What Wikipedia Couldn't Tell You About Social Media Marketing Plans?

When I went Scuba Diving for the first time, I had no idea what I was doing. My friend and I were complete newbies about the technique breathe underwater and every other bit of what is a basic technical understanding and requires that the diver has equipment that is appropriate for this activity.

We saw others doing it spectacularly well. We were thrilled at the thought of diving deeply in the sea; but we had no idea how to get there. From that day, I’d imagine that a social media marketing plan could feel the same way.

I would say If you’re starting from square one, you should know what you want to do and why. For instance, the people we met in scuba diving they have known what the techniques and have experience level to deep descend in the water. I would say it is like a social media when you plan to target your audience by knowing the technique and get few ideas about how to get there.

It’d help to have a plan!

The idea that I came out about social media marketing plan has stemmed from the personal experience behind scuba diving situation.

Starting at the ground floor and building up, here is our overview of how to create a social media marketing plan from scratch.

I like to think of this plan like a road trip. Start out by pointing yourself in the right direction, then choose the way you’re going to get there, check in regularly to make sure you’re on track, and have some fun along the way.

Step 1: Choose your social networks
Step 2: Fill out your profiles completely
Step 3: Find your voice and tone
Step 4: Pick your posting strategy
Step 5: Analyze and test
Step 6: Listen and engage

 

Step 1: Which social media sites you should use.

Social Media is as homogenous from network to network as soda pop is from brand to brand. Sure, it’s all social media, but Google+ and Twitter might as well be Mountain Dew and Pepsi. Each network is unique, with its own best practices, own style, and own audience.

You should choose the social networks that best fit your strategy and the goals you want to achieve on social media. You don’t have to be on them all—just the ones that matter to you and your audience.

Some things to consider that can help you choose not only which social networks to try but also how many to try

Time – Did you put a plan about how much time can you devote to a social network?
Resources - What personnel and skills do you have to work with? Visual social networks like Pinterest and Instagram require images and photos. Social networks like Google+ emphasize quality content. Do you have the resources to create what’s needed?
Your audience – Where do your potential customers hang out? Which social network has the right demographics?

For the latter part of this decision, you can reference the audience research and demographics from surveys like those conducted by Pew Research. For instance, Pew has complete data, collected last fall, of the demographics for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

Step 2: Fill out your profiles completely

Be loyalty and let your customers or audiences know how you are when they visit each of every single platform you have or any hub you stand on or social media profiles and make sure that your avatar, cover photos, bio, and profile info is up-to-date and complete. It’s a key part to your social media audit. A completed profile shows professionalism, cohesive branding, and a signal to visitors that you’re serious about engaging. Did you work on that?

On the other hand we should know that the profiles will require two parts: visuals and text. Both complement each other, yet both are distinct in many ways.

Till date we see many people are still only catching up to text based social media without focusing on visual aspect, for instance LinkedIn isn’t Pinterest. It’s not Instagram. It’s a text-heavy platform.  

Why do I need to include images there? Most people think of LinkedIn as being a professional profile – where words do the talking, not pictures. Baby boomers are learning to create blogs, they’re learning to use Twitter, and starting to grasp the concept of text based social media.

But things have changed in the world of LinkedIn with the introduction of what is called “Professional Portfolio” earlier this year…and for this Visual Social Media Fan, it’s a very positive change.

Step 3: Find your marketing voice and tone

The temptation at this point might be to jump right in and start sharing. Just one more step before you do. Your foray into social media will be more focused and more on point if you come up with a voice and tone for your content right off the bat.

To do so, you could spend time coming up with marketing personas and debating the finer points of your mission statement and customer base. These are all well and good. However, for a social media marketing plan just getting off the ground, you can make this process a bit easier.

Start with questions like these:

• If your brand was a person, what kind of personality would it have? 
• If your brand was a person, what’s their relationship to the consumer? (a coach, friend, teacher, dad, etc) 
• Describe in adjectives what your company’s personality is not. 
• Are there any companies that have a similar personality to yours? Why are they similar? 
• How do you want your customers to think about your company?

