (including increased revenue) is a different story entirely.
That doesn’t mean it’s not possible, though. With the help of this definitive social media checklist, you can stop wondering what you should focus your social media efforts on and start enjoying the benefits of a comprehensive social media strategy.
Table Of Contents
- Daily Social Media Checklist
- Weekly Social Media Checklist
- Monthly Social Media Checklist
- Quarterly Social Media Checklist
- Yearly Social Media Checklist
- Social Media Checklist Infographic
Daily Social Media Checklist
All major social media algorithms are tuned to reward accounts that are frequently active and receive high levels of engagement. To ensure your account is one of those that gets rewarded, you’ll want to perform some basic daily maintenance.
On a daily basis:
Make New Posts
Refer to your social media calendar and create new posts for the day accordingly.
Reply to Comments and Messages
To keep your engagement rates up, be sure to reply to as many comments and messages as possible (even if they’re negative).
Look at Competitors’ Posts
Keep an eye on what your competitors are posting each day to gauge their activity level and engagement rates.
Check Out Trending Hashtags
Especially on platforms like Twitter and TikTok, each day brings new trending hashtags you can use to stay up-to-date on what your audience wants.
Like and Comment on Relevant Posts
Part of successfully using a social media network is, well, networking. If you set aside a few minutes each day to like and comment on posts that are relevant to your vertical, you’ll soon find yourself gaining followers and making new connections as a result.
Check Your Brand’s Mentions
By engaging in regular social listening, you’ll be able to keep tabs on what people truly think of your brand.
Follow New and Relevant Accounts
Another way to grow your network is to follow new accounts you come across, whether they’re influencers, other brands or your own followers.
Schedule Tomorrow’s Posts
Finally, make sure you’re ready for the next day of social media marketing by scheduling tomorrow’s posts.
Weekly Social Media Checklist
Once you start to zoom out from daily social media tasks, you can focus more on scheduling, strategizing, and analyzing data.
On a weekly basis:
Update Your Content Calendar
To maintain a clear view of what you have and haven’t posted, be sure to update your content calendar and note which posts you’ve published.
Create a Posting Schedule for the Upcoming Week
If you want to avoid falling behind on your content strategy, then you’ll need to create an updated posting schedule each week.
Evaluate Your Posts from Last Week
Take a look at all your brand’s posts from the last week across all platforms and determine which ones garnered the most likes, comments, shares, impressions and overall engagement.
Evaluate Your Competitors’ Posts from Last Week
Also look at your competitors’ posts from the past week to see which ones performed the best. While you won’t have access to the same in-depth data that you do on your own posts, you can still see which ones got the most likes and comments.
Create New Content Inspired by Top-Performing Posts
Pick a handful of both your and your competitors’ top-performing posts from the past week and use them to inspire new content for the upcoming week.
Coordinate with Other Teams to Ensure Everyone’s on the Same Page
While social media is simple on the surface, a lot of moving parts need to come together in order to execute a successful social media strategy. To make sure everyone is on the same page, be sure to coordinate with your content, sales, design, marketing and web development teams — every graphic should be ready, and every link should work (no 404 pages, please!).
Track Your Social Media Ad Campaigns
It can be tempting to adopt a “set it and forget it” mindset for your social media campaigns, but if you want to ensure that everything is going well (and quickly fix any problems that arise) you’ll need to check their performance at least once per week.
Reach Out to Possible Partners
These could include influencers, other brands or thought leaders in your vertical—essentially, anyone who you may want to collaborate with in a mutually beneficial partnership.
Monthly Social Media Checklist
On a monthly basis:
Gather Your Monthly Performance Reports
The analytics programs you use, whether native to your social media platforms or not, will likely provide you with a report summarizing all of the last month’s most important data.
Compare the Past Month’s Performance to Other Months’ Performance
Once you have your latest performance reports in hand, compare them to all other months’ performance reports.
See Which of the Previous Month’s Posts Have Performed Best
Zoom in a bit by identifying which of the past month’s posts have gotten the most engagement, impressions, comments, likes and any other metric that matters to you.
See Which of Your Competitors’ Posts from the past Month Have Performed Best
Don’t forget to evaluate your competitors’ best-performing posts, too. Doing so will give you even more useful insights and help ensure that you don’t fall behind.
