The need for a media plan

It’s been said you can’t accomplish anything without a plan, and you can’t get to  places you haven’t been without a map. Your media plan is critical for your social media efforts because it provides you with both your direction and your goal.

In social media and content marketing, your media plan is the detailed written action plan that will tell you and your team how you are going to achieve your goals. The best media plans are detailed enough to provide specific audience, media and message, but still open enough to allow for some serious creativity.

Media plans go by many names: content marketing plans, social media campaigns, editorial calendars, fast calendars and more. We’ll break these down later but all of them are planning documents to be used to organize ourselves and make ourselves more efficient and effective.

Editorial calendars go back years, before the time of social media, where topics were targeted to daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, magazines, trade publications, TV, radio, email, and more. They’re all still there, with the additional of all the new media, the social media, but the goals are still the same, with the addition of these new players.

Editorial calendars are usually organized for a 12 month period, however, that period can be longer or shorter depending on need. It can be divided into quarterly or monthly periods as deadlines draw near. A quarterly period is very effective for medium-range planning, testing your effectiveness 0r  implementation ROI measures.

Monthly planning is perhaps the key unit for implementing your social media, media relations, government relations and content development. This will be broken down further into weekly and daily increments but the month is generally central organizing unit.

The media plan is useful for a number of reasons. It serves as a planning document and we explore our creativity as we approach deadlines. The plan helps to organize us and focus our team. The media plan can also be a vital aid in team building. From a practical perspective, we often need to develop a story 3-4 months prior to the publication date, and even with Facebook and Twitter we often need prep time of several weeks prior to post

With a content calendar, you can look for story ideas from the seasons and the holidays, and milestones for your business and industry. Major products to be released, newsworthy events you will hold, outstanding staff stories, can all help fill your news calendar.  It lists all of your promotions and how you are going deliver them to your audience.

Use an excel spreadsheet to develop your media plan. Palettes can be developed to create copy blocks of frequently used content.  You can do this on your own, but a public relations or social media professional may be able to provide a superior effort and take you to the next level!

Every media plan is different. In future updates we’ll tackle a number of issues regarding media plans. But what is essential for every plan is a listing of the topics to be covered, the targeted audience, the responsible author or editor, and the date to be released.
 

 

Why you need a media plan

It’s been said you can’t accomplish anything without a plan, and you can’t get to  places you haven’t been without a map. Your media plan is critical for your social media efforts because it provides you with both your direction and your goal.

In social media and content marketing, your media plan is the detailed written action plan that will tell you and your team how you are going to achieve your goals. The best media plans are detailed enough to provide specific audience, media and message, but still open enough to allow for some serious creativity.

Media plans go by many names: content marketing plans, social media campaigns, editorial calendars, fast calendars and more. We’ll break these down later but all of them are planning documents to be used to organize ourselves and make ourselves more efficient and effective.

Editorial calendars go back years, before the time of social media, where topics were targeted to daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, magazines, trade publications, TV, radio, email, and more. They’re all still there, with the additional of all the new media, the social media, but the goals are still the same, with the addition of these new players.

Editorial calendars are usually organized for a 12 month period, however, that period can be longer or shorter depending on need. It can be divided into quarterly or monthly periods as deadlines draw near. A quarterly period is very effective for medium-range planning, testing your effectiveness 0r  implementation ROI measures.

Monthly planning is perhaps the key unit for implementing your social media, media relations, government relations and content development. This will be broken down further into weekly and daily increments but the month is generally central organizing unit.

The media plan is useful for a number of reasons. It serves as a planning document and we explore our creativity as we approach deadlines. The plan helps to organize us and focus our team. The media plan can also be a vital aid in team building. From a practical perspective, we often need to develop a story 3-4 months prior to the publication date, and even with Facebook and Twitter we often need prep time of several weeks prior to post

With a content calendar, you can look for story ideas from the seasons and the holidays, and milestones for your business and industry. Major products to be released, newsworthy events you will hold, outstanding staff stories, can all help fill your news calendar.  It lists all of your promotions and how you are going deliver them to your audience.

Use an excel spreadsheet to develop your media plan. Palettes can be developed to create copy blocks of frequently used content.  You can do this on your own, but a public relations or social media professional may be able to provide a superior effort and take you to the next level!

Every media plan is different. In future updates we’ll tackle a number of issues regarding media plans. But what is essential for every plan is a listing of the topics to be covered, the targeted audience, the responsible author or editor, and the date to be released.