The Complete Social Media Marketing Checklist: Cheat Sheet for Maximum Engagement

Did you know that 27% of global social media users, roughly 1.4 billion people, use different social channels to purchase products worldwide?

Imagine the opportunity that social media platforms provide businesses to scale up their sales. However, this is easier said than done.

If you have been struggling with your social media marketing, you must feel how frustrating it can be.

It’s not because you lack skills or effort. Maybe you don’t have the proper guidelines. That’s all. But guess what? We have some good news for you.

At WPManageNinja, we are always experimenting with different approaches to social media marketing. Finally, we’ve prepared an ultimate social media marketing checklist for our brand.

In this article, we’ll share our cheat sheet with you. Stay with us to the end to keep your social media marketing on the right track.

Let’s get started.

Social media marketing goals of WPManageNinja

We’ve set our social media marketing goals based on the SMART method.

Here’s the list of goals that we want to achieve with our social media marketing:

1. Increase brand awarness: We want more and more people to know about our brand– who we are, what we do, and how we can help them to achieve their business goals. That’s why our social media marketing strategies start with acknowledging our audience about our existence.

2. Establish thought leadership: Social channels are overly crowded places. No one will believe what we say unless we establish ourselves as leaders. That’s why one of our key goals is to build and promote thought leadership so that people trust us whenever we provide any suggestions.

3. Generate impressions and engagement: Our social media marketing efforts will start bearing fruit when our content reaches a wide range of people and they start taking actions like reacting or sharing. That’s why we aim to generate higher impressions and engagements.

4. Grow followers across platforms: We will know that our marketing strategies are on the right track when we can grow more followers. People will follow us only when they find us valuable and worthy of their time. So, growing followers on different platforms is a cornerstone of our goals.

5. Drive more visitors to websites: As our websites are our sales medium, more quality traffic is always our ultimate marketing goal. When we’ve made people know about us and trust us via social channels, converting them into traffic indicates high-impactful leads.

Pro Tips: Learn about the most effective and low-cost social media marketing tricks for your business.

General rules for our social media content

No matter what our strategies are and how much they change, we always follow some iron-clad rules for our content.

We want to ensure that our content sets a positive example, avoids offending people, and accurately represents our message and brand.

That’s why we have established mandatory ground rules for making our branding content interesting to create a long-term good brand impression.

Let’s learn about them.

1. Rules for brand personality

Like a person, a brand should have a well-groomed personality on social media. It should be confident, communicative, inclusive, and engaging.

Let’s learn about our social media marketing checklist for building a strong brand personality:

• Always maintain an approachable and confident tone everywhere. Your image copy, video scripts, and caption should reflect that you know what you are doing.

• Be truthful. Do not exaggerate about your products or services, and avoid false claims. Instead, present the use cases of your products in detail and show how customers can benefit.

• Make sure that your branding language is inclusive and respectful. Not all your viewers are the same, so it is your responsibility to consider diversity and avoid sensitive topics.

• Your images must be cohesive. That means all the visual elements and the copy of your image must complement each other and not create confusion.

• Personalize your texts, such as posts, image copies, or comments. Instead of using the passive voice, speak directly to your users in the second person. Start any conversation with “You.”

• Make your messages digestible and easy to consume. Do not use industry jargon or complicated terms and tones in your branding.

• Focus on making interactive and problem-solving posts. For example, instead of saying a 10 GB memory card, say that your card can store 10,000 songs.

• Always maintain consistency with your branding taglines and key phrases. But do not overuse them. Focus on naturally promoting them in your posts and content.

• Social media is all about having fun and being casual. So, use relevant emojis and hashtags to make your messages interesting, not overwhelming.

Pro Tips: Follow the best practices for selling products on social media to boost your sales.

2. Rules for branding consistency

Branding consistency means creating a consistent brand image in the minds of your audience. It’s like when someone sees your post on their feed and recognises immediately that it’s you.

