Table 04 10 16

of Contents Routines That Actually Help Weekly Attempts to Keep Up

With the Competition
Quarterly Planning and
Reporting Activities

06
Capitalizing on Your Competitors’ Best- Reviewing and Evaluating Last Quarter KPIs
Performing Posts
Making Sure Your Brand Image Is Consistent
Tracking the Results of Your Ongoing Campaigns Across All Social Media Channels
Boosting Well-Performing Posts Conducting Audience Analysis
Daily Steps to Engaging Synchronizing with Other Teams’ Goals Setting Your Goals and KPIs for the Next Quarter
Your Audience and Upcoming Events
Creating a Posting Schedule for the

18
Replying to Comments and Questions
Upcoming Week
Monitoring Your Brand Mentions Online
Exploring Industry News and Hot Topics

13
Discovering Trending Hashtags
Researching Industry-Related Keywords
Conclusion
and Threads
Watching What Your Competitors Are Posting Monthly Efforts to Enhance
Updating Your Posting Calendar Your Social Media Strategy
Identifying Your Month’s Successes and
Adjusting Your Strategy
Analyzing Your Competitors’ Social Strategies
Comparing Your Performance Against
Competitors’
Researching Upcoming Industry News and Events
Defining the Next Month’s Ratio of Educational
and Entertaining Content to Product Content
 The Ultimate Social Media Checklist by SEMrush
Daily Weekly Monthly Quarterly
Check and reply to comments Capitalize on competitors’ Identify your month’s successes Review and evaluate the last
and questions. best-performing posts. based on stats and adjust your quarter KPIs.
strategy.
Find your brand mentions Track the results of your Conduct audience analysis
online and react to them. ongoing campaigns. Analyze your competitors’ to check your targeting.
social strategies.
Review and comment Boost well-performing posts. Make sure your brand image
on influencers’ posts. Compare your performance is consistent across all
Synchronize with other teams’ against competitors’. social channels.
Explore industry news and goals and upcoming activities.
hot topics. Research upcoming industry Set your goals for the next quarter.
Create a posting schedule news and events.
Discover trending hashtags. for the week.
Define the next month’s ratio
Research industry-related of educational to entertaining
keywords and threads. content.

Watch what your competitors

are posting.

Update your posting calendar.

 4 / 19

Routines That Actually Help

Are you just starting out on leveraging social media for your business?
Or maybe the countless routine tasks like scheduling posts, launching
ads, social listening, and dealing with influencers are already piling up.
Whatever! With the following SEMrush SMM Checklist you’ll be able to
prioritize your work and achieve consistency by breaking down all your
tasks into what needs to be addressed on a daily, weekly, monthly, and
quarterly basis.

Prioritize your work and

achieve consistency
Daily Steps to Engaging
Your Audience
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Daily Steps to Engaging Your Audience

Check and reply to comments and questions. Discover trending hashtags.

Find your brand mentions online and react to them. Research industry-related keywords and threads.

Review and comment on influencers’ posts. Watch what your competitors are posting.

Explore industry news and hot topics. Update your posting calendar.
 7 / 19

Replying to Comments and Questions Reviewing and Commenting

No customer likes to be ignored, so keeping track of comments and questions from your current and potential
on Influencers’ Posts
clients is critical. To maintain their satisfaction and your brand’s reputation, respond quickly and respectfully.
Don’t be afraid of the critical comments, they give you an opportunity to prove to your clients that you care before This suggestion follows on from the previous one. If you are alert to what the opinion leaders in your industry
your competitors say that you don’t. are up to in the social space, you can easily jump in with your expert opinion or prompt them to test your new
tool or feature.

Monitoring Your Brand Mentions Online Exploring Industry News and Hot Topics
People will discuss your brand on the Internet, and you need to check what they’re saying. For example, ignoring
an influencer’s comment is either a missed opportunity or (in the case of criticism), a potential reputation crisis Keeping up with all the latest updates in the industry and sharing these with your audience is common decency
that can be prevented. and a sign of professionalism. There are hundreds of tools out there (like Feedly or Inoreader) that can help you
automate this process, saving you from having to go and check every information source yourself.
Unfortunately, it does happen that people forget to tag you (add an @-sign, for example) when making comments
on social platforms. So the easiest way not to miss a valuable mention is to use special brand monitoring tools. For sharing (social posting), we recommend tools with dedicated content curation features as they allow you to
add RSS feeds from your favorite resources, so you can simply scroll through the list and repost the articles you
like with one click.

