How to create a strategic social media marketing plan

Ignacio Garcera Ferrando

Assigment 5 Social Media In Marketing 9.11.2013

Abstract Date of presentation Degree programme Author or authors Ignacio Garcera Ferrando Title of report Group or year of entry X Number of pages and appendices 6

How to create a strategic social media marketing plan

Teacher/s or supervisor/s Johanna Heinonen-Salakka

Keywords

Table of contents
1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 2. Seven steps to a social media strategy plan....................................................................1-4 3. Bibliography.............................................................................................................................4

1 Introduction
Its important for every business to have an overall strategy/plan, from which the ma rketing plan would flow from which the social media plan would flow. Business Plan -> Marketing Plan -> Social Media Plan. Here are a few reasons a social media strategy is important: Goals for what you want to accomplish are clearly defined at the beginning enabling you to follow a process for accomplishing those goals. When you have specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound goals set (see our SMART goal blog post here) you will know if you are on track and know how to adjust your tactics accordingly. It keeps you focused. The number of social media channels is increasing every day. A strategy helps you define ahead of time what channels to target (i.e. where your target audiences are hanging out) and what to do when you are there. A strategy allows you to select the tools that will help you successfully accomplish your goals such as editorial calendars, task lists and performance metrics. A clearly defined strategy and plan allows more than just one person in the organization/company to participate in execution, especially when tasks are clearly defined. And, if the person managing your strategy is not able to follow through, a plan allows for someone else to step in without a gap in execution.

2 Seven steps to a social media strategy plan 1: Determine Your Business Objectives for Social Media
How do you want to use social media to help your business? What goals do you want to achieve? Make your goals as concrete, measurable and achievable as possible. Here are some objectives commonly identified by small businesses: Build your brand by getting people to recognize your name and associate it with your product. Attract new customers by driving traffic to your social media page or company website. Support sales by answering prospects questions and showing them how to use your products or services. Engage with your fans by giving customers a reason to talk about your brand and encourage others to purchase from you.

By setting specific objectives, you establish markers for your business. This helps define your social media metrics and will make effective social media marketing easier for you to do.

2: Know Your Audience

Determine the prospects and customers with whom you want to engage on social media. This is your target audience. To help you understand their characteristics, create a set of marketing for the segments you want to reach. Understand your target markets point of view and activities. Think demographics, psychographics and past purchases, as well as interests and priorities. Consider influencers, buyers and end users. Most purchase decisions, including consumer purchases, are made with input from more than one person. Know where your audience engages on social media. Not everyone is on Facebook. Consider your audiences social media behaviour. Does your market lurk, share or create social media content? What incentives will make them act? The more you know your audience, the easier it will be to engage with them on social media and get the results youre looking for.

3: Choose Your Hot Buttons

These are your firms core topics. Target your three to five main topics. These should be categories or words you want to place for in search optimization. Create content around these topics for which you want your business to be known. Create an editorial calendar integrated with your promotional calendar. Plan relevant content around your main keywords and your planned promotions. Develop a framework to minimize content creation time by not needing to think about what youre going to write before you craft content.

 Brainstorm ideas for content around these categories. Before developing your content, list topics you want to cover. For most businesses, the easiest way to accomplish this is to answer your customers questions before and after purchase. Link to appropriate product pages but dont be promotional! Offer a variety of content formats, not just text. People take in content differently. Attract attention with images, since some social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram are image-based. By clearly defining the right hot topics for your company and creating content and conversations around these topics, youll find it easier to get the results you want from social media.

4: Stake Your Social Media Turf

Create a presence on all major social media platforms. Take ownership of your firms name across social media entities. Understand that this may not be possible, depending on your company name and similarly named organizations. But youll want to secure your name for the main social media profiles. Branding is shorthand that helps customers to recognize your company without thinking. After youve claimed your space, remember to incorporate elements of your brand into your profile. Also think findability and post your store location, phone number and local hours. Remember to include a link to your website. A strong social presence will help you get the most out of your social media marketing.

5: Set Your Social Media Engagement

Be strategic with your social media time usage. Its easy to spend more time than you need to on social media. A social media plantogether with a strategic approachwill help you find the right balance. Use your existing communications such as email and in-store signage to encourage your customers to get onto social media and engage with you.

6: Plan Your Resource Use

For many small businesses, the concept of planning resource utilization may be new. Even if youre a entrepreneur, you must take a strategic view of your time. If you dont, youll find that youre running from one online emergency to another. Decide who will handle your social media engagement. For most small businesses, this is often the owner. Set parameters for social media use. This means defining your social media guidelines for both employees and visitors. Create processes where possible. Depending on your business, assess where you have opportunities to develop content that supports your goals. Think customer interactions, purchases and conferences.

7: Measure Your Social Media Results

Dont forget to set up everything youll need to measure your results. The metrics youll want to track will be based on the business objectives you defined. Youll want to make it easy to measure your results. Incorporate a social media call to action. Dont just assume prospects will take the next action without prompting. Guide them to engage and interact with contextually relevant calls to action. Track indicators that help show that youve accomplished your objectives. For most businesses, this means more than comments and social media shares.

The bottom line is that your small business can successfully use social media to achieve your business objectives. To this end, plan ahead to ensure that your time spent on social media reinforces your other business messaging and engagement and yields measureable results.

Bibliography

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-setup-a-social-mediabusiness-strategy/ http://www.wesst.org/2013/04/why-a-social-media-strategy-is-important/
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