Following certain styles and templates can help you achieve brand consistency. Maintaining it for a long time can help you create a unique brand image and make your brand a symbol of trust.

Here’s how you can maintain brand consistency for long-term benefits:

• Always use two or three modern, clean, sans-serif fonts for your content. We recommend using these combinations:
  
  1. Montserrat (headings) + Open Sans (Body)
  2. Poppins (headings and Body) + Roboto (body)

• Stick to your brand color palette in all designs. If your logo is primarily blue-dominant, do not randomly use orange or green. Make sure all your designs are blue-dominated.

• Focus on contrasts in your designs. Ensure that your fonts are clearly visible and highly readable. Do not let your viewers struggle to see what you’ve written in your image copy.

• Create pre-built templates for various types of posts, such as promotions, testimonials, and product features, so that you don’t have to design them manually every time.

3. Rules for logo usage

The logo is the heart of your online identity. Whether on your website or social media channel, it bears the symbol of your business. Properly using your logo is crucial to creating a strong virtual presence.

Here’s our social media marketing checklist for using brand logos properly:

• Always maintain consistency with your logo placement, size, and resolution. Avoid using low-quality files or placing your logos randomly in different designs.

• Make different versions of your logo and use the appropriate ones based on the background contrast. Your logo should always be highlighted and properly visible in all designs and content.

• Ensure the logo is high-resolution and never distorted. If your logo is an oval, ensure that it remains oval in your content. Do not force it to be round to fit your design.

• Do not alter your logo color or add any elements randomly. Keeping your logo intact is important to improve your brand recognition.

• Keep sufficient white space around the logo. Otherwise, it might impact the visibility of your logo.

• Use the official product logo as the social media profile picture. Your business needs to have its own identity to become a brand.

Bonus Tips: Social media marketing can be tough and frustrating at times. Learn about some amazing small business success stories using social media marketing and effective tips to motivate yourself.

Content strategies for the best outcome

You cannot succeed with social media marketing by creating and publishing content randomly.

Social media marketing is about being strategic so that your contents reach the right people at the right time.

Only then will your efforts be successful if you combine and maintain properly content types, posting time, frequency, community management, and best practices.

Let’s review our step-by-step content strategies from our social media marketing guidelines to achieve the best outcome.

1. Content (The 30-70 rule)

• Our 30% posts include promotional content, such as product updates, new features, and offers.

• The remaining 70% is audience-focused content like educational, industry insights, or engagement-driven posts.

2. Types of content

• Product updates & features
• Customer testimonials & success stories
• Industry news and educational tips
• Offers and promotions
• Blog content
• Product/feature-specific short videos
• Engagement-driven content (polls, discussions, memes, where appropriate)

3. Posting frequency & timing

• Post a minimum of 3 to 5 times per week. If you have multiple accounts or pages for different products, repeat this process for each one.

• Every social channel has its analytics. Take the data from those analytical tools to determine the best time to post.

Pro Tips: Discover the best times to post on social media to ensure your content reaches its maximum audience and engagement.

4. Best practices

• Avoid posting low-effort and repetitive content just to add volume. Quality must never be compromised.

• Count your impressions per post to assess their performance. Don’t rely on total impressions, as it might mislead your progress tracking.

• Optimize link placement by using photo posts with the link in the comments to maintain reach across platforms.

• Always encourage interactions and discussions in posts. For example, you can write “Let us know your opinion in the comment section” in your captions to initiate engagement.

• Make sure that your posts add value to the viewers, like industry updates or product benefits. Avoid posting without context.

5. Engagement & community management

• Make sure to reply to all comments and messages. Always use a friendly yet professional and humane tone.

• Do not engage in controversial topics or arguments. Social media audiences are sensitive, and arguments and controversies can easily drive them away.

• Address negative comments professionally. First, try to understand your customer’s pain point, and then offer solutions with gentle words.

• Escalate PR or technical issues to the appropriate teams. Delaying in issue solving can create a long-term bad impression.

