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A Checklist Every Marketer Needs

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A Checklist Every Marketer Needs

Whether you’re a new or seasoned social media manager, managing a brand’s social presence can be overwhelming. After all, you’re behind every post and every interaction with potential customers so the pressure is on.

One way to ease that and make sure you’re at the top of your game is with a social media checklist. In this article, we’ll cover the daily and monthly tasks every social media manager needs to succeed.

Social Media Tasks

Before we get into the checklist, we’re going to break down the work of a social media manager into four pillars.

  • Sharing – You must post on social media regularly to grow and maintain an audience.
  • Engaging – Connecting with your audience, via polls, responding to comments and DMs, and reposting user-generated content, is key to building that brand loyalty.
  • Monitoring – It’s important to know how your brand is perceived online, so you’ll need to monitor mentions of your brand as well as topics within your industry.
  • Reviewing and Optimizing – If you’re not reviewing your performance, how can you improve? This is a necessary part of every social media strategy.

If you don’t share often, you’ll struggle to build an audience. Without an audience, you won’t have much to engage with. This also means that you’ll have little to no data about what works well and nothing to optimize or review.

This is all to say that to have a robust social media presence, you must be strong in all four areas. Now, let’s dive into the daily tasks you’ll need to complete in this role.

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Social Media Daily Checklist

On a daily basis, you will be focused on the first three pillars: sharing, engaging, and monitoring.

While there is some reviewing and optimizing that can happen daily, you can better identify patterns when you do so on a monthly basis once you have compiled a good data set.

1. Sharing content.

Your number one priority on social media should be sharing content.

That’s what will allow you to reach your target audience, attract them to your brand, and keep them engaged.

When we surveyed 310 U.S.-based marketers in 2022, we found that most social media marketers post between four to six times a week on social media platforms.

While that is the average, some marketers post more or less depending on the platform. For instance, 29% of marketers surveyed said they post on Facebook every day while 35% said they do the same on Twitter.

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However, when asked about Pinterest, most marketers surveyed only post two to three times a week.

Of course, how often you post will depend on a variety of factors including the return on investment.

Something else to consider is that sharing content doesn’t only mean from your brand. It can include user-generated content or content from another non-competitor that would add value to your audience.

2. Responding to comments and DMs.

One of the easiest ways to engage your audience is by responding to their comments.

If you’re struggling to generate comments in the first place, try starting a conversation and asking your audience to join it.

In this post, sunscreen brand KINLÒ asks its audience to share ways they protect their skin.

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In that same vein, you can ask your audience to tag a friend that would enjoy your post.

Another way to engage your audience is by responding to direct messages. Often, consumers will reach out to brands on social media to learn more about the brand, ask specific questions related to shared content, or get help.

It’s important that you review these questions every day to leave a positive impression on your audience. If you take too long to answer, they may lose interest or escalate the issue by complaining to the public.

You can take it one step further by working internally with your customer support team to develop an escalation process once a customer reaches out via social media.

3. Monitor brand mentions and industry-related content.

When you’re growing your business, it’s vital that you know how your brand is being perceived online and what is being said about it.

According to our 2022 social media marketing report, 35% of marketers surveyed track brand mentions and hashtags on social media.

Thankfully with social media, that information is within reach. You can easily set up alerts to be noticed whenever your brand is tagged or mentioned on social media.

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You can also routinely do searches on platforms like TikTok where alerts aren’t readily available.

This will allow you to gauge brand sentiment and quickly address concerns from your target audience.

Pro-tip: HubSpot’s social media management software includes a brand monitoring tool that will help you stay on top of all mentions and even track your competitors.

4. Identify trends and buzzy content.

Trends come and go just about every week on social media.

The trick is jumping in as they’re growing in popularity and knowing when they’ve died out.

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The best way to find trends is by simply being on social media – social listening. You may start to notice a particular sound being used often or a song being added to every Reel you come across.

Some social platforms will tell you exactly what’s trending, like on TikTok’s “Discover” tab and Twitter’s “Trending” tab.

social media checklist: tiktok discover tab showing trending sounds and hashtags

There are also accounts that are dedicated to finding trends as they happen and explaining their origin. This will help you determine which ones are worth joining and which ones you should stay out of.

As a brand, everything you put out there is a representation of your values. That’s why it’s important that you be extra careful when assessing trends.

See what videos other brands and users are creating with that trend. Are they funny and creative? Are they offensive? Do they align with your brand?

If not, it’s always OK to skip because there’ll be another one coming around the corner.

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5. Answer queries on forums.

When we think of social media, we often think of content-sharing apps like TikTok, Twitter, and Twitch.

However, some social apps – think Reddit and Quora – focus instead on conversations and community.

You may be surprised to find how many conversations people may be having about your brand on these websites. In addition to being a great source of information surrounding brand sentiment, you can also learn a lot about your audience’s challenges and pain points.

You can then leverage that information into value-packed posts to attract your audience.

6. Connect with brand evangelists.

Building brand loyalty is no easy feat. So once you’ve accomplished it, you have to invest time to maintain it.

This means connecting with your brand evangelists on a regular basis.

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This can look like commenting on their content and/or sharing it on your platform, giving them access to exclusive content, shouting them out, and inviting them to participate during live streams.

While social media can be filled with parasocial relationships, don’t let that be the case for you and your audience.

Social Media Monthly Checklist

1. Check your analytics.

Data is every brand’s most sacred asset. It holds incredibly valuable insights about your target audience.

On social media, your data will tell you the type of content your audience enjoys, what grabs their attention, and what generates conversions.

It will also help you identify trends. In fact, when we asked social media marketersHow do you predict which social media trends are worth investing in?” The top answer was by analyzing their social media analytics.

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So, which metrics are marketers reviewing? Here are the top five, according to our survey:

  • Likes and comments (41%)
  • Sales (41%)
  • Traffic to their website (41%)
  • Impressions and views (40%)
  • Brand mentions and hashtags (35%)

If you have at least one month’s worth of data, you can start finding out which posts perform the best and dig into the why.

Through your analytics, you can also assess which social platforms are worth investing in. According to our survey, the top three metrics marketers look at to make this decision are:

  • Impressions/views
  • Sales
  • Follower or subscriber count

Whether you’re already succeeding or struggling on social media, reviewing your data will always set you up for a better month ahead.

2. Set goals.

Once you’ve reviewed your analytics and know what went well and what can be improved, you can set your goals for next month.

For instance, say you notice that last month’s videos outperformed any other content type and generated 2,000 visits to your website. For next month, you can up the number of videos you post and set a visit goal of 3,000.

Whether it’s increasing your reach, generating more engagement, or driving more traffic to your website, setting goals will serve as your north star and allow you to schedule content that aligns with these goals.

3. Schedule next month’s content.

When you’re managing multiple social media accounts, you have to plan your content ahead of time. Otherwise, you risk under planning and not having enough content.

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You’ve already set your goals for the month. So now, it’s just a matter of creating content that best aligns with them.

For instance, say you want to increase your reach and last month’s data shows that your most shared content relates to three main topics. You can then center next month’s content on these three topics.

When scheduling content, you should also consult other teams to determine if there are any events, announcements, or campaigns that you will need to share.

The earlier you have your creative assets – images, videos, copy – the easier it will be to create your content calendar.

Pro-tip: We created a social media content calendar template to make planning posts and coordinating campaigns easy.

There you have it – a detailed social media checklist that will have you on top of your game every day.

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MARKETING

How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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