How To Create A Social Roadmap (Get A Free Template)

6 min readApr 1, 2022

I grew up in an era where the fastest connection was dial-up and a phone call meant the end of your time browsing the web. This may sound like a tale of ancient times, but it was just two decades ago. The world would certainly not be what it is today without the internet. It has become a key feature in our lives, and our main way to stay connected. Then came the pandemic, and with it, the use of social media skyrocketed. According to Statista, the average daily time spent by users on social networks grew to over an hour in the United States. Suddenly, if you weren’t on social media, you were out of the conversation.

Social media platforms allow users to have conversations, share information, and create content. We use it to develop a voice, share content, learn, keep up to date with the latest trends, and even manage and market our business. Consumer interactions with brands on social media add depth to business-consumer relationships and allow businesses to establish rapport and a sense of trust with consumers. Yet as technology advances, more and more platforms become available to the public, and managing 5 to 10 different channels can quickly become overwhelming.

Learning how to create a Social Media Roadmap can help you organize your content effectively, and even plan and schedule your posts in advance. A well-organized roadmap can turn into data that can ultimately help you improve your content and better adapt to trends and changes. Managing the lifecycle of your content is a key to success.

Whether you are a content creator looking to distribute your content effectively, or a business looking to connect with consumers, these tips can help you get organized.

What’s A Social Media Roadmap?

It is the document that reflects your Social Media Marketing Strategy moving forward. The basic roadmap contains an overview of the content that you will be publishing as well as an editorial calendar with all the information related to your posts. It can quickly become your main tool to organize your social media effectively and centralize the information related to your channels and your audience.

While creating roadmaps for both big and small companies, I’ve learned that each roadmap is unique. It needs to fit your needs. Here’s a free version of one of my social media roadmaps. Click on the link to access the template.

Note: Make sure that you are logged in to Gmail and that you click on Make a copy to download a copy of the template to your own Google Drive.

Tips To Manage Your Roadmap Effectively

Defining your strategy takes thought and consideration. From your target audience to each specific social media platform, content distribution can be an art.

1. Define Your Audience & Create A Persona

Defining your target audience can help you visualize content in a way that adapts to their needs. Tailor content to your audience for increased reach.

Think about your audience in demographic, psychographic, and geographic terms. Identify the consumer and the platforms they’re the most active on, and use that information to find the right social platforms for you.

You can take this a step further by creating buyer personas. These describe specific segments of your target audience. Each audience should contain multiple personas that take their individual preferences into consideration. You can learn more about personas in this article by Hootsuite.

Human beings are complex and our experiences make us unique. This is the time to get personal. Understanding who’s on the other side of your message can help you create content that resonates.

If you downloaded my free template, I would highly recommend that you add a new tab for your Audience. Include each persona and keep that information up-to-date. You can also add a column to the Editorial Calendar to assign an audience group to each post or channel.

2. Set SMART Social Media Goals

What are you trying to achieve? Defining your goals is the first step in organization and planning. Goal setting provides a benchmark to determine whether your strategy is actually succeeding or not.

Start small and make your goals realistic within the set parameters. Be SMART, meaning:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time-bound

Avoid trying to overachieve. Leave that for the content review and make changes based on actual data, as this is more likely to produce better results.

Be as specific as you can. This will allow you to track your progress and determine when to adjust your strategy. The more specific you can be with your goal, the higher the chance you’ll complete it.

Here are some examples:

Get 1000 followers within a month.
Reach an engagement rate of 5% in 3 months.
Increase website traffic by 15% within a month by driving traffic from social media channels to my website.

Make sure that you are consistent about taking the time to analyze the current success of your ongoing strategy and how it affects goal completion. This will help you identify barriers and solve them.

3. Choose The Right Social Media Channels

Social media is an ever-evolving network of interconnected content, but not all content is created equal, and not all channels work for every type of content.

Start by finding out where your audience is the most active. This is where experience and general knowledge of social media can make a difference, but these few tips from SproutSocial may help you get started:

4. Create Content for Your Audience

It’s time to start creating content. Here are a few best practices:

Try A/B testing different content elements, formats, timings, and more. This is how you gather the knowledge to fine-tune your strategy to the types of content that your audience tends to engage with. Monitor what kind of captions they like, which timing works best to engage them, etc.
Conduct polls and ask questions to engage with your audience directly. Combine the information with your analytics for better results.
Remember to create content that fits your message in all its different stages. Capture attention, entertain the audience and increase reach for more awareness. Include informative content when looking to make a sale.

5. Check Out The Competition

Look at what the competition is doing. Their success is your data. These questions from SproutSocial can help you identify areas where you need to develop your strategy:

What types of people are your competitors targeting?
How are they reaching out to their target audience?
What are they doing right?
What’s missing from their strategy?
What key benefits are they emphasizing in their marketing?
How often are they posting?
Which content formats seem to work the best for them?
What kind of tone are they using?

Use social listening. Research the social chatter around other brands and content creators.

6. Build A Community

Building a dedicated community through Facebook Groups, forums, Reddit, and other platforms can help you a lot. It’s a win-win situation. Your community can keep an eye on the latest updates and you can engage your audience even further, while also getting data to further develop your strategy.

Work with influencers, run a giveaway, or host an event to keep your community engaged.

7. Measure Progress and Improve

Creating, organizing, and keeping track of your posts takes time. Centralizing the process definitely helps with organization, but it also allows you to measure your progress and improve upon it.

Use your Social Media Roadmap to identify the posts that shine and those that need more work. Monitor your followers and engagement, and identify sudden changes. If you are using the free template attached to this article, consider adding extra columns to your Channels tab to calculate growth by percentage from month to month. Add a graphic that can help you visualize the information.

Analytics are essential for success. During times of uncertainty, data is king. Figure out what’s working and what’s not. Keep track of your progress regularly and optimize your strategy based on your insights.