5 steps in a social media marketing plan
By Kirsti Scott
Implementing a social media component is a great way to amplify the results of all your marketing efforts. Here are the main steps in creating a successful campaign, from start to finish.
1. Define the goals of your campaign.
It’s important to clarify the goals of your campaign before you do anything else. Is your goal to get more visitors to your website or blog? Drive awareness of a new product or service? Increase the response rate for a promotional offer? Drive downloads? Or, maybe, respond to a crisis? Make sure you have a clear idea of how you want things to be different after implementing your social media plan.
2. Build in measurement.
Before launch, be sure to establish a baseline so you can compare the results of your social media push. Once your campaign launches, continue to monitor the results using the baseline numbers for reference. You might want to use Google Analytics to measure activity and time spent on your site, and to find out where your new visitors are coming from. You could also measure participation on your blog through the number of comments left by visitors. You can also look at ratings such as your Technorati rating to see whether others are responding positively, and you should make sure to do some qualitative analysis of conversations to find out whether they’re positive or negative. Of course, one of the best results is an increase in sales, which you can hopefully attribute to your initiatives.
3. Build your toolbox.
Before you launch your plan, you need to listen to the market. Do research, identify the social media sites where your customers and key influencers in their industry are active, post questions and follow the responses, and start to enter into online conversations. Secure names and/or pages on targeted sites, and set up keyword alerts and analytics to monitor activity, analyze results, and filter out noise from your campaign. Set up different URLs if you’d like to monitor exactly where your best results are coming from. Create initial content for your accounts, including custom background images, photos, video, wall posts, etc. Determine who will be your internal brand evangelist(s), charged with spreading the company messages, responding to concerns, and answering questions online.
4. Participate.
In order for your campaign to work, you’ll have to make sure the interactions you’re planning will resonate with your online audience, be helpful, and be genuine. Identify topics that are trending up, conduct research, and promote your findings on social media. Share your knowledge, lead discussions, and be accessible to answer questions, clarify comments, and direct people to outside resources. Be sure to acknowledge feedback and criticisms, and engage in friendly conversations with your competitors. Your goal is to be involved whenever someone is talking online about your company and to facilitate conversations between your company and your customers, and among your customers. If you distribute the responsibilities for participating in discussions online, be sure to keep in close contact to coordinate your efforts.
5. Make your efforts sustainable.
Once you have had some experience with your online audiences, you should develop a set of guidelines for continuing involvement in social media networks so that many people in your organizations can participate. Include policies about the timing of discussions and responses, tone of communications, appropriate content, and how to handle problems and criticisms. Create a schedule for updating backgrounds, uploading new images, and posting new information. And, be sure that your entire marketing team notifies the person responsible for your social media campaigns every time there’s a new marketing initiative or public relations push.
If you complete all of these steps, you will be able to consistently create successful social media campaigns.
Tags: B2B marketing, linkedin, Marketing, social media, web design, web development
March 20th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Hi there,
Super post, Need to mark it on Digg
Have a nice day
AnnaHopn
March 24th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Those really are great tips for anyone doing their own marketing. For a lot of people that’s not really practical, though, especially in the small business area, where talent and time are at a premium. Still, using this as a guide to gauge the social media marketing services of a firm that could be outsourced to is an excellent idea. These 5 steps are rational and measurable for success, which are 2 big pieces of any good marketing campaign.
October 31st, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Social Media Marketing is really the trend these days. i market most of my products through social networking sites.
November 16th, 2009 at 6:28 am
i do Social Media Marketing specially when promoting a new website or an affiliate product. Social media is more effective than offline advertising in my opinion.