As a marketer in a world where social media prevails, it can be tough to gain the success you want when you’re asked to start mixing social media marketing with your already established communications plans. Sometimes you just stare at the screen in front of you with no idea what to do and no idea where to start. Following are some tips on how to plan, implement, and stay on top of your social media marketing.
What are your Goals?
This may seem like a question with a simple answer (to get on social media platforms) but it’s a question that you have to fully explore. You can get onto Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/etc. but why are you going on to those platforms? Does your company need a page for videos or need to be in direct contact with your customers all the time? You won’t know if something has gone well unless you lay down clear business objectives beforehand. These could include:
- Are you trying to increase sales?
- Highlight a new product?
- Improve your overall SEO?
- Generate awareness in your local community?
By organizing your objectives, this allows you to better create a social media marketing plan that will be beneficial to your business.
Who is your Audience?
Once you’ve realized what your goals are, the next step is to recognize who your audience is. Who are your goals aimed towards? You need to figure out who your target demographic is and if they use social media. If they do use social media you will need to research how it is they use it.
For example, teens are far more likely to use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube more often than people over the age of 65. A great tool for you to use is Global Web Index to gauge what it is your target audience does, whether it’s blogging, posting photos on Flickr or playing social games on Facebook. Using this information, organize your objectives to match the social media your target audience uses.
How do you start the Campaign?
Now that you know what your objectives are and are aware of your target audience, it’s now time to implement your strategy. To start, how will social media factor in to your overall strategy? Will you have a main web page or will you only use Facebook? Will Facebook be used to highlight important stories or only as a way to reach out to your audience? It’s important questions like these that you have to address right away.
You will also need to decide who will run the social media marketing aspect of the campaign. Where will the content come from and what tone will it take? What this means is how are you going to communicate with your audience. Will you be generally informative, or maybe you’ll take a friendly tone with your audience? You’ll then have to decide if your writers will have their own voice of if they’ll be answering as a voice for the business.
Now that you’ve built and implemented your social media campaign you can’t just assume that users are going to find it without some help. Advertising online or offline can be helpful with press releases, Google ads, and some SEO.
What are the Results?
With established goals in mind, analyzing how your social media campaign is going should be an easy process. Are you reaching your target audience? Is your consumer base connecting with you and creating a community? Are your products seeing an increase in sales?
You should be able to evaluate each stage of your campaign and use those evaluations to evolve and mature your social media presence to what you want it to be.
By following these tips you should have your social media campaign in hand and be able to tackle it like any other marketing plan. Remember that proper planning, knowing who your audience is and campaign implementation can provide you with a successful social media marketing campaign.
SearchPro Systems
2023