Digital Marketing

5 Steps to a Winning Social Media Marketing Plan

What is the most important action you can take to improve your chances of success in implementing a social media campaign? Create a well-researched and carefully thought out social media marketing plan that lays the foundation for executing a winning social media campaign. While there is no concrete roadmap for putting together an effective social media marketing plan, there are pointers that can guide you along the way. The following 5 steps provide the guidance you’ll need to develop a successful social media marketing plan.

Step 1: Set Definitive, Measurable Goals. Social media marketing goals include improving brand awareness, search engine rankings, relevant site traffic, and conversion performance (eg, sales of a product or service), as well as reputation management and interaction with consumers.

The challenge for some of these goals, like engaging with consumers, is making them specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely (ELEGANT). Additionally, goals should be set for each type of social media platform in order to maximize results. The following are examples of SMART goals for four popular social networking platforms: blogs, microblogging (Twitter), social networking sites, as well as image and video sharing sites:

Blog:

  • 20% improvement in post to comment ratio (i.e. visitor comments/posts=conversions) within six months
  • 30% increase in total number of unique visitors in six months
  • 20% increase in average number of unique visitors within six months
  • 40% growth in the total number of visits in six months
  • 10% RSS subscriber growth in six months
  • 5% growth in RSS feed requests in six months

Microblogging (Twitter):

  • 20% growth in the number of followers in 30 days
  • 30% growth in the number of retweets (message amplification) within 30 days
  • 10% increase in click-through rate (CTR) of links posted in tweets within 30 days (Tip: Looking at which types of links get the highest CTRs can help you fine-tune your tweets to provide your consumers with the links they are interested). and therefore further improve your CTR).
  • 15% increase in website visits from tweet links within 30 days
  • 10% growth over time on the website from tweet links within 30 days
  • 5% increase in website conversions (eg sales) from tweet links within 30 days

Social Networking Sites:

  • 20% growth in the number of friends in five months
  • 30% growth in the number of comments in five months
  • 40% growth in the number of posts and comments in discussion groups in five months
  • 20% increase in the ratio of comments on videos uploaded to the number of videos uploaded within five months
  • 20% increase in the ratio of comments on photos uploaded to the number of photos uploaded in five months
  • 30% growth in the number of comments left on profiles in five months
  • 50% growth in the number of questions answered or asked in five months

Image and video sharing sites:

  • 30% growth in the number of images or videos viewed in four months
  • 20% growth in the number of unique visitors in four months
  • 10% increase in the number of subscribers to your channel or stream in four months
  • 30% increase in the ratio of comments on images or videos to the number of images or videos uploaded in four months
  • 15% growth in the number of embedded links to your images or videos (meaning links from other sites to your images or videos) within four months
  • 30% increase in average image or video ratings by viewers in four months

Step 2: Identify your target market Who is your target audience (target market)? Where do they hang out on the social web? How do they participate in these social media platforms? Forrester Research’s “Social Technology Profile” allows you to use age, location, and gender to identify the type of activity people engage in on the social web, such as creating content, reviewing, collecting, watching, and more. Depending on what they do, you can determine which social media platform they are likely to frequent. For example, viewers may not participate in social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn, while they may watch YouTube videos and read blogs, but not comment on posts.

Step 3: Conduct a competitive analysis. What are the trends in social media (ie, which platforms are growing, which are declining?). What needs are not being covered by your competitors? Who will be your main competitors? What are the best practices in social media marketing? Perform a SWOT analysis, identifying your company’s strengths and weaknesses, along with opportunities and threats in the market and economy.

Step 4: Innovative Design strategies. Select the optimal social media platforms to reach your target market. Then, build a specialized strategy for each social media platform to achieve the goals customized for each platform. Each social media has distinctive features and means of communication. For example, a corporate blogging strategy will differ markedly from the strategy you use to achieve your goals on a social network like LinkedIn. In other words, a one size fits all strategy.

Therefore, you should adjust the following 8 C’s of Social Media Marketing Mix for each social media platform. Here are some suggestions on how to achieve this feat:

  • Categorize social media platforms by target market relevance (i.e. those where your target audience resides)
  • Understand the “rules of the road” on the platform by listening and learning how to behave, successfully start a conversation, and engage and energize participants
  • discuss acknowledging and responding to other platform users, always remembering to be a contributor, not a promoter
  • To collaborate with platform members as a means to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with platform participants
  • Contribute content to build your reputation and become a valued member, helping to build the community
  • Connect with influencers, so you can recruit them to help form opinions about your product or service
  • Community Creation allows you to create discussion forums where consumers suggest ideas and receive customer support.
  • Conversion from strategy execution to desired results (for example, increased brand awareness, website traffic, sales, etc.)

Step 5: Monitor, measure and tune. Access your progress, then adjust your marketing plan based on feedback to optimize goal achievement. Reassess and adjust your social media marketing plan to take into account the ever-changing nature of consumer tastes and the social web. For example, if the number of viewers and subscribers to your blog is declining, you can adjust your content to more closely match the interests of your target market. If the number of comments on your blog posts is dwindling, you can adjust your strategy by asking a question at the bottom of each post that inspires people to respond. In short, planning and executing a social media marketing campaign is a never-ending cycle. You must constantly monitor and adjust your strategies to maximize the impact of your campaign.

For more information and resources on planning social media marketing campaigns, be sure to visit my blog at www.SocialMediaMarketingResources.info.