Social Media Management Checklist

UPDATE 08/20/2024 (next update February 2025).

With increasing competition in the digital space, businesses must strategically manage their social media presence to build and maintain strong relationships with their audience. Businesses that don't have a presence where their audience is are missing out big time on traffic, brand reputation, influencer scope, and revenue.

The following checklist will help you streamline your eCommerce social media management process and ensure consistency and effectiveness in your efforts. Consider it a first step in building your comprehensive strategy.

Focus on the right social media platform. Not every business needs TikTok or Pinterest, but most may need a LinkedIn profile. Research and find out where your audience hangs out.

Establish clear goals for your social media efforts, such as increasing traffic, boosting engagement, or driving conversions.

Identify key performance indicators (KPIs), such as reach, engagement, and conversion rates, that align with your objectives.

Buyer Personas. Identifying personas will help you cater to who is in your audience and what their pain points are.

Ensure consistency. Ensure your profile images, banners, and bios are consistent across all platforms.

Include CTA. Include relevant keywords and calls to action in your bios and shared posts.

Link to your website and other important pages, such as product pages or blog posts.

Research the content. Once you’ve identified the platforms that best align with your target audiences and business goals, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, or LinkedIn, research the most popular content on your desired platforms for your audience.

Identify and then test content formats. Find the best content for your audience on a selected platform. Track engagement, clicks, shares, and sales.

Research hashtags. Research the hashtags used mainly by your targeted audience and the content used with those hashtags.

Determine the optimal posting frequency and timing for each platform.

Schedule tasks. In general, there are daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. Daily tasks like responding to comments, tracking brand mentions, or jumping on hyped topics with your content. Weekly tasks like making and scheduling content and analyzing performance. Monthly tasks analytics, analysis, and revisiting strategies, i.e., figuring out what worked and what did not.

Plan content development from the biggest to the smallest segments. First, create a large piece of content and then create smaller pieces based on it.

Re-purpose content. Cross-post and re-purpose content you’ve built across different platforms. For example, turn a blog post into a Livestream. Turn Livestream into small videos and post them on all social media with different messaging.

Develop a content calendar that outlines your posting schedule, includes a mix of promotional, educational, and engaging content, and helps you stay organized.

Be consistent. Your website is the starting point for your brand, so make sure to follow it across different social media channels.

Establish a consistent color palette, typography, and imagery that follow and represent your brand.

Create templates for different types of content, such as product promotions, blog posts, and customer testimonials.

Use high-quality images and videos to showcase your products and build a strong visual brand.

Post when active. Post your content when your audience is most active and enhance those posts with responses. Use analytic tools to figure out the times.

Respond to comments, questions, brand mentions, and direct messages promptly and professionally. Partake in sharing, liking, and commenting on hot, trendy world and industry-related topics.

Mention customers, partners, and influencers. Mention customers, partners, and influencers in public posts to spark conversation and broaden your reach.

Monitor and address customer reviews, both positive and negative, to maintain a strong online reputation. Sometimes as little as a Thank you in response is enough.

Motivate and share user-generated content and tag customers to show appreciation and build community. For example, gather customer testimonials and turn them into videos or images shareable over social media. Use hashtags and mentions to make customers aware you’ve appreciated what they had to say.

Develop targeted ad campaigns to reach your ideal customers and drive conversions. Use similar following or your competitors to broaden the reach.

A/B test different ad creatives, targeting options, and platforms to optimize your ad spend.

Monitor and analyze your ad performance to make data-driven decisions for future campaigns.

Regularly review your social media analytics to assess the success of your content and campaigns.

Identify trends, areas of improvement, and opportunities for growth.

Adjust your strategy based on data-driven insights to continually improve your social media efforts.

Track and mimic what your competitors are doing. Use their strategy as an inspiration.

Integrate shoppable tags or product links within your social media content to create a seamless purchasing experience.

Sell via social media. Leverage social commerce features, such as Instagram Shopping or Facebook Shops, to showcase your products directly within the platform.

Monitor and optimize your social commerce efforts to drive sales and increase revenue.

Identify relevant influencers and partners who align with your brand and audience. To broaden your reach, co-create content with them or comment and share their content.

Develop mutually beneficial collaborations, such as sponsored posts, product reviews, or giveaways.

Monitor the performance of influencer and partner campaigns to assess their impact on your overall social media goals.

Keep up with the latest social media trends, platform updates, and best practices to ensure your strategy remains effective.

Continually test new tactics and platforms to identify growth opportunities.

Be prepared to adapt your strategy in response to changing algorithms, consumer behavior, and industry trends.

By following this e-commerce social media management checklist, you'll be well-equipped to create a successful and engaging online presence that drives traffic, builds brand awareness, and ultimately increases sales for your business.