A social media marketing plan details goals and strategies for an organization's social media presence. Creating a plan is an ongoing process that involves listening to audiences, setting goals, defining strategies, identifying target audiences, selecting appropriate tools, implementing tactics, and monitoring/tuning the plan based on results. Key elements of developing an effective plan include clarifying goals, defining audiences, considering resources, analyzing competition, determining tone/frequency, identifying topics, and engaging audiences.
Social media marketing/Seo expert and digital marketing
JJ Social Light
1.
2. A Social media marketing plan details
an organization’s social media goals
and the actions necessary to achieve
them. Key among these actions is the
creation of solid marketing strategies
without which there is little chance of
successfully executing the plan.
Social Media Marketing Plan?
3. Social Media Marketing Planning Cycle
Creating a social media plan is a continuous process, as illustrated by the social
media marketing planning cycle. Skilled social media marketers constantly
monitor the progress of the plan’s foundational elements, test alternative
approaches, and adjust the plan based on the results
Listen
Goals
Strategies
Target
Audienc
e
Tools
Implement
Tune
4. Listening
Listen to what people are saying about your organization. This enables you to evaluate
organization’s current social media presence, which guides you in setting social media
and strategies to achieve them. Listening also helps you better understand what the
competition is doing and helps you discover what people are discussing before you join
conversation.
Setting goals
Once you understand your audience’s behavior, location, tastes, and needs, it’s time to
on what you want to use social media to do for them. Set social media goals that satisfy
your audience’s unmet needs and capitalize on your organization’s strengths and the
opportunities available to it.
Defining strategies
How do you plan to accomplish your goals? You answer that question generally here by
identifying organizational specific methods you will use to accomplish your social media
goals.
Listening, Setting Goals, Defining
Strategies
5. Identifying the audience
This is where you identify the audience you want to reach with your social media
communication. It may be your current audience and people like them or a
different group altogether.
Selecting tools
By now you should have determined the social media sites where your target
audience resides. You should focus your organization’s social media efforts on
those platforms.
Implementing
This is the process whereby the goals, strategies, target market and tools are
into consideration in creating actionable social media platform specific marketing
tactics. Executing well-defined tactics makes it possible for an organization to
implement its general social media strategies across multiple social media
platforms and realize the company’s marketing goals.
Identifying the Audience, Selecting Tools,
Implementing
6. Monitoring
While the steps above are important, they are not fail safe methods of using
media. It’s important to track, measure and evaluate your organization’s social
media marketing initiatives. You may need to tweak your initial methods. You
likely will discover that your organization and your audience change over time,
resulting in the need for adjustments.
Tuning
There is nothing stagnant about social media. It is a constantly changing method
of engaging directly with your audience. These dynamic platforms result in the
need to continuously adjust and improve your social media marketing campaign
to maximize its success. You can’t just post a photo on Instagram and sit back
watch your audience (and customer base) flourish. It just doesn’t work that way.
Monitoring, Tuning
7. Your organization can’t afford not to communicate with 70 percent of people
online. But you also can’t take a chance of communicating the wrong message or
wasting your efforts because they’re not strategic. Using this social media planning
cycle will help you create and implement a strategic social media marketing plan
instead of just adding to the noise and potential creating problems for your
organization.
End Result
8. When we look at online marketing,
there are three broad categories into
which nearly all social media related
goals can fall. They are usually either
aimed at:
1. Building/Strengthening the Brand
2. Driving Conversions
3. Increasing/Monitoring the Presence
Social Media Goals
Starting at this broad level and thinking about the goals you
have for your business can help you begin to write up a list of
realistic ways in which social media might help you reach those
goals.
9. Goal #1: Build the Brand
When it comes to building and reinforcing your
brand, social media is one of the most powerful
marketing tools available. It gives you the strongest
and broadest opportunity to both find your target
audience and to engage in conversation with them.
These days, you have no choice but to differentiate
yourself from your competitors unless you have an
exclusive product. Otherwise, you’re forced into the
unwinnable battle of competing for the lowest prices
and the fastest shipping.
