How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan for Business

Over 1 billion people have registered accounts with the social media market leader Facebook. 1.71 billion users are active monthly.

It’s not just the businesses down the road you’re competing with. You might even need to beat the world depending on your products and services. People from all over the world have access to the internet. Social media marketing is one of the best tools that can provide total customer care.

Like most things in life, there is a right way and wrong way. The same applies to when social media is used. There are some common errors marketers make using social media and there are a few best practices that are valuable to incorporate.

Learning how to create a social media marketing plan for your business, is valuable knowledge! Take the time to do your plan right the first time. Here’s how!

Make social media profitable for your business!

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1. Social media marketing goal.

Social media marketing plan should not be kept separate from your other marketing plans. It should drive your business toward the same goals. Have goals like:

• Connect on