Hands-on: The Free 30-day, One-Task-a-Day Social Media Challenge

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We can swear that every business owner who has a social media presence wants to blow their competition out of the water – are you one of those business or blog owners?

Then this 30-day, one-task-a-day social media challenge is for you. Don’t leave it for someone else to use to blow you out of the water instead.

Being successful on social media today can be a challenging task.

The number of social media accounts that are blasting billions of messages, posts, and tweets to their followers, in a single day, can be mind-boggling.

Businesses, Individuals, Non-profits, Vloggers, Bloggers, Community organizations, and many more are contributing to this flood of information.

So how will you ever get your voice heard amidst all this noise?

There are a lot of aspects that work together to create a successful social media engagement process, but it all has to start with a clear plan.

Even when you come across a funny image on social media, posted by a blogger or brand, they are not simply doing that at random in the hope of gaining interest from their audience – it is a planned event.

A social media plan is part of the overall growth strategy for a business or a blog, and it needs to be carefully created and adhered to.

Each post follows the other in the form of a ladder that increases their success on social media.

There is no mystery as to how the big boys and girls on social media get an awesome number of engaged followers – YOU CAN DO IT TOO!

All you need is a little bit of creativity and a daily plan that you can use to get to your social media marketing goals.

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This 30-day, one-task-a-day challenge will take you through what you can do for the next 30 days to achieve tangible results in furthering your social media marketing endeavors.

We will divide it into 6 weeks; Monday to Friday tasks that you can easily perform without moving away from the core functions of your blog or business – each task takes a few minutes to complete.

So, let’s get started.

WEEK 1

Create Your Goals and Outline Your Metrics

 

Day 1 – Create Your Goals

The first step towards achieving this social media challenge is to establish clear social marketing goals.

What exactly are you trying to achieve within these coming 30 days?

Some examples of social media goals that you can choose from are:

  • Raising your blog or business brand awareness
  • Driving more traffic to your blog or website
  • Generating new leads
  • Nurturing the leads that you have generated on your blog or website
  • Improving the engagement of your blog or website
  • Building a thriving community around your blog or business
  • Establishing your authority and expertise within your niche
  • Shifting the sentiments surrounding your business of blog

The idea behind this first step is to find the purpose of your social media efforts for these 30 days.

With a clear goal in mind, you have an idea of the content that you need to create that will optimally serve these goals.

The question remains, how do you quality these goals?

One of the most popular ways is to use the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) model.

This is where you set up a broad statement of the objectives that you want to achieve, and then list a set of key results that you want to achieve.

An example of this statement would be:

  • Objective – Raising awareness for my blog
  • Key Result – Increase the number of fans, likes, shares, comments, and mentions of the blog by 20% within 6 months.

With this in mind, you will know the kind of content to create that will elicit shares, comments, mentions, and ultimately get more fans for your blog.

Day 2 – Outline Your Success Metrics

What are the indicators of success in your social media endeavors? Are you looking for more likes? Do you want to convert leads into sales?

You need to decide on the metrics you will use to measure the success of your social media plan.

This means that you have to set clear standards as to what success or failure means.

For example, when you want more engagement, the numbers that define success will vary from one person to another.

You may look at success as having an extra 100 fans on your blog, while another blogger might measure success as having 200 more fans.

You must decide on what success looks like for your particular needs.

The metrics that you track will also be different based on the kind of content you produce (videos, pictures, ads) where you post the content (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) and the goals that you have defined in step 1 above.

Day 3 – Lay Out Your Challenges

Congratulations, you are now on the third day of the challenge.

Now you need to lay down the challenges that you face in your social media endeavors.

This is quite a simple task. You just need to think about what it is that stops you from making the desired impact on your social media.

Once you write down a challenge, flesh it out by identifying EXACTLY HOW these challenges water down the results that you get from your current social media process.