Discovering Trending Hashtags Branded hashtags (brand awareness): Seasonal hashtags (exposure):
#Charityball2018 #christmaswear
Your hashtag strategy strongly depends on the goals you want to achieve.
It may be brand awareness, engagement, reach or some improvements in
client relationships.
Once you know what it is you want to accomplish, you will need to do
Niche interest hashtags Location hashtags (local reach):
some research and decide exactly which hashtags will work best for your (niche audience engagement): #manchesterfood
upcoming posts. Let’s look at some examples.
#dachshundlover
 8 / 19

Researching Industry-Related Keywords

and Threads
Specific keywords can help you quickly find industry-relevant threads and discussions that you can jump into.
Google Alerts is a great tool for this: it allows you to track any keyword across all the sources that Google tracks (in-
cluding YouTube), and receive notifications.

Watching What Your Competitors Are Posting

Competitors share their news. Whether it is a new product, a big promotion or a special offer — all of these things can
impact the loyalty of your customers. Keep an eye on your competitors’ activities and find smarter ways to outdo them.
Have they posted an article and left some users’ questions unanswered? Be sure to address these in your posts and
start an engaging discussion around them.

Updating Your Posting Calendar

Checking your posting schedule is the last but not least activity as it lets you prioritize your content by moving your im-
portant posts to the most potent time slots and make room for ad hoc occasions.

To be able to juggle your content around in the ways I’ve just described, you need
a content calendar that has a drag-and-drop feature.
 9 / 19

Weekly Attempts to Keep Up

With the Competition
 10 / 19

Weekly Attempts to Keep Up With the Competition

Capitalize on competitors’ best-performing posts. Synchronize with other teams’ goals and
upcoming activities.
Track the results of your ongoing campaigns.
Create a posting schedule for the week.
Boost well-performing posts.
 11 / 19

Capitalizing on Your Competitors’ Best-Performing Posts Synchronizing with Other Teams’

Identifying your competitors’ top-performing content is only half the battle; you must be able to adapt it to your needs and audiences. Here
Goals and Upcoming Events
are some tips on how to take advantage of your competitors’ posts:
Most companies have a variety of tools and services to manage their activities.
This may be comfortable, but sometimes leads to missed deadlines and failed
projects, as people don’t sync on a regular basis. The best way to avoid this kind
of situation is having a shared marketing calendar, where you can assign tasks to
Address the questions that Leverage their highest- Offer strong alternatives to the your team members and receive timely updates on a project’s progress.
they haven’t answered. performing post formats. content they are sharing.
This will let you provide your followers with The greatest thing about having competi-
Do their online games cause massive en-
unique value. tors is that you are sharing the same audi-
ence. If you notice that their infographics
are beating your video tutorials, it may be
gagement on social? Try to beat them with
a fun holiday-themed quiz. Creating a Posting Schedule
time to rearrange priorities. for the Upcoming Week
You don’t want to end up posting 15 posts on Monday and only 2 on Tuesday,
do you? Ideally, you should have a personalized posting schedule, with the

Tracking the Results of Your Ongoing Campaigns same number of slots on weekdays; on weekends, it’s OK to post less, for ob-
vious reasons.
Some posting tools allow you to create content queues once your schedule is
Monitoring the results of your ongoing campaigns will give you an opportunity to tweak them in case something goes wrong. all set up. That way, you won’t have to think about how and when to schedule
All major social networks have their own analytics services, which provide great insights into your performance. your next social media activity; you just send your post to the queue, and it
will go live at a preset time.
Another important thing to remember is to leave room for ad-hoc campaigns
(for example, holiday campaigns). Make sure you always have a spare slot or

Boosting Well-Performing Posts two per week where you can fit in such promos.
This article will help you avoid the most common mistakes in social media
content planning.
Some content has more potential than it first appears, and requires a little help to be unlocked. If you see, let’s say, a Facebook post that
performs notably better than your other materials, just give it a quick boost to benefit from maximized reach.
To get an even bigger picture of your accomplishments, add UTM parameters to your promoted posts and track them in Google Analytics.
 12 / 19

Monthly Efforts to Enhance

Your Social Media Strategy
 13 / 19

Monthly Efforts to Enhance Your Social Media Strategy

Identify your month’s successes based on stats Research upcoming industry news and events.
and adjust your strategy.
Define the next month’s ratio of educational
Analyze your competitors’ social strategies. to entertaining content.

Compare your performance against competitors’.

 14 / 19

Identifying Your Month’s

Successes and Adjusting
Your Strategy Comparing Your Performance Against Competitors’
Has there been an unusual spike in likes and comments in response to the Once you know what your competitors are doing, it is time to see how strongly you stand against them. It is essential that you pay atten-
video you posted a few days ago? Or maybe you’ve noticed extra interest tion to relative metrics, such as engagement rate. This parameter is especially helpful when you are trying to compare the performance of
in a piece of news you’ve shared. Keep track of these (and other) stats and different profiles with varying audience sizes.
use them to reconsider the upcoming month’s goals and strategy.
Set very clear metrics you are going to track to assess each of the planned
activities. For example, if you are entering a new market, decide how to meas-
ure your efforts to increase brand awareness, as the number of purchases is
not important at this stage.
Researching Upcoming Industry News and Events
Did you know that holidays and events make your customers more receptive to your marketing campaigns? Spicing up your campaigns
with some fun ideas is a great way to entertain your users and give them a good reason to check out your products and/or services.

