Creating A Social Media Marketing PlanThere is no question that social media is an essential part of any business today. Even if you ignore the obvious advantages social media offers for marketing you can’t ignore the need to use it for managing your reputation, maintaining credibility and attracting the best talent. Whatever you use it for and however you use it you need to have a real plan or you cannot expect to succeed. So what should be included in your social media plan? Research Before you hammer out any plan you ought to take some time to do a little research and find out how others are using social media. What are they using it for? How much are they spending on it? Who are they hiring to help them? What innovative campaigns are they using for marketing their businesses through social media? What You Are Using It For Define what your social media will be used for first in order to determine how you should be using it. Will you use it to recruit new staff, increase brand visibility, educate, manage customer opinion, build relationships, reach new customers? You can do all this and more. Choose Which Social Networks To Use Some social networks work better for some industries than others. We all know Facebook and Twitter but what about MySpace, LinkedIn, Ecademy, Xing, Stumble Upon and Google +? Custom Profile Design You aren’t going to get too far too fast without investing in creating custom profiles. Otherwise no one will take you seriously or believe that you are taking your business seriously. What should they look like, what should they link to, what will be your verbal branding, what keywords will you use? How much will you pay for the design? How Will You Drive Traffic To Your SM? It won’t just happen by itself. How are you going to tell people about it and drive them there. Most importantly what is your action plan for creating more fans and followers? How Will You Turn Traffic Into Profits? Yes, we all know social media isn’t for spamming, but we are in business for profit right. So how will you create a funnel which will convert visitors to fans and followers and those into real leads and prospects into profits? What Will You Post Social media requires plenty of fresh, new high quality content. In order to keep a good flow going you need to make a plan for what you will post. Create guidelines for a good content mix and decide who will create titles and topics. How Much & When To Post When you post and how much you post can make a huge difference in your social media success. What are the optimal times for updating your social media profiles for your target market and will you post daily or multiple times a day? Who Will Do It? Who will do your design, who will write your content, who will post it, who will manage comments and interact? Probably none of these items are the best use of your own personal time, but they have to be done. Is it cost effective to have in-house staff take care of these tasks or is it wiser to outsource them to those who have more expertise in social media? “Independent Executive” Chuck Boyce is an experienced small business coach who can help you get the most out of your business. For more information on how you achieve your business goals, go to www.breakingfreeblog.com.
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