For example

  • Challenge 1 – Although we post every other day, we don’t seem to get people to engage with our posts
  • Challenge 2 – The organic reach of our social media posts has declined suddenly

Certain challenges seem to crop up for a large proportion of bloggers and business owners on social media and some of these are:

  • Finding and reaching the target audience
  • Getting resources and budgets for social
  • Measure the ROI
  • Support for overall business goals
  • Alignment of the social strategy with that of the overall business
  • Creating engaging content
  • Publishing content
  • Monitoring the competition
  • And many more
Day 4 – Identify Solutions to The Challenges You Face

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and brainstorm the solutions required to address the challenges you have identified in the step above.

For every solution that you come up with, also include a justification for how it will be effective – this makes it easier to prioritize the solutions and allocate resources to achieving them.

For example:

  • Challenge 1 – Although we post every other day, we don’t seem to get people to engage with our posts

Solution 1 – We can opt to use influencers to drive conversions and increase engagement on our social media posts

Justification – 91% of brands use influencers on social media to boost engagement on their social media channels. Influencers have loyal followers who quickly follow the advice that they give to them.

  • Challenge 2 – The organic reach of our social media posts has declined suddenly

Solution 2 – We can start making highly targeted social media adverts, which will reach the right people and solve the issue of our declining organic reach.

Justification – Marketers are spending more money on social media adverts to reach motivated buyers through the best social channels. This is why social media spending in the US alone is projected to reach $47.9 billion in 2021.

Day 5 – Analyze Your Competition

One of the best ways to analyze your competition is to run a competitive analysis.

You will not be copying the content that they use, but you can try to customize the social strategies that they use to fit your need.

Basically, your blog or business shares the same audience personas, so you should look at the type of content that they use to meet their social media strategy and then change it so it fits your own social process.

  • Look at the social media channels that they predominantly use – are they successful in those channels? Then you too should switch to those channels.
  • Look at the topics that the competition is using to generate the most traffic, and what they talk about in those posts.
  • Look at which areas in YOUR social media strategy are performing better than the competition and add more effort there.

You can use social analytics to find out where your competition is doing better and where they aren’t. There are several online tools that you can use to measure the statistics regarding the performance of your competition.

These tools will show you the days when your competition achieves the highest engagement, and then see what kind of content they use on those days.

This will give you an insight into when to post your content, and what form will generate the most engagement for you.

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WEEK 2

Refine Your Business/Brand or Blog Identity and Voice

 

Day 6 – Define Your Social Media Strengths and Weaknesses

This is the time for you to go deeper and find out where you are successful and where you have flopped in your current social media strategy.

You can conduct an in-house survey with your employees if you are running a big business.

If you are running a blog, check your statistics concerning how your current social media plan is working and identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Come up with a list of success parameters and then see if you have achieved your goal in each.

This will help you know where you should put more emphasis as you progress with this 30-day challenge.

Some issues you can consider are:

  • Are your social media content strategies in line with your business goals?
  • Have you put enough time and monetary resources into your social media plan?
  • Does your social media content resonate with your target audience?
  • Do you have the technology and access to analytics that can help you measure your ROI?
  • Do you have the appropriate social media channels where your target audience resides?
  • Do you curate your content so that it is fitting with each social media channel? (e.g., curating your Facebook content to fit Twitter or Instagram)

And so much more.

Day 7 – Audit Your Current Social Media Content

This is the step where you find out which of the channels you use and which type of content is performing the best.

When you carry out such an audit, make sure you take some time to dig deeper and understand why the content is performing well or not.

This will help you know the kind of content that your audience readily consumes and which one flops.

If your posts are not engaging your audience as you expect them to, then there is a need to change your social media strategy.

There are several tools that you can use to audit your social media content, and some go as far as suggesting where you should be posting your content, based on the niche you are operating in.

Day 8 – Identify the Best Keywords/Hashtags for Your Niche

Have you ever tried to use social media listening tools to find out what your target audience is talking about?

If you have not, then it is time that you started.

Social media listening tools can help you identify keywords that are used a lot in your niche.

These keywords are the ones you will use in creating content that your target audience will respond to.

When talking about keywords in social media, you should also include hashtags. These are the ones that your target audience uses to converse in a hidden manner.

During the pandemic, the hashtag #stasafe was the most used by people who were targeting parents and students after children were allowed to go back to school.

