Conducting social media marketing requires commitment and a strategy. Otherwise, the money you spend on Facebook and Twitter ads would just go to waste. Advertising in social media is getting more and more sophisticated. Without the right plan, you will lose potential customers to competitors. Here are the easiest steps that you can use to devise a social media marketing plan for your business:
Set Goals
Any good social media communication strategy starts with a clear set of goals. Having goals will give your strategy direction. For example, if you want to increase traffic to your site, set it as a goal. Now you can devise the marketing plan in a way that achieves that goal. You should set both long-term and short-term goals for your strategy. Keep the long-term goals in mind always. Short-term goals can change, but don’t make major changes to the long-term ones.
Commit
Having a plan is not enough; you must commit yourself to the plan from the get go. For a business, commitment means you have employees who exclusively work on social media strategy. Have at least one employee who can prioritize social media marketing. You can hire freelancers to help the employee. Others can pitch in at least on a part time basis.
Identify the Best Social Media Channels
There are dozens of social media sites out there that are just too many to list here. Obviously, you cannot market on all these sites. So, you should first identify which social media channels that best attracts the right kind of attention to your business. For example, if you are a B2B company, LinkedIn would be a great platform, rather than a B2C platform like Facebook. If your company sells food, you must have an Instagram account. Vigorously collect traffic and conversion statistics for each of your social media marketing campaigns. These numbers will indicate which channels are preferred by your target audience.
Scheduling is Important
Regular posting is very important for keeping customers interested with a social media strategy. Even if you have thousands of followers on a Facebook account, these potential customers need to be engaged with regular posts. So, learn to schedule all the social media activity in an appropriate way. You can use online tools to write posts in advance and publish on a given date and time. Keep interaction with social media followers frequent. Otherwise, your plan will definitely fail.
Publish Unique Content
Keep in mind that there are hundreds of businesses just like yours competing for the attention of individual customers. The best way to pique interest and stand out is to publish unique content on social media. Create videos and publish well-written articles that attract attention. Avoid re-posting unless absolutely necessary. Never copy content from another site. Provide links back to your shopping site with the content you publish to redirect traffic.
Once the plan is underway, you must delegate tasks to individual employees. Create a hierarchy for responsibility to ensure the plan is put into place as intended. Once you follow through the above steps as indicated, you will have a basic social media plan at hand.