Think about the things that make your company different from your
competitors; your Unique Value Proposition. This is the thing you want to use
social media to built awareness of.
10. Goal #2: Drive Conversions
One of smartest reasons to use social media is for the
potential boost it can have to your conversion efforts.
Whether you are looking to drive sales, increase leads or
simply drive people to action, conversions are an easily
trackable goal in the realm of social media.
Sit down and write out a list of all the potential actions
someone might take while engaging with your company’s web
site or while interacting online.
Obvious options like buying your products or becoming a
lead spring to mind, but don’t forget about other valuable
actions like subscribing to your newsletter, rewetting a blog
post or downloading a white paper.
Read over your list and think about the different ways you might be able to use social
media to increase conversions for each item. Often times, this is the best way to start
planning your social media efforts.
11. Goal #3: Increase Presence
Finally, we come to the goal most often associated with
social media outreach efforts; increasing the conversation
about your brand. After all, social media is all about the
conversation. It’s about the only space in the world where
consumers talk to each other and to companies in an
environment that can be tracked, sorted and followed-up
with. This makes social media a prime outlet for PR driven
companies who want to know what customers are saying
about them.
Setting up even a baseline of social media monitoring can go a long way toward
helping you follow these conversations. Whether you’re launching new product and
aiming to get people buzzing about it or trying to reach out to a new target audience
to share information about one of your best selling services, it’s all trackable.
12. When it comes to the conversation people might be having about you online,
ask yourself a few questions.
· Who do you want to hear talking?
· What do you want them to be saying?
· Who do you want them to say it to?
These are your starting points for setting up key goals within the realm of
increasing your presence.
Things to consider
13. 1. Clarify your goals.
What is it exactly that you’re trying
to accomplish with your presence
on social media? To drive
awareness? Increase website
traffic? Improve conversion rates?
You won’t be able to create a
useful game plan unless you know
what it is you’re trying to do –
simply throwing random content
up on a blog or Twitter feed
without a specific purpose in mind
will not lead to results.
Creating Strategies
14. 2. Define your audience.
Who is your ideal customer? Defining
your audience is crucial to your online
marketing efforts. If you are trying to
reach women between the ages of 18
and 29, you’d be smart to focus most
your attention on Facebook. If, on the
other hand, you’re aiming your
marketing at men with graduate-level
education, you’d be better off using
LinkedIn. Your audience determines not
only where you spend your time
marketing, but also the type of content
you will be providing, as well.
15. 3. Consider your resources. Be realistic. If you’ll be implementing this marketing
strategy on your own, keep your time limitations in mind as you plan. If, however,
you have an entire marketing department at your disposal, take full advantage of
it!
16. 4. Analyze your competition.
Before you jump in headfirst,
some time to see what sort of
online marketing your
competitors are doing. Check
their strengths and weaknesses,
and the use that information to
craft your own unique strategy
that fills in the holes they’ve left
wide open.
17. 5. Determine tone and frequency.
You can’t just write a blog “every
once in a while,” or it’ll never get
done. Plan in advance to write two
blog posts a week, every Monday
and Wednesday…or to post three
Facebook updates per week…or to
contribute to two LinkedIn
discussions each week. You’ll also
need to decide what your official
voice or tone will be in all these
posts. Funny? Conversational?
and businesslike? Choose a tone
will appeal to your audience.
18. 6. Identify core topics.
Decide in advance what sorts of things you’ll write or post about, so that you’re
not faced with the challenge of coming up with new material out of the blue
day. You can even plan out an editorial calendar to help in the generation of
ideas.
19. 7. Engage your audience.
Now that you’ve completed the
six steps, you’re ready to get
started. Share that content, but
don’t stop there. Be sure
your audience in conversations, to
build those relationships.
8. Use analytics.
Finally, check your stats frequently to see
what’s working and what isn’t. Analyze
your performance based on the goals you
set out in Step One, and then make
changes as necessary.