Template: Local Social Media Planner

Managing social media for one location is challenging enough, but creating content, managing posts, and reporting on results for a few hundred – or thousand – locations can feel impossible.

Whether your goal is to drive brand engagement, increase foot traffic to specific locations, empower financial advisors with localized messaging, schedule reminders for seasonal health tips, or promote new menu items, these four steps will help you build a cohesive strategy across corporate and local social pages.

Speaking of goals, let’s get started.

1. Set Clear Goals and Measurable KPIs

Start your social media strategy by setting goals that align with your business objectives at both the corporate and local levels. Establishing measurable KPIs will help you track progress, stay focused, and make necessary adjustments. Focus on broad objectives like increasing brand visibility, building loyalty, and maintaining a consistent voice. KPIs might include engagement rate, reach, impressions, and follower growth. Set goals that align with overall business goals and use industry benchmarks or year-over-year lift as targets.

Tailor goals to each location, such as driving foot traffic, increasing event engagement, or fostering community ties. Depending on the size of your brand, consider outlining this at a regional level instead of each location. Local KPIs could include engagement rate, check-ins, or social mentions, with goals like an increase in event attendance through targeted promotions.

2. Create a Content Plan

A well-structured content plan that incorporates key dates is the backbone of your social media strategy. By defining content types, themes, and important dates, you can plan posts that resonate with your audience and align with both corporate and local objectives at scale.

Develop a content plan focused on broad themes that support your brand’s message, such as educational content, brand storytelling, and major announcements. Integrate key dates like holidays, product launches, and industry events into your calendar.

Leverage the corporate posts as an easy cross-share to local pages to increase brand awareness and maintain consistency. New content specific to the local experience can be built off of these ideas. Additional themes could include featuring local customer stories, promoting events, or highlighting a specific product or sale. Incorporate local festivals, community initiatives, and significant dates into your content calendar to increase relevance.

3. Prioritize Post Ideas

Once you have a content plan, it's crucial to prioritize the topics that best align with your goals and resonate with your audience. Prioritize posts that align with your strategic goals, such as brand positioning, thought leadership, or major announcements. Identify content that has historically performed well, and focus on replicating that success in future posts.

Prioritize posts that are most relevant to the local community, such as event promotions, collaborations with local businesses, or content that highlights community involvement. Create a balance between promotional content and posts that add value to your local audience.

4. Track and Report Performance Regularly

Effective tracking, measurement and reporting are crucial for staying organized and making informed adjustments that contribute to the success of your social media strategy.

Set up weekly or bi-weekly reviews to assess content performance, and adjust upcoming posts based on what’s working. How well are your posts meeting KPIs like engagement rates, reach, and follower growth?  A regular reporting schedule will help you share insights with your team, ensure alignment with overall business goals, and continuously refine your strategy.

Monitor your posts by tracking local KPIs–such as engagement with community events, customer check-ins, and social mentions–to understand what resonates best with specific audiences. Coordinate with the corporate team to avoid content clashes and optimize the timing and impact of your posts. By reporting these findings to both local and corporate teams, you’ll uncover trends, optimize content, and ensure local goals are being met. ddd

5. Download the Template

Use these strategies to fill out the Local Social Media Planner, designed to keep your team organized and efficient. Click to download the template as an Excel file.