For a blog or business that deals with products and services associated with school-going children, then this would have been a great hashtag to use when posting on social media.

An example is a retailer of school books or uniforms – this would have been great to send out tweets or display their products on Instagram.

Following the hashtag was a great way for retailers to follow the conversation and provide content to mitigate these worries and increase engagement with their target audience.

Day 9 – Polish Your Brand Voice

Consistency is key when you are creating a powerful social media presence. Your brand or blog voice is the one that enables you to connect with your audience along all your social media channels.

The voice that you use should appeal to your target audience’s psychographics and demographics.

You can begin by stating which three words best describe your blog or business.

If your blog or brand was a person, how would you describe him or her?

Choosing these words will help you narrow in on the kind of voice that you should use on social media.

To illustrate this, take a look at these examples:

  1. Quirky

This means that you are a person who is not afraid of being yourself and challenging the status quo.

Things to do: be contrary and use unexpected posts.

Things NOT to do: use jargon and other vague references.

  1. Passionate

You want to change the way the world works.

Things to do: be a champion of your niche and be strong when expressing your views.

Things NOT to do: be flakey and unsure.

  1. Authentic

You always give the best solutions even when it is not your product or service.

Things to do: be very honest in your approach.

Things NOT to do – use a lot of marketing jargon the overpromises the solutions that you offer.

  1. Irreverent

You take your products and services seriously even though you don’t take yourself as seriously as you should.

Things to do: be playful and use colorful imagery.

Things NOT to do: be too casual by using vague pop-culture terms.

Day 10 – Maintain Consistency Across Social Channels

Although many people concentrate a lot on the content that they are creating for social media, they don’t realize that the consistency of their social profiles also affects their performance on these channels.

When you have defined your social media voice, you need to align your social media channels with that voice.

Ideally, your social media imagery and written content should reflect the voice that you want to use.

Here are a few things that you can do to align your social media voice across all your channels.

  1. Use the same profile picture

If you are using multiple channels for your social media marketing campaigns, then you must use the same, recognizable, profile picture on all your channels.

Businesses and blogs usually use their logos as their profile picture, so this should not be a big challenge to you.

  1. Complete you profile

Make sure that you use every available means to tell your audience about your business or blog.

You can be creative when you are doing this so as not to seem too salesy.

Make sure they know what you do, and what you have to offer them that will add value to their lives.

  1. Use keywords to boost organic searches

The keywords that you compiled on Day 8 will come in useful at this point.

Use the keywords at specific points in your social media profile.

For example, use the best hashtags that are used within your niche.

These keywords and hashtags can be used in your bio, experiences, interests, and photos.

WEEK 3

Find and Listen to Your Target Audience

 

Day 11 – Create Audience Personas for Your Blog/Business

You may have to visit your current audience personas if they don’t seem to be working well for you. If you have not created any, then it is time to do so.

Audience Personas will help you understand your target audience and future customers better. This way, you will know exactly what type of content they will respond to, and what you will be saying on the content.

Start by defining what you think your target audience would look like, and if there is information you can’t think of, look for it through research.

The main issues you should consider are:

  • Lifestyle
  • Demographics
  • Career
  • Backstory
  • Purchase habits
  • Financial status
  • Goals
  • Challenges and Pain Points
Day 12 – Listen to Your Audience

In order to better understand how to connect on an intimate level with your target audience, you have to listen to what they say on social media channels.

Even if they are not directly interacting with your business or blog, you can still learn a lot about what makes them tick, when they appear on social media.

As we mentioned earlier, there are various online tools that you can use to listen to your target audience.

When you listen to them, here are some things that you should be on the lookout for:

  • What is your audience talking about and what do they love sharing the most?
  • What is your target audience saying about the products and services offered within your niche, and/or your business?
  • What answers is your audience looking for on forums like Reddit and Quora?
  • Which influencers, events, and trending topics best engage your target audience?
Day 13 – Research Relevant Topics and Industry Trends

You must stay on top of the happenings in your niche if you want to establish yourself as an authority in the industry.

Make sure that you take part in conversations that are trending in your industry.

