Social Media Marketing Plan
Kim Matheson
Founder of bizlabonline.com specializing in all Social Media and Internet Marketing contact me to grow your biz online!
A 6 Step Guide to Creating A Social Media Marketing Campaign & Plan
Do you want to set up a social media marketing plan? Not sure where to get started? No problem, as this article will guide you through all the steps required to create a successful social media marketing plan.
Step#1: Plan Your Campaign
The saying “Well begun is half done”, perfectly captures the essence of a social media marketing plan. Smart marketers are aware of the fact that thorough preparation is an essential first step in the execution of any type of marketing campaign, and same is the case with social media plan. Nevertheless, there are a few nuances specific to the planning of social media marketing campaigns. All you need to do is follow the process below:
Describe the Goal
First, you must decide the goal of your social media marketing plan. It could be to attain leads, build awareness for your brand and product, or to drive traffic to your website. Heck, you can even have multiple goals. However, it’s important you decide which goal is primary, as it will drive other planning decisions and frame your focus.
Identify Your Audience
There are droves of people on social media, all from different backgrounds, cultures, professions, and age groups. It’s important you know which audience you will be targeting, before you create content for your campaign. This is basically identifying your target audience.
Choose Your Channels
Will your campaign be focused around one social media site, or multiple channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and Facebook?
Define a Timeline
What’s the duration of your plan? This will affect the type and frequency of messages you plan on delivering together your marketing budget.
Build an Editorial Calendar
Map out the messages you intend on using, as well as when and where you will be using them. This will allow you to streamline the process and stay focused on your audience’s needs.
Quantify Your Success
Assess the measurement resources and tools you have available and put the most effective ones into place. This will allow you to identify the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts.
Step#2: Create Excellent Content
Now that you have a plan in place, the next step is content creation. Just like all areas of online marketing, content is the undisputed king when it comes to social media marketing. So, do you want your business to be positioned as a leader in your industry? In order to be positioned as the leader you need to make sure your content is high quality and provides solutions to your target audience.
Here are some tips to help you create great content:
Understand Your Space
The best way of doing so is by reading other blogs, as well as their comments. Set up a series of bookmarks or an RSS reader to stay updated about relevant blogs. Apart from this, you should also read materials like industry newsletters and magazine articles.
Provide a Fresh Perspective
Unless you are writing about something that hasn’t been covered by others yet, it can be safely assumed that no matter which topic you choose, there is already material about it on the web. So, to create content that would get people to share, you will need to highlight something new. Whether it’s a new insight or a different angle, it’s important you find a unique way to write about the topic at hand.
Incorporate Keywords
Include keywords that are relevant to the topic you are writing about, as this will optimize your content and improve SEO rankings. You should consider using keyword generation tools to help you in this regard such as ubbersuggest or google keyword tool planner. See my post about how to do keyword research for your niche.
Be Straightforward
It’s important that your audience is knowledgeable and well-informed about the subject of your content. For example, not everybody will know what real time marketing or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is. Therefore, if you are using industry-specific jargon or lingo, you can either include a link to a page that explains the meaning of specific terms or explain it in your blog post, articles and content.
Use Imagery
You should use illustrations, images, videos and audio to further explain points, or make your content more digestible. Photographic images and illustrations together with infographics are great to make information more palatable as well as break up long paragraphs, while videos and images have important roles in the search engine results.
Be reminded, even if you are sharing content from other sources, it should be relevant and helpful to your target audience.
Step#3: Create Lure Language
So, you have planned your campaign and created excellent content to share with your audience. The next step involves telling the world about it. However, the language you use should effectively entice visitors. Although, here we will only be addressing the two most dominant social media platforms namely, Facebook and Twitter, the ‘lure language’ tips provided below can also be leveraged on several other social media platforms such as Google+ or LinkedIn.
An important thing to keep in mind is that Facebook is mostly used by people for personal and social purposes. Though some will restrict updates from pages they have ‘Liked’ on Facebook, several users will be able to see your updates on their newsfeeds. So, keep in mind the purpose of your Facebook page and characteristics of your target audience, and think of ways to add value to their experience, each time they log on to Facebook and see messages from your company.
Use Videos and Photos
Facebook users simply love photos. So, upload a profile picture of your company’s logo, and regularly include high-quality photos and videos in your updates.
While Posting a Link, Try Varying What You Write
As you already know, Facebook automatically includes both the meta-description and title of the link you post on your profile. Therefore, try not repeating the same message twice and improvise to get your audience to read and re-share.
Engage, Engage & Engage!
There are various methods of engaging your audience on Facebook, such as asking questions, posting timely content, including images, holding surveys and so on. Businesses can also leverage this opportunity to provide customers with good customer service, so do not forget to quickly respond to any questions or complaints they have.
Keep your Tweets resonating and fresh. Since Twitter uses real-time web, information that is a day or a week-old will generate lower levels of engagement. Therefore, refresh the content you share daily and say something interesting in the 140 characters you have available.
Avoid Using the Same Language in Every Tweet
It’s important you do not Tweet about the same blog post or Tweet again and again. That’s because users will unfollow the accounts they feel have nothing new or valuable to offer to them. So, it’s important you bring a fresh perspective and use attractive and compelling language in each Tweet. However, make sure you do not stray from your primary marketing message, or make statements that are irrelevant to the content you are sharing.
What Should Your Tweets Say?
Here are a few tweets that can be used in all types of events, content and promotions:
Use teasing statements that would entice your followers, something that will encourage users to read more.
Ask enticing questions that are relevant to the content you are Tweeting about.
Ask an enticing question, provide a brief response and include a call to action.
Add hashtags that are relevant to the content you are Tweeting about.
Step#4: Distribute Links through Social Media Channels
After your have planned your campaign, built your content and created lure language, it’s time to promote your content externally. Here are a few suggestions that will help you to distribute links through social media channels:
Promote the content to your customers through newsletters.
Include the keyword in the Tweet to announce the content through Twitter.
Link the content to your blog.
Create a press release about the content and publish it to PRWire or other services that provide SEO value .
Step#5: Monitor & Track Your Campaign
Once you get your campaign up and running, the final step is to measure whether or not the time and money you have invested is bringing you the desired results. Has your Facebook page generated leads? How much traffic did you gain with your Twitter Feeds? All of these questions can be answered by social media monitoring. You can also make use of numerous tools that help monitor and track your campaign progress. Some of the best tools include:
· SAS Sentiment Analysis Manager
Step#6: Make Use of the Data Provided
Check out the Infographic below: Source and attribution to Buffer App
CONCLUSION So, now that you have finally gathered the data, what are you waiting for? Use it to your advantage and see what efforts or strategies work and remove those that don’t. This way, you will successfully be able to create an effective social media marketing campaign that will bring exceptional results for your business.
So, if you find it difficult to create a successful social media marketing plan, make sure to follow the abovementioned steps and take advantage of the increased exposure, boost in volume of web traffic, and better customer engagement at all levels. If you have anything to add we'd love to hear from you. Cheers Kim self confessed Internet Business Marketing Addicts :)
