Social media strategy for a small business: a one-page plan

A small business social media strategy fits on one page: one goal, one audience, one or two platforms, three or four kinds of post, and a posting pace you can keep. Start with the free tools the platforms give you, then check your own numbers once a month and adjust.

What this means for you

You don't need to be everywhere. Pick the one thing you want social media to do for your business, like getting more bookings or more calls. Go where your customers already are. Post the same few kinds of things on a regular day. Once a month, look at what worked and do more of it. That's the whole plan.

The details

1. One goal you can count

Write one sentence: what you want, and how you'll know. "More people call us from our Google listing." "More bookings from Instagram." "More people visit the website from LinkedIn." Pick a goal you can see in a platform's own analytics or in your sales, so you can tell if it's working.

2. The customers you want to reach

Describe them in a line or two: who they are, where they live, what they need from you, and when they look for it. A bakery's customers search nearby on their phone in the morning. A consultant's clients read LinkedIn on weekdays. This decides everything below.

3. One or two platforms, not five

Choose where those customers already spend time, and start with one or two.

• Local business: your Google Business Profile comes first. Google says "businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results", and asks you to provide hours, website, phone number and location, and to post photos and videos. Set that up before any social account.
• Selling to other businesses: a LinkedIn Page, often with your own profile next to it.
• Selling to consumers with photos or video: Instagram and Facebook, which you can run together from Meta Business Suite for free.

4. Three or four kinds of post you'll repeat

These are your "content pillars". Pick a few kinds of post that serve your goal and that you can make again and again, for example:

• Show the work: products, before and after, behind the scenes.
• Answer questions: what customers ask you every week.
• Proof: a review or a result, with permission.
• Offers and news: opening hours, events, a new service.

Rotate through them so your account doesn't become only ads.

5. A pace you can keep

Regular beats frequent. Pick a schedule you can keep for three months, such as one post a week per platform, and put it in your calendar. LinkedIn backs regular posting with its own figures: "Pages that post weekly have five times more followers and grow seven times faster than Pages that post monthly." Treat that as LinkedIn's data about LinkedIn Pages, not a rule for every network.

To keep the pace, batch your posts and schedule them. LinkedIn lets you "create a draft of a post or schedule it to be published at a time you choose", and Meta Business Suite schedules Facebook and Instagram posts for free. Our guides cover scheduling on LinkedIn and posting to several networks at once for free.

6. Check once a month, then adjust

Once a month, open each platform's own analytics and note three things next to your goal: which posts got the most response, on which days, and whether the goal moved (calls, bookings, visits). Keep a simple log. After two or three months, do more of what worked and drop what didn't. That is how you find your own best days, times and post types, rather than borrowing someone else's averages.

The one-page plan

Copy this into a document and fill it in:

What to do next

• Business owners: Fill in the one-page plan this week, and if you're local, complete your Google Business Profile first.
• Marketers and agencies: Use the same page as a client brief, and agree the goal and the monthly check before you start posting.
• Developers: Nothing.