Step 4: Pick your posting strategy.

What’s the ideal amount to post per day? How often should you post? When should you post? What should you post? Where should start your posting? So you need to determine your goal. I would therefore say, every post you make on a social network needs to have a purpose. Something you can measure and quantify as being part of an overall strategy. Here are some common purposes and goals.

So much of the social media experience is about your individual audience and niche. What works for you might not work for me, and you never know until you try. Each post type may or may not resonate with your audience such that they will respond to it and help you achieve your goal. That’s okay, you can test the different post types to see which ones do.

That being said, there is some pretty good data and insight about where to start. Here’s what we’ve found to be good jumping off points..

What should you be posting?

The push toward visual content has plenty of anecdotal evidence—as you browse the streams on Twitter and Facebook, you’re likely to see images all over. There’s data behind the reason why. Image posts get more views, clicks, re-shares, and likes than any other type of post. And it’s not even close.

On Facebook, photos get 53 pecent more likes, 104 percent more comments and 84 percent more click-through on links than text-based posts.

Same goes for Twitter. In a study of over two million tweets from verified users across a number of different industries, Twitter found that photos have the greatest effect on re-tweets.

When should you be posting?

There are many neat tools to show you the best time of day to post to Facebook, Twitter, and more. These tools look at your followers and your history of posts to see when your audience is online and when historically have been your best times to share.

So what’s someone to do who’s just starting out on these social networks, with no audience and no history?

Again, this is where best practices come in. I have seen in one of the most important article in info graphic about timing comes from Sum All, which compiled timing research from sites like Visual.ly, Search Engine Watch, and Social Media Today to create its awesome visual. Here’s an overview of what they found in terms of timing (all times are Eastern Time).

Twitter - 1-3pm weekdays
Facebook - 1-4pm and 2-5pm weekdays
LinkedIn - 7-8:30am and 5-6pm Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
Tumblr - 7-10pm weekdays and 4pm on Fridays
Instagram - 5-6pm weekdays and 8pm on Mondays with a sweetspot at 6pm
Pinterest - 2-4pm and 8-11pm weekdays with weekends being the best
Google+ - 9-11am weekdays

Step 5: Analyze, test, and iterate

Remember how I mentioned about the deep descend in the water, so now you’re data-driven. Your company speaks the language of data and has a full-blown analytics set up tracking every piece of your digital marketing efforts. So you need to go deep and do test, test and test. Test landing pages. Test ad copy. Test content. Test website images and themes. Test everything.

On the other hand, we need to know that more you post, the more you’ll discover which content, timing, and frequency is right for you.

How will you know? It’s best to get a reporting tool. Most major social networks will have basic analytics built into the site; it’s just a little easier to seek and find this information from an all-encompassing dashboard.

Step 6: Engage, and listen.

The final piece of a social media marketing plan involves having a system you can follow to help you stay on top of updates and engaged with your community.

Your plan doesn’t end with posting content and find out audience. Social media requires engagement, too. When people talk to you, talk back. Set aside time during your day to follow up with conversations that are happening on social media. These are conversations with potential customers, references, friends, and colleagues. They’re too important to ignore.

One way to stay up on all the conversations that are happening around you and your bsuiness is to create a system for listening. Tools like Mention will send you an alert every time you’re mentioned online, and you can rely on custom searches and email alerts for mentions on specific networks, too.
What would you share with someone new to social media?

Coming up with a social media marketing plan is a great step toward diving in to social. If social media looks thrilling and overwhelming all at once, start with a plan. Once you see the blueprint in front of you, it’s a little easier to see what lies ahead.

• Pick your networks 
• Fill out your infoFind your voice
• Choose your strategy
• Analyze and test 
• Listen and engage

Finally it done!

How did you develop your social media strategy? I’d love to keep the conversation going in the comments. If you know someone who could use this, feel free to pass this along. If you can use it yourself, let me know how it goes!