How Can I Create an Effective Social Media Marketing Plan?
Regardless of whether you’re offering a service or a product, you need to advertise in order to create sales. Advertising takes many forms from word-of-mouth to multi-level, million dollar campaigns.
In today’s world, Internet advertising is an important component of any marketing campaign. Advertising on the Internet gives you the potential to reach many people that you might otherwise not reach if you had limited your marketing to print, TV, radio or other types of media. With Internet advertising you can put your ad up online and it can potentially be seen by anyone, anywhere in the world, who is searching for exactly that item.
Over the last decade, one sector of Internet advertising has gained a lot of traction -- social media marketing. Social media marketing follows the “telephone” trail – one person shares information to the next person who shares it to the next person…….etc.
If, for example, you wanted to encourage people to join you in an Sloto Cash casino lobby event you could pay to advertise your event or you could simply put up a post that shows you playing a jackpot game with an invitation to join. Or you could market a coffee brand by posting an image of a coffee klatch with each member enjoying his or her cup of steaming coffee.
The possibilities are endless. But some strategies have been shown to work better than others. If you’re going to launch a social media marketing campaign, plan out your course of action by using proven methods.
Tips to creating an effective social media marketing strategy:
Build On Your Existing Contacts and Platforms
Before you start opening accounts and branching out, consider the networks on which you are already active and make sure that your accounts are optimized with updated and compelling material. You should have a good photo and cover image, a complete bio and a link to your brand.
Before launching a social marketing campaign, you should analyze your existing social media presence and the content that is already being presented. You need to create a structured plan that focuses on your key priorities.
Target Audience
Every brand has a target audience in mind. No product is going to be marketed to everyone so before you start creating content, you need to consider who your target market is. Adults? Teens? Over 50? Male? High-income? Working class? Interested in physical fitness? Nature lovers? Pet enthusiasts? Tech savvy? Parents? Married?
There are dozens of categories and the more that you narrow down your target audience, the better you’ll be able to build your campaign. You will want to use images, text, concepts and other content that will address the “pain points” – the issues of which your product or service will offer a solution.
Mission Statement
Consider reflecting your brand identify through a social media mission statement. This is a statement that you put forth to express your commitment to your customers and the community surrounding those individuals. You want customers to feel like they make a difference in a good way when they purchase from the company.
Not every brand should have a mission statement but if you do you have a chance to attract extra attention. Some mission statements of well-known brands include:
- LinkedIn: Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.
- Patagonia: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.
- Warby Parker: To offer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price, while leading the way for socially conscious businesses.
Metrics
Identify your key success metrics. You should be able to evaluate your conversion rate, reach, brand mentions, total shares, sentiment, reach and time spent on your website based on the number of people who viewed your content on your social media platform(s).
Content
Creating engaging and interactive content is the key to a social media campaign. After all, that’s what social media really is all about. There are many different types of content – the main ones are text, images and video. Once you’ve identified your target audience you can begin to create and curate content in the form of infographics, company news, blog posts, informative videos, cute images, interviews and other valuable presentations.
Displaying quality content is what will drive visitation to your social media posts so make sure that it’s top quality and engaging. Even better, try to keep your content interactive by soliciting comments, likes and shares from viewers which will then bring even more people to your platform.
Tracking
For all that is known about social media marketing, it still involves a lot of trial and error. That’s why it’s so important to track your results and analyze the data. The tweaks that you make is the key top optimizing your marketing campaign.
Every step that you take should be evaluated based on the results. You may change your approach, your content or even reassess on which platforms you want to focus.
Marketing on social media is always a work in progress. With a solid strategy, good content and proper tools for analyzing data, you can promote your product effectively through social media.
