I have a friend who recently was assigned to manage the social media accounts for an organizations they volunteers for. They are new to such a role and I wanted to give them some pointers on where to start. I believe anyone who takes on the task of social media management needs to make a Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet.

In this article I will discuss what a Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet is, how to start and use it. The following tips can help any business owner, organization or newbie social media manager to be properly get organized and see success with their social media efforts unfold.

What is a Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet?

A Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet is basically an inventory of your organizations social media accounts and passwords, what is the current state of the accounts, where the accounts need improvement and making sure the branding message is consistent across all social media platforms. Also it contains the best keywords, best hashtags to use along with other items like the top influences in the specific niche the organization is targeting.

I completely 100% believe before anyone from an organizations signs up for social media accounts or starts updating old accounts and posting to the accounts this kind of spreadsheet needs to be in place.

To start make a spreadsheet either in Microsoft Excel or Google Spread Sheet. I prefer using Google Spread Sheets. Reason I prefer Google Spread Sheet of Microsoft Excel is because I can easily share it with others using it as a collaboration tool with other staff, consultants or volunteers and also use it to document for upper management real time social media milestones or where we need more attention.

As well Google Spread Sheets can be opened up from anywhere which makes it easy to work from any computer if that is a personal computer or a public computer such as one in a business center, library or office. One of the best feature is it is stored in Google Drive which is cloud it will not get lost if your computer gets corrupted such as getting a virus, a hard drive goes bad or your laptop gets stolen.

To start the Social Media Marketing Spread Sheet you will make seven sheets with specific columns.

1- Social Media Accounts. This is where you will list all the accounts, username, passwords and emails associated to that social media account if you need to retrieve a password and todays date with current amount of followers. I would start by adding the most popular social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Stumblupon, Google+ and so on.

2- Keywords. On this sheet you will list all the keywords and how often they are search monthly. You will find the keyword search volume by using tools like Google Adwords Keyword Planner or Hittail
3- #Hashtags – You will list popular hashtags your competitors and others in the same niche use in the first column and the second column you will list your hashtag analytics. A good tool to determine the popularity of a hashtag is hashtagify.me or hashtags.org
4- Social Media Bios – Here you will cut and paste the current bios published on each of the social media accounts and see if they are uniformed, portray the same message consistently, use keywords or need to be rewritten to serve better results

5- Draft Posts – The title is pretty self-explanatory. It is always nice to have several drafts posts put aside for the days you have writers block.

6- Social Media Influencers – This is where you list people / social media accounts who are influential to your same niche and frequently repost other people’s social media posts. Establishing a relationship with them would be a good thing if you can get them to repost your posts even better.

7- To-do List – a basic list of to-do that you noticed while putting this Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet together. It could be as simple as to updated profile photo, or deleting social media posts that are not consistent to the brand messaging, to contacting to narrowing down who has the password for a specific account

I setup a blank Social Media Marketing Spreadsheet here you can view and download it for your own use.

Note the social media spread sheet will grow by time but for now this is going to help keep everything organized, keep your messaging and branding consistent. I also find that people / organizations think their social media is in order until they get a spreadsheet going like this and start noticing that they might have:

• disorganizations of usernames and the passwords
• ghost accounts basically social media accounts a past employee started that have gone stagnant and need to hunt down the passwords to take control of it
• inconstant branding and messaging
• missing exposure by focusing too much on one social media platform versus diversifying – it is truly amazing how much traffic Stumblupon and Pinterest can bring to a site but yet most people overlook using them as a traffic driver

Once the social media spreadsheet is populated you will be on an organized path to social media posting postings success.