March 5, 2019 | Main Spotlight | Successful Main Street Social Media Marketing: How to Have a Plan! | By Tourism Currents
“Lokal Love” T-shirt sold at Main Street Mercantile in downtown Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. Photo by Sheila Scarborough for Tourism Currents
Social media platforms are powerful; as we often say, they are the most significant communications tools since the printing press. They can do a lot for your Main Street, but only if you take them seriously and do some planning for how you’ll use them.
Do you know what you are posting on your blog, Facebook Page, Instagram, or Twitter account next Wednesday? The dirty secret is that a lot of folks have no idea, because they do not have any sort of social media content calendar. They figure it out on Wednesday morning, if they remember to post at all. Then they wonder why social media doesn’t do much for them.
A social media content plan should support your goals. Know what you are going to post, and when. Know why you are posting it. A lot of the social media content planning process that we’ll talk about at the Main Street Now Conference in Seattle involves setting up a simple calendar (paper or electronic; we don’t care as long as you have one!) that looks something like this …
If you like paper, that’s fine. It always boots up, and you can spill coffee on it.
However, it is a LOT easier to fill in those blanks if you have a “basket of content ideas” to draw from. Here is how to fill that basket:
1. List Your Top 3-5 Marketing Goals
Your content and social posts should support the marketing goals that you have set for the next year or two for your Main Street or Main Street partner business, attraction, hotel, or restaurant. They should be specific goals, too, and not simply, “Get more people to visit and spend money.”
For example, let’s say one of your goals is to encourage more locals to shop downtown. That means that some of your social media posts need to be created with local people in mind, to support your goal of getting their attention and convincing them to visit. This includes your paid social advertising, like certain Facebook Sponsored posts that you only show to people in local ZIP codes.
Do you see how much clarity this brings to your planning process? You’re not posting "random whatever" on social; you are focused on specific content for a specific type of visitor or customer. For ease of planning, you may decide to make every Wednesday "locals outreach day" for your social posts.
2. Build That “Basket of Content Ideas” for Social Media Posts
Now you’re ready to brainstorm a nice stack of ideas for each marketing goal, which you’ll then turn around and plug into your content calendar. Content should include a variety of media: photos, plain text posts, video, live video, audio including podcasts, eBooks, tip sheets, checklists, info-graphics, how-to guides, contests/giveaways, sharing visitor content (with permission,) or coupons/discounts/value adds.
Here is a sample “basket of ideas” to support that marketing goal of getting more locals downtown:
- Photos of partner businesses and what they offer (i.e., who sells things you might not think of, who does special orders, who will make a “custom cocktail”) then post on Instagram and Facebook. Make the most popular ones into sponsored posts (ads.)
- Photos of “what it really looks like downtown” (i.e., entertainment, walkability, surprising places, historic buildings, places where locals can gather, different times of day) in your email newsletter and on Pinterest.
- Live/streaming video of “what it is really like right here, right now” on Facebook Live or on Twitter, including fun outdoor activities, and things for families/children to do inside or outside. Music does well as a live-stream.
- Video interview series “Local Secrets” – merchant partners saying in 60-90 seconds their favorite place to go or thing to do on Main Street, and show it, too. Post to YouTube.
- Create a blog post series using the videos above, one video “secret” per post, embedded from YouTube uploads. Follow with a round-up blog post with links back to all of them.
- Create a “Secrets From Our Locals” eBook/download and make it a lead magnet for email newsletter subscribers. Could include value added offers like a BOGO, or coupons to subscribers.
- BONUS – Use some of these locally-focused blog posts, videos, and photo material and package it for your CVB and/or Chamber of Commerce to send out as “YES, we have a great Main Street area for our visitors to enjoy” information, or to include in convention sales pitches to meeting and event planners.
Click here to download a PDF of a “content basket planning template” with these ideas and more, to get you started.
Yes, many of your ideas will require some planning – photos in different places, live video at the right time, setting up partner interviews, etc. – but now that you’ve clearly identified what you need to accomplish, it’s so much easier to integrate these tasks into your workflow.
3. Build Out a Calendar Draft. Start With Next Week.
Now you are ready for what we call the “plug and chug” phase. You’re taking that basket of content ideas and starting to figure out which posts are going to go up on which days. To create a content plan, you can use some version of the paper example shown earlier in this post, or maybe get fancy with an Excel spreadsheet that looks something like this:
Your calendar content will be driven by the seasons and holidays, too. It doesn’t matter how you lay out your calendar, or if you do it in a weekly or monthly format. What matters is that you have a plan that supports your goals. Remember, know what you are going to post, and when. Know why you are posting it. That is the path to Main Street social success.
About the authors: Tourism Currents teaches you how to use social media and digital destination marketing to bring more visitors to town. They offer an online course, in-person workshops, webinars, consulting/coaching, and a free biweekly newsletter. Team members are Leslie McLellan in Lake Arrowhead, California, and Sheila Scarborough in Round Rock, Texas.