Keep on researching so that your content aligns with the interests that are trending in your industry.

Some of the best ways to do this are through:

Newsletters

Instead of browsing haphazardly looking for the current and trending issues within your niche, you should sign up for newsletters that give you the latest news about your niche.

Newsletters give you information about the state of the industry, updates on social networks surrounding your niche, changes in technology being used to reach your audience, and the emerging trends and best practices.

Some newsletters that you should follow include:

Social Media Examiner – This is a newsletter that shows you various ways in which you can reach your audience.

They have expert interviews, written and video, reviews of the latest trends, and several insightful articles.

Social Media Today – this is a newsletter that analyses what is happening within social media today – hence the name.

They give you information with a platform-focused approach so you can decide which content you want to read.

You can then see what your competition is doing on specific social media channels and see how you can leverage this to achieve success.

Socialmedia.org – This is an organization for leaders within social media networks. You can subscribe to their newsletter, The Shortlist, which shows member stories as they share what they are observing o social media and what they are working on.

Webinars

Webinars are a great way of generating new leads and prospects, demonstrating your expertise in your niche, and nurturing existing relationships with your audience and customers.

These channels can be used to keep conversations going, which can be tweeted live so others may join in as the webinar is going on.

Webinars also give you the opportunity to learn more about your audience, listen to their ideas, and see how best to meet their needs.

Blogs

There are several blogs that you can read regularly to keep ahead when it comes to understanding what is happening in your niche.

They go as far as letting you know which types of campaigns work well and the channels, they should be employed in.

Medium is a great blog to follow for the latest industry news.

Forums

Follow forums within your niche to see which topics are generating the most interest and conversations.

Quora is a great place to look for questions that people need to be answered – you can opt to answer these questions on Quora and also post on social media.

Quora is a great place to find ideas for blogging topics as well as social media posts that will elicit the best engagement with your target audience.

Day 14 – Collaborate With Other Departments

If your organization is a big one, it probably has other departments within it. If you are a solopreneur, then you can look at your pers and see how you can collaborate to improve your social media presence.

Although marketing is the department that is tasked with reaching out to customers, people in other departments could have insights and ideas that the people in marketing could benefit from.

For example, people in your sales team have a better understanding of the customer needs, because they interact with them directly. They are the ones who listen to what customers say about the pros and cons of your products or services.

People in human resources can also share a lot of insights on how to share social media content at the management level. This is especially useful for corporate persons who use LinkedIn for communicating with their peers within the industry.

For those running solo enterprises, social media collaboration tools are a great avenue to achieving this goal.

Day 15 – Identify Your Ideal Content Types

It is now time that you started identifying the kind of content that appeals the most to your target audience.

Take a look at the Audience Personas that you created and decide what kind of content these people would love to consume.

Would it be a meme on Facebook or Instagram or a video on YouTube?

Would they like to chat on Twitter or through Facebook Live Broadcast?

When considering the type o content that best appeals to your target audience, look at the resources that you have. For example, if you cannot afford to produce a high-definition video, then you can add a great infographic that leads them to your blog content or website.

You should adopt diversity so you keep your target audiences’ interest in high gear. Posting the same kind of content every other day will quickly bore them and they will disengage from your posts.

Here are some of the content types consider:

  • Infographics
  • Memes
  • GIFs
  • How-to’s
  • Polls
  • Videos
  • Contests
  • User-generated content
  • Photos
  • Audio
  • Livestreaming

A smart to test which is the best content for your target audience on social media is to create a mix of content and then see which one results in better engagement.

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WEEK 4

Fill Out Your Social Content Calendar

 

Day 16 – Create a Social Posting Schedule

Your audience, the campaign that you want to conduct, the social media channels you want to use, and your company goals are important factors to consider when you are defining your social media posting frequency.

Here are some of the best ways to post on different social media platforms:

  • Facebook – 1 to 2 posts per day
  • Twitter – 3 to 10 tweets a day
  • Instagram – 1 to 3 posts a day
  • Instagram Stories – 2 to 5 times a day
  • Pinterest – 3 to 20 times a day
  • LinkedIn – 1 to 2 posts a week

The post frequency will also depend on the size and experience of your social media team. If you are posting alone, don’t compromise on the quality of your posts in order to meet these posting thresholds.

