Must-Knows in Creating an Effective Social Media Marketing Plan

Social Media is now a vital marketing channel for virtually all businesses across different industries.

It is no longer just a common hub for people who like to share things on the web, it has now become a necessity for businesses and customers.

Why you should invest in social media?

According to the latest survey, there are a total of 2.8 billion social media users across the globe, which large portion is dominated by Facebook.

This number is still growing year by year.

So how can you grow your business through social media?

Before jumping in to the bandwagon of social media marketing, it is important to have a solid plan in order for you to market your business in social media effectively.

In this post, I will show your the things you need in creating an effective social media marketing plan.

Check your current social media presence

Have you made any effort in selling your products in Facebook or Twitter in the past? Did someone from your team make a Business page in Facebook that became idle for a long time?

Check your current status in social media for you to be able identify where to start and how you will launch your campaign.

Even if you didn’t do anything for your business in social media in the past, it is still important to audit your presence in social networking websites.

You may want to hear what people are saying about your business especially if you think you have a large number of patrons.

You can start searching your name in Facebook and look for possible personal reviews of your customers. Or just type in your business’ name in Google search and look for social networking websites that mentioned your brand.

Identify your ideal buyer profile

How well do you know your customers?

For businesses that document their customers, this shouldn’t be that hard.

However, if you are just starting in marketing your business and don’t have an idea about who your ideal target customers are, then you need to identify them right away.

The following questions will help you come up with a highly focused buyer profiles:

– What is their age range?
– What level of education did they complete? (Educational background)
– Where do they live (Come up with one or more locations near your business)
– What do they do for a living? (Jobs & businesses)
– How much they earn on a monthly basis?
– What are their pain points (that your business can solve)
– Most Used Social Network?
– Which publications or blogs do they read?
– How do they spend their money? (Spending habit)

These questions will help you identify your ideal buyer profile and will eventually lead you to create your core creative idea.

Identify marketing and business goals

What do you want to achieve in doing social media? Do you just want to have brand exposure? Generate leads?

These are the common questions in identifying your goals in doing SMM. And this is one of the most vital parts when it comes to planning your overall SMM strategy.

You need to be specific in defining your goal. For example if you want to generate leads, be specific on the numbers.

Let’s say, 20 leads and out of that, I should be getting 5 qualified leads.

Marketing and business goals come hand in hand. If you have a business goal, there should be a marketing goal that will fulfill the ultimate target.

See more about the illustration above here.

Define your social media brand positioning

Do you want to build a community for a cause? Or do you want to align to the mood of your audience?

Brand positioning simply refers to the process of occupying a certain space in the mind of your target audience. Or simply how you want your customers perceive your brand.

This is one of the most critical aspects of planning a marketing strategy not only for social media but for all marketing efforts that will be done.

In order for you to identify your brand positioning, you need to go back to your buyer profile and look for certain situations or gaps that you want to fill.

A few rules to consider when positioning your brand to your audience:

– Make sure it is unique and distinctive over your competitors
– Your brand positioning should be significant and encouraging to your market
– Make it appropriate and relevant to major geographic markets
– Your products/services must validate your proposition
– Should be sustainable
– Do not forget your marketing, business, and financial goals
– Do not forget your tag lines

Make your Social Media editorial calendar

If you don’t have budget to purchase a premium tool for editorial calendar, you can simply use Google Sheet. This way, you can plan ahead of time in terms of what to post, theme, and messaging.

You can also keep track of the content are already posted and those that are not. Here are some other benefits of having an editorial calendar:

– It saves you a lot of time and become more timely
– It helps you organize your creative assets
– It allows you to create themes ahead of time depending on the seasonality
– It helps you to focus your content marketing efforts
– Editorial calendars can be measured, monitored, and also altered
– It helps your business slign your content and social media marketing to your client engagement process

Most of all, creating editorial calendar isn’t that hard. You can even plan out your content materials months ahead and just alter them depending on the demand.

Conclusion

Creating a social media marketing plan needs military precision if you want to succeed in your social media campaign. And these tips are a good start in creating an effective campaign. You can be more creative and add other elements depending on the need of your business.