Social media marketing can be complex, and overwhelming, making it difficult to know where to start. This approach can be used as a cycle, repeated as needed or for each new social media campaign.
1. Pinpoint Target Audience
It should be no surprise that the first step of this marketing plan is to determine your audience. If you haven’t thought about this yet, you’ll have to sit down and thoroughly research how to nail down a target audience. If your target is vague, (e.g. you only have an age group or one other characteristic about them) focus on sharpening your understanding of your demographic during this stage.Some startups conduct interviews with members of their target audience to obtain an in-depth understanding of them. The simple part is to determine characteristics, but the more important part is to understand their point of view and their unmet needs.
2. Identify Goals
Your goals are a part of the broad, all-encompassing vision behind your company. Objectives, which we’ll cover next, are the specific avenues you’ll go through to achieve those goals. There’s no need to go overboard with an lengthy list of goals. Instead, aim for 3 to 5. Remember that you’ll have to monitor the progress of each of these, so you want to be sure you can both keep track of them and tell them apart. While goals don’t need to be super specific, they also shouldn’t be too vague.
During this time, you should also pinpoint current holes in your marketing plan. For example, is there a social media platform you are not using, but should be? Have you determined your brand, and how you want your audience to view your company? Consider these weak spots when generating your list of goals.
View this Constant Contact graph to see which social media platforms are best for your business.
3. Create Objectives
Hootsuite uses the S.M.A.R.T acronym to describe what social media marketing objectives should look like:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Objectives will vary based on your industry and how long you’ve been in business. The most important thing is to ensure your objectives relate directly to your goals. Think of each goal as a destination and your objectives as the roads that lead there. For example, if your goal is to increase sales, you want to make sure that your objectives could logically cause that. LinkedIn lists some common business goals and the proper metrics for measuring success with each.
4. Observe Competition
Observing your competition is not the same as mimicking them. There are a few reasons why observing your competition is one of the most valuable, accessible tools you have.
- It allows you to analyze the effectiveness of certain practices without actually having to try them out
- It allows you to stay relevant and not get left behind in your industry
- It gives you the opportunity to recognize mistakes before making them
- It helps you see what kinds of content people respond to the most
So how do you go about observing your competition? Following them on social media or subscribing to their mailing list is an easy start. You can also use Spyfu to see the most profitable keywords being used by your competitors. This valuable insight will give you a one-up for your next ad campaign.
Another great method? Read reviews about them – especially the bad ones. This will let you know exactly how to structure your business to surpass competition.
5. Develop a Direct Strategy
Finally, the actual work begins. This is where you get into specifics. Create a schedule for social media and blog posts. Be sure that all your social media accounts are synced.
Determine where you’ll spend your time, for example: 40% focus on website blog, 20% focus on Facebook, etc. Do this first so that the rest of your strategy is based on these proportions. How many posts per week will you do? What kinds of content will you focus on (e.g. infographics, tutorials, videos, etc.)? At first, you’ll have to guess (based on your earlier research) which types of content resonate most with the target audience. During the last stage, you’ll find out whether these guesses were correct or need tweaking.
You’ll want to look into each social media platform to determine what kinds of content do best on each. Sometimes a post will be appropriate for all platforms, but other times you’ll find that a post is more appropriate for Twitter than LinkedIn, for example.
6. Appoint Tasks
Once your direct strategy is written out, you’ll need to determine the best people for the job. For new entrepreneurs, the entire workload may fall on you. If you have a social media manager on board, it may all fall on them. Ideally, you’ll have more than one person involved. Both should be diligent and educated about content marketing.
7. Measure Outcomes
Once you’ve set your strategy into action, the work isn’t over. In fact, the most crucial step of the process is observation. Undoubtedly, some parts of your plan will work better than others. So this stage should be about analysis and subsequent changes to bolster your effectiveness. Social media examiner recommends that all businesses measure conversion rates, brand awareness, website traffic, and website visitor loyalty.
As you develop consistency in your social media marketing approach, you’ll want to repeat and refine this cycle. With this basic framework, you have room to improve technique and maintain audience engagement in the future.