Bonus Tips: Social media marketing is all about being trendy. Learn more about the future of social commerce trends and relevant information to stay ahead with your marketing.

Platform-specific guidelines that our brands follow

There is no individual best platform for social media marketing. Each social platform has its unique charm for businesses.

The best social media platforms for your business depend entirely on your target audience. However, choosing multiple platforms for your marketing efforts is generally a better approach.

Here’s a chart of top social platforms according to DataReortal statistics:

Our target audiences are highly active on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, and X(formerly Twitter). That’s why we have specific social media marketing guidelines for these platforms.

Let’s check them out.

1. Facebook:

• Keep messages between 40-80 characters for better engagement
• Use Facebook Insights to optimize posting times and content plans
• Decide whether to place links in captions or comments based on performance

2. Instagram

• Focus on high-quality, aesthetic visuals
• Use Story Highlights to showcase key products or testimonials

3. LinkedIn

• Prioritise educational and thought leadership content
• Avoid direct external links in captions—place links in comments
• Use LinkedIn Articles for longer-form content
• For a step-by-step and detailed guide, post carousel content.
• Share documents directly within posts.
• Target your product’s niche-specific audiences or influencers who’d benefit from your product.
• Use proper hashtags.

4. X

• Regularly audit follower/following lists to remove bots
• Avoid posting external links in tweets where possible; use comments
• Use threads for detailed discussions and tips
• Limit link inclusion to essential posts only

5. Reddit

• Participate in relevant subreddits
• Read subreddit rules before posting or commenting
• Provide genuine value before mentioning products
• Engage in discussions to earn credibility

Pro Tips: Learn about the top social media lead generation techniques to ensure maximum conversion and higher revenue.

Best practices for account management and security

While social platforms are the greatest promotional medium, handling multiple accounts and juggling between campaigns is not easy. Additionally, security issues have become a major concern as well.

If you are not cautious enough, things can easily get messy, and your best plans might be ruined in a blink. That’s why we strictly follow best practices for managing our accounts better and secured.

Let’s take a look at our social media marketing guidelines for account management and security:

• All major announcements, promotions, and collaborations require approval from relevant teams and stakeholders before publishing.

• Scheduled posts should be monitored to ensure they publish correctly. Platforms might have technical issues with post publishing, so it’s better to double-check.

• All social media managers should always enable two-factor authentication (2FA). Google Authenticator should also be connected to the respective platforms.

• Remove access immediately for team members who leave or change roles. Access to social handles must be limited to associated employees only.

• Never share login credentials with anyone other than relevant team members, and avoid phishing attempts by verifying unexpected messages or emails before clicking links.

Bonus Tips: For inspiration, you can check social media success stories of popular global brands where they used social channels to launch successful campaigns.

Pro tips for performance tracking and reporting

Social media marketing has no fixed shape. It depends on the business and varies with time. Change is the only constant here!

That’s why you need to be prepared to adjust to changes, and it’s not possible without proper performance analysis. Performance analysis will tell you which content and strategies work best for you.

Here is our social media marketing checklist for performance tracking and reporting:

• Regularly monitor different engagement metrics like click-through rate, number of reactions, impressions, and shares.

• Create monthly reports summarizing followers gained, impressions, and engagement.

• Adjust strategy based on analytics insights.

Be strategic, innovative, and successful

The success of social media marketing depends on three parameters: experimentation, analysis, and adjustment. Here at WPManageNinja, we continually learn about new trends and adjust our strategies accordingly, and we love to share these insights with you.

By now, we’ve shared our full social media marketing checklist with you. From setting our goals, mandatory rules, content strategies, platform-wise guidelines, account management, security measures, to best practices, every topic we’ve covered is for your convenience.

However, this is not the end. We will continue to track our performances and share them with you. In the meantime, we would be more than happy if our guidelines could help you achieve your goals. Feel free to share how our strategies are working for you. Till then, keep in touch. Cheers!