Business plan

Business plans for the use of social media tools should be added to your existing marketing, communications or engagement plan. To provide guidance a recommended plan has been created.

Example business plan

Find the audience

• Determine your message and who the message is intended for:
  • What aspects of your message will attract the target audience?
  • What will the audience want to know from you
• Research the language used by the target audience and how they communicate. If you are communicating with technology savvy people, ensure you research technology based terminology.
• If using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social media sites ensure you understand how the site works, how users respond and acceptable behaviour.
• Ensure you understand the terms of use for social media sites prior to creating an account.

Predict your audience's problems

• Research what issues may come up or questions the audience may ask. Answer these questions through your message. Be ahead of the audience.
• Providing evidence or further information to your message to allow the audience to investigate the message.
• Find ways to spell out your message and show the audience why the message is important or relevant to them.
• Create a list from the above research of questions, evidence and important messages. Prepare to keep this list updated through the process.

Plan who is responsible and schedule

• Decide who will be responsible for the following tasks:
  • information gathering and research
  • maintaining and updating the social media accounts
  • monitoring online activity.
• Schedule time for these duties – rather over budget than under budget time.

Create the plan

• Document the process and people responsible.
• Think of traditional planning processes, like mind mapping, to organise your thoughts.
• Create a shared calendar for all team members working on the project. Include all duties including scheduled times for updates, research and monitoring.
• Create a schedule of content updates. This is vital, and while it may change over time, having a schedule in place to begin with will keep you on track and ensure the account maintains the interest of the audience. For example a Queensland Health flu schedule may look like: