5 Tips For Cre­at­ing A So­cial Me­dia Plan

So­cial me­dia is the biggest mar­ket­ing chal­lenge in busi­ness to­day. All the strate­gies that were easy to un­der­stand and im­ple­ment in tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing chan­nels may or may not ap­ply to so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing. If you are in busi­ness, you need a so­cial me­dia strat­egy and it does not de­pend on the size of your company.

Cre­at­ing, ex­e­cut­ing and eval­u­at­ing your so­cial me­dia plan take a lot of time, tal­ent and money. These are re­sources that are scarce in to­day’s busi­ness world. The fol­low­ing tips will as­sist you cre­ate and im­ple­ment a plan that will work for your com­pany and keeps you ac­tive, on track and mov­ing forwards:

1. Make a commitment

Make a com­mit­ment to your­self, you can frame or write it and hang it on your wall. You have to agree and ac­knowl­edge to your­self that de­vel­op­ing your so­cial me­dia pres­ence could take your prof­its of the year higher, af­ter that promise to in­vest time, re­sources and en­ergy into it even if you re­al­ize losses. This will keep you ac­tive, com­mit­ted and busy even when your pres­ence is not be­ing no­ticed. Also be re­al­is­tic in your expectations.

2. Un­der­stand how the peo­ple you are try­ing to reach use so­cial media

Con­sider all your mar­kets; de­­ci­­sion-in­­flu­encers, cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers, me­dia, chat sites and much more. De­sign your plan so it po­si­tions you ap­pro­pri­ately within your mar­kets. Such as, if you need busi­ness to busi­ness net­work­ing, join LinkedIn and if you are try­ing to reach a re­tail con­sumers, use Face­book, Twit­ter and Zinzzchat.

3. Sched­ule en­gage­ment with your users

Af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing a so­cial me­dia plat­forms you’re fo­cus­ing on, fo­cus your at­ten­tion to ways and fre­quency of en­gag­ing with your fol­low­ers and fans. In­fre­quent in­ter­ac­tion is a main rea­son busi­nesses fail at so­cial media.

The most suc­cess­ful busi­ness­men in so­cial me­dia en­gage their users steadily. Cre­ate and re­spond to posts, tweets, com­ments, etc. You need to be­gin the con­ver­sa­tion with your fol­low­ers and fans, and any­time they need your at­ten­tion, be ready to respond.

Re­mem­ber that, in twit­ter, tweets move so fast and can be­come ir­rel­e­vant within an hour. Face­book sta­tus and chat sites up­dates and posts can take a few hours while videos take very long to be irrelevant.

4. Cre­ate pro­fes­sional content

Your fol­low­ers and fans want con­ver­sa­tions, thought lead­er­ship and in­dus­try news. Your con­tent should talk about your cus­tomers, in­dus­try and dis­cuss your busi­ness. This means you should write white pa­pers, start a blog, ex­plore trends, cre­ate info graph­ics and re­lease case studies.

Your goal should be post­ing some con­tent at least two days a week. Posts should be fre­quent and con­sis­tent, avoid tak­ing more than a week with­out post­ing. In-depth pa­pers and ar­ti­cles will place your busi­ness as a thought leader and in­dus­try ex­pert, hence keep­ing your fol­low­ers and fans look­ing to you.

5. Run pro­mo­tions and contests

Pro­mo­tions and con­tests keep fol­low­ers and fans in­ter­ested, ex­cited and com­ing back. They are a se­cret way to get your brand or busi­ness rank­ing in­creased. If you al­ways have some give­away go­ing, es­pe­cially not so great prizes, they will be­come more so­cial back­ground noise. Run a pro­mo­tion or con­test for months and en­sure the prize exciting.

These are the best tips on what it takes to ef­fec­tively use so­cial me­dia to grow your busi­ness. It is a good start­ing point for eval­u­at­ing the role of this rapidly grow­ing trend in your mar­ket­ing plan to­day and in the future.