When creating your content calendar, use our social media analytics to determine where you should post, rather than toiling hard to post on all channels.

It is preferable to post more on channels where you have the best engagement and less on those with low engagement stats.

Keep an eye on the publishing rate and the amount of engagement that you get.

Day 17 – Create a Bunch of Posting Ideas

It is time to put on your creativity hat and start planning the content that you will use to capture your audiences’ attention throughout your campaign.

The best way to do this is to put yourself in the shoes of your audience and think about what would catch your eye as you browse through your social media feeds.

You can also look at ways in which you can repurpose any old content that you used before to make it better or use it in another social media channel.

When you look at what type of content conversations that your target audience prefers, which is the best way to contribute to these conversations?

Here are some of the best ways to create content that will interest and engage your target audience:

User-generated content

User-generated content is now being used heavily to create awareness and cultivate engagement. You can promote your products and services using user-generated content.

This is a great way of facilitating word-of-mouth promotions using digital media.

According to statistics, consumers are 9.8 times more likely to follow user-generated content than influencer content when they are making purchasing decisions.

Live streams

YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook now have the ability to stream live from content creators and companies.

Statistics show that people aged 18 to 34 watch more live streams per day on social media than any other form of content.

When you create live streams, your target audience can put a face to the brand and this serves to improve engagement rates.

Video

74% of businesses confirm that video has a better engagement rate and ROI than static images. 60% of businesses today are using video in their marketing endeavors.

You should not rule out video, even if you don’t have the budget to hire a videographer – you can use your trusty Smartphone to achieve the same results.

You may also use tools like Canva in creating fantastic videos.

Interactive Content

Polls and surveys are another way of engaging your target audience on social media.

You can also create content and then announce the winners on social media.

When you engage your target audience in this way, they will be primed to read more about your products and services on social media.

For example, when you create a quiz, that is funny and engaging, it will be shared by your current readers and probably bring in more readers in this way.

Day 18 – Take Stock of Your Resources

After you have finished gathering ideas for your content, it is time to take stock of your resources and see how best to allocate them in your social media plan.

Take a look at which ideas seem to be the best and then think of the resources required to create the content.

If you want to use video, do you need a videographer or producer, or can you simply create a quick video using your phone?

Also, think of the manpower you need to create these content pieces. If you have a big organization, who will be creating the content? If you work solo, do you have the budget to hire a freelancer?

Do you need any creative support in creating the content?

Do you already have content that you can use in your possessions?

Day 19 – Create Your Content

This is the time to get down and dirty and create the content that will wow your audience.

Make sure that you have a timeline for when the content will be complete so it fits within your posting schedule.

Day 20 – Optimize Your Content

When you are creating your content, think about the Social Search Optimizations tips that you can use.

This means using hashtags, and keywords that your target audience is bound to follow on social media.

Each content you create should have different keywords and hashtags for the best engagement results.

For example, you can create a video, which has been broken down into smaller bits, has still images, gives quotes, and more.

You have to think carefully about the options that you have for each content that you create and ensure that it is designed to optimally engage your target audience.

Make sure that you use keywords in the name of the video and also include hashtags in the description when you post it on your social media channels.

WEEK 5

Enhance Your Social Media Content

 

Now that the most difficult part of this 30-day social media challenge is almost over, it is time to start boosting your social media calendar in order to get more readers.

Day 21 – Create Calls to Action

Not every piece of social media content is designed to create a specific action but where you can, make the most out of it.

For example, there are social media posts that are created to elicit fun and laughter, just to keep the brand or business in the eyes of their target audience.

However, these can also be leveraged to ask people to make a purchase.

You can create a funny meme about a problem that your users face, one that can be solved by your products or services. Somewhere in the meme, make a recommendation for the users to purchase products and services from you and get rid of the “funny” problem.

Day 22 – Widen Your Resource Network

There are various ways in which connecting your target audience to more resources can boost your social media calendar efforts.

