Every business who is going to market themselves on social media needs a cohesive, strategic plan.
Marketing on social media without a plan is like driving a Ferrari in first gear!
There are certain steps you need to take to have an effective social media strategy. If you jump in without a strategic plan, you’ll be wandering around, wasting time, money and effort and not getting the results you want. Then you’ll say, “Social media marketing doesn’t work.” or “Social media is not for my business.”
Nonsense. If you want new customers, you must be on social media — and learn how to use it properly and effectively!
Here are the 11 steps you need to take to do effective social media marketing:
- Define Your Target Market’s Persona: If you don’t learn everything you can about your target niche, you can’t market to them effectively. You need to know their likes, dislikes, pain points, goals, demographics, and their social media habits. Today, there is tons of data, demographics, statistics, studies, etc. You can access much of this data free online. Download the free Define Your Target Market Workbook here.
- Set SMART Goals: What do you want to accomplish? They must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. Basically, start with how much you want make in 2016. Then divide that by 12. That will give you a monthly monetary goal. Now determine how many sales, new clients, etc. you’ll need to reach that monthly goal. That will help you set goals for each month.
- Do some research and find out where your target audience is hanging out online. And check out what your competition is doing online and do more of it and better.
- Learn How Each of the Social Networks Work. What to do and what not to do. Each network has a different culture. It’s vital that you learn how each one works to be able to leverage its power.
- Devise a Strategic Plan to Reach those Goals: You’ve defined your target market niche and you know which networks they frequent the most and how they work, so now you need to write up a strategy for each network along with what you’re going to blog about 3 times a week. (Yes, that’s what it takes. 3x a week is the charm!)
- Develop a Tactical Plan to Implement the Strategies: With this plan you define what you’re going to do when and for how long. If you’re starting from scratch with little or no following it takes at least 90 minutes a day for the first 30 days to build a decent following. Then your social media can be managed in 30 minutes a day! Yes, it can be done with the free online tools. We can show you how!
- Make sure your website and social media profile pages are branded consistently and optimized for search (SEO).
- Have the right calls-to-action to generate quality leads, then have some email marketing automation set up to nurture them into buying.
- Just Do It! Create and curate content. Post, engage, respond, blog 3x a week, build a following and build relationships.
- Monitor and Measure: At the end of each month you need to review your site statistics and social insights and analytics. They will tell you the demographics of your followers. Are they your target? Where are they located? If you’re a local business, this is important. Which types of posts got the most engagement — likes, shares and comments? This tells you the types of posts that they liked. Provide similar ones. On your website, you can see which networks drove the most visitors to your site and which posts got the most views.
- Adjust the Strategic and Tactical Plans for the Next Month: Taking it one month at a time makes sense. It helps you review your goals and see which were met and which ones were not. What did you do or not do? Plan ahead for the next month. Take into consideration holidays, observance and awareness days that will be trending in social media. They’ll also help determine what to blog about.
My Goal is to Help You Take Control of Your Marketing
I know that most of you are short-staffed or run the whole show yourself. Been there, done that. Learning how it works may seem daunting, but we take it step-by-step in a logical progression so it all makes sense in the end and gets you going in the right direction.
How much is your time worth?
This is important for you to decide what you can do yourself and what you need to outsource. Maybe it’s because you’ve been trying to do it all yourself without a plan or without knowing which networks are best to reach your target that you’re frustrated and overwhelmed. Contrary to what you might hear, you DON”T have to be on ALL the networks! Just strategically on the ones your target market frequents and the ones that are driving traffic to your website.
Take a step back. Let me help. Let’s start with a FREE 15-minute phone consult. Schedule it now — what are you waiting for?
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