Integrate the Qualities of Top-Performing Posts into Your Strategy
After getting a clear idea of which posts (both yours and your competitors’) have performed the best over the past month, determine their common qualities so you can integrate them into your broader social media strategy.
Identify Upcoming Events and Holidays
Each month of the year is sure to have at least one event or holiday that you can plan fresh and engaging content around. Whether it’s a traditional holiday like Independence Day or a local occasion such as a festival or sports game, you should try to take advantage of the upcoming month’s unique events.
Coordinate with Other Teams for the Upcoming Month
Work with the sales, design, content writing, marketing and social media teams to make sure that everyone knows what’s on the calendar for the next month.
Evaluate Your Ad Campaigns and Make Necessary Changes
With a month’s worth of social media ad campaign data to look at, you should be able to evaluate your campaigns’ performance and make any necessary adjustments.
Quarterly Social Media Checklist
On a quarterly basis:
Compile All Three of the Most Recent Monthly Performance Reports
What’s better than one month’s worth of performance reports? Three months’ worth of performance reports, of course. Gather them all together in one place so you can get a better idea of your brand’s overall social media status.
Identify Common Features Between Your Best-Performing Posts
For instance, maybe five of your ten top-performing posts include video content. In that case, you should prioritize creating more videos. (Hint: Don’t forget to check out the common features between your worst-performing posts too.)
Check Your Quarterly Goals
It’s time to take a look at your previously set quarterly goals and see if you’ve met them. If you have, make a note accordingly. If you haven’t, try to determine why.
Set New Goals for the Next Quarter
If you met some of the current quarter’s goals, replace them with new ones for the next quarter. Your new goals could be slightly modified versions of the current ones, or they could be completely original—the choice is yours.
Perform a Thorough Social Media Audit
Now that your social media marketing tactics have been in place for several months, you should perform a social media audit. This simply means looking at all your brand’s social media accounts and noting their activity, engagement, growth and consistency.
Address Any Problems Uncovered by Your Audit
For instance, if your audit reveals that you’ve been neglecting your Pinterest SEO or using inconsistent messaging across platforms, now’s the time to fix it.
Amplify Any Positive Elements Uncovered by Your Audit
Let’s say your audit shows that your brand’s tweets perform particularly well. Now, you can continue that success by devoting even more resources to Twitter marketing.
Evaluate Your Audience and Identify New Targeting Opportunities
As your brand evolves and consumer tastes change, your audience will shift too. So, be sure to evaluate them every quarter and strive to identify new targeting opportunities you may be missing out on.
Yearly Social Media Checklist
On an annual basis:
Compile and Review the Past Year’s Performance Reports
This task can be somewhat time consuming, but it’s one of the most important ones you can do. That’s because reviewing the past year’s performance reports all at once allows you to gain a big-picture perspective of your brand’s social media marketing that you simply couldn’t otherwise.
Check Your Annual Goals
To get a better idea of your brand’s progression, check to see which of your annual goals you’ve successfully accomplished. Also take note of any you haven’t accomplished, and try to figure out how you can meet them ASAP.
Set New Goals for the Next Year
Keep your brand accountable for its success by setting new goals for the coming year.
Evaluate Your Current Social Media Platforms
It’s only natural for your brand to perform better on some platforms than others—what’s important is that you identify those you’re getting the most out of, and those which aren’t delivering the results you want.
Identify New Social Media Platforms
Although it may not happen often, new and widely-used social media platforms do emerge (ever heard of TikTok?). To ensure you don’t fall behind, set aside some time each year to look at any new social media platforms and see if your brand could benefit from joining them.
Analyze Your Social Media Ads’ Performance
Now that you have a year’s worth of social media ads analytics to work with, put it to good use by conducting an evaluation of the past 12 months’ performance.
Create an Outline for Next Year’s Strategy
You’ve just wrapped up a full year of social media marketing, so guess what? It’s time to do it all over again, but this time with new knowledge and a sharper competitive edge. The first step to doing so is creating a detailed outline for next year’s social media strategy.
Use Our Checklist to Upgrade Your Social Media Strategy
Setting up a winning social media strategy is no easy task, and maintaining one over weeks, months and years is even more challenging. Our checklist, however, can make this immense task much more straightforward and streamlined.
Infographic: Social Media Checklist