Analyzing Your Competitors’ Also, be sure to check out our Social Media Events Calendar 2019, made especially for social media managers to help them keep up with
all the events, holidays and meaningful days that matter to their target audience and schedule for them right there and then.
Social Strategies
Defining the Next Month’s Ratio of Educational and
Then it’s reasonable to check where your competitors are going with their so-
cial strategies. If you think you need expensive tools to gain insight into their
plans, think again. Native analytics of social networks coupled with manual
reviews of your competitors’ pages will be enough for you to spot their Entertaining Content to Product Content
weak points.
Next, it’s advisable to sneak a peek into their ongoing ad campaigns by visiting When it comes to posting, it is crucial to maintain a healthy ratio between your product content and external content. Whether it is going
their Facebook Info and Ads section. It will show you their current newsfeed to be 70:30 or 50:50 should depend on the audience you are targeting. If you want to build a community around your brand, make sure
ads and landing pages they lead to. Who knows, you might find a strategy or you take into account your target audience’s interests.
two that you may want to test yourself!
Run an experiment: try different ratios of entertaining content to product content each week during a month and see which ratio works
Finally, remember to keep an eye on your competitors’ hashtags. Not only will best for your audience.
you be able to spy on their special offers or competitions, but it can also help
Don’t be afraid to experiment with your best-performing content and “recycle” it; this can either mean rescheduling it for a different time or
you spot any significant changes in their strategies.
adapting it to new campaigns (for example, making an infographic or a quick animation out of your previous month’s post).
Find out more about how to uncover your competitors’ social media strategies.
 15 / 19

Quarterly Planning and

Reporting Activities
 16 / 19

Quarterly Planning and Reporting Activities

Review and evaluate the last quarter KPIs. Make sure your brand image is consistent across
all social channels.
Conduct audience analysis to check your targeting.
Set your goals for the next quarter.
 17 / 19

Reviewing and Evaluating Setting Your Goals and KPIs

Last Quarter KPIs For The Next Quarter
Collecting stats about your posts’ performance works well both on a monthly and quarterly basis. Quarterly re- Remember to always set your quarterly goals based on your company’s and your team’s goals; this will also help
views will let you focus less on details and more on the bigger picture. you in creating a content plan for the next 3 months and with setting priorities correctly.
For example, you may want to reassess the channels you are targeting; if some of them don’t seem to bring any Social media KPIs are there to help you determine the performance of your social media campaigns and their ROI.
results, why continue being active in them? Here, you must go beyond vanity metrics like follower and like counts. Instead, try to focus on the following:

Reach.
Making Sure Your Brand Image Is Consistent Watch out for metrics like followers/fans, impressions, traffic data.

Across All Social Media Channels Leads.

There are different ways of measuring social media lead generation. Speak to your analytics team to learn
Does your company have a corporate style guide or a brand guide? Now is the right time to find out. Make sure how to approach this task.
your tone of voice, along with all the images you post, including scripts and colors, matches your brand’s style
and is consistent across all social networks.
Engagement.
Your metrics here may include profile visits, active followers, brand mentions, comments, shares, likes,
and clicks.

Conducting Audience Analysis Conversions.

Ideally, a social media audience audit should be carried out at least every quarter. How will you measure the ROI from social media, unless you track customer acquisition and conversion
rates? Applying segments to your Google Analytics is a great way to track conversions.
This timespan is just enough for you to be able to spot any mismatches between your real audience and what you
have been imagining them to be.
Start by gaining insights into your followers’ interests and demographics by using the analytics provided to you by
your social network accounts (Facebook Analytics, Twitter Analytics, Instagram Insights, etc.)
After that, picture your ideal customer (you may end up with several personas if you are active on more than one
social network).
Finally, tailor your content to your ideal customer personas.
 18 / 19

Conclusion
We hope that this checklist will make your life as • Schedule and post on major social channels
a social media manager a little easier. You can use the • Boost the most popular Facebook posts
whole list, or pick the points you consider most impor-
tant or find hard to deal with. For a quick start, print • Save great content ideas for future use
out the list and start checking the boxes right now. • Track likes and shares
Moreover, breaking the routine is just the first step. • Study your audience’s behavior trends
If you want to get to your goals faster, check out the • Monitor your competitors’ campaigns
SEMrush Social Media Toolkit. It lets you make the
• Generate stunning PDF reports for your customers
most of your social media profiles by combining in-
and colleagues.
depth competitor analysis and powerful automation
functionalities.

You can also utilise project sharing options to keep your social media
aligned with your planned and ongoing campaigns and tweak their activities
based on the campaigns’ results.

Try now
 19 / 19

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