First, when you connect your target audience to other resources, you establish yourself as a well-informed authority in your niche, giving them a chance to engage deeper and find solutions that you may not primarily provide.

The more they learn about you and the depth of your “connectedness” the more they trust you as a source of solutions for all the issues that they have, whether you deal with them directly or not.

This is the reason why bloggers provide links to other blogs that offer more information regarding a topic that they are discussing.

Day 23 – Magnify Your Efforts

You must always think about other ways in which your social media campaign can reach a wider audience.

Here are some things that you can do to magnify the efficiency of your social media posts:

  • Give readers an incentive to share your posts with others in their networks.
  • Use influencers to reach an even larger audience within your shared niches.
  • Use friends and family to share posts with others in their networks.

And so on.

Day 24 – Invest in Your Best Content

As you go about making your social media posts, you might find that some forms of content perform much better than others.

For example, if you have been creating videos on your mobile phone, on the fly, you could invest some money to make a professional premium video using a videographer and producer.

You may also amplify the efforts of the best-performing content by paying to have them put into adverts on your social media channels.

With adverts, you can target highly motivated prospective customers who will easily convert into sales, attract qualified leads and traffic as well as grow your audience pool.

The social media algorithms are now preferring to promote paid advertisements over organic content. Paying for an advert will allow you to be discovered much faster than when you use organic content.

You must decide where to place social media adverts based on:

  • Where your target customers spend most of their time
  • Where your target customers are more concentrated
  • Where target customers can easily interact with paid ads
Day 25 – Engage With Your Audience

80% of consumers expect to get replies and answers when they interact with businesses on social media.

You must always engage with your target audience whenever they need you to.

This will create a dialogue that cultivates trust and loyalty for your business.

You will also get valuable insights when you look at the way people comment on your social media content.

Make sure that you read their comments carefully, and answer thoughtfully every time.

When a reader asks a question about your product or service, make sure that you reply promptly.

WEEK 6

Take Stock of Your Performance and Celebrate

 

Day 26 – Track Your Content

You must take stock of how your content is performing across all your social media channels. This is the best way to find out which campaigns are working and which ones need to be redone.

There are tools that you can use to track all of your social media channels in one dashboard.

These reports show you how your posts have performed, ad this helps you understand how your target audience engages with each type of content that you create.

Day 27 – Compare Your Results to Your Goals

There were certain objectives that you defined when you were starting this 30-day challenge, right?

How have your social media posts compared with these objectives?

If you wanted to boost brand awareness, have you achieved this goal?

Social media analytics tools will help you understand where your social media plan has taken you with respect to the objectives you had set at the start.

They also show you whether you are on track to fulfilling your long-term plans with respect to the overall objectives of your business or blog.

Day 28 – Share Your Report

You can now share these results with your teams in your organization, and let them see the fruits of their labor – this serves as an incentive to perform better in their next social media tasks.

There are a number of tools that you can use to share results with people within your organization.

Using the data that you have collected from your social listening and social analytics, you can clearly show just how this 30-day plan has improved your social media marketing process.

You can customize the reports to show just what matters to your team.

Day 29 – Revise or readjust Your Overall Strategy

Marketing strategies are fluid and change constantly. You need to keep an eye on the performance of your strategy and adjust it accordingly.

Day 30 – Celebrate the Transformation

Now that you have made it to the last day, it is time to break out the champagne and celebrate your success, no matter how small it is.

A positive change is a great starting point, and with adjustment, the small steps can be changed into leaps and bounds.

Takeaway

This 30-day, one-task-a-day challenge was created to help you refine your strategies for social media marketing.

This was designed to give you actionable steps that you can follow, and end up creating content that will change how you interact with your target audience for the better performance of your blog or business.

Content created using such a plan will give you better results than content that was haphazardly created on the fly.

It does not mean that these 30 days mark the end of refining your social media strategy. This should be an ongoing process that you repeat from time to time, as factors change within your niche.

If you have gone through this challenge and made some tangible improvements in your social media strategy, please let us know in the comments section below this article.

If you have had challenges, please let us know too, and we can help you solve them.

 

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