It’s planning szn, which means it's time to think about what you want to accomplish with your brand and business next year – and then aligning those dreams and goals with realities and budgets. We've worked with Fortune 500s, tech startups, scrappy nonprofits and renowned cultural institutions to help them navigate Q4 and assemble solid annual plans. And through all of that experience, Team Bond has identified one important area that businesses and organizations of all sizes either forget or, oftentimes, ignore during budget planning: social media.
And we're here to tell you that it simply can’t be left out of the process. Here are five questions to address with your MarComm team to ensure that your brand has what it deserves and demands to look great, sound smart and perform well every single day in 2024:
✔️ Are we carving out budget for our social team to jump on opportunities in real time – even if they’re brand adjacent and don’t directly support your bottom line?
✔️ And we allocating enough dollars for our team to create a meaningful series or original content - including social-first short-form video? Think about stock imagery licensing and original footage fees, production costs and spends for paid campaigns. Also, if budget is REALLY constrained, consider ditching some of the higher priced pro tools in favor of visual suites like Canva, which can do a lot more than they used to – just sayin'.
✔️ Have we thought about emerging platforms – whether they're right for us and how we'll prioritize them in 2024? And, if we're going to use them, how will they’ll impact our projections? Experimentation still requires time and money.
✔️ Do we have the right level of support for our community management and audience engagement needs? This is an area that can make or break your customer retention.
✔️ Are we using the right tools to plan, schedule and publish our content, or do we need to upgrade? Nothing wrong with OGs like Hootsuite, but there are other tools like Later and Sprinklr that offer a variety of features. Choose one that's right for your team size, platform usage, social goals and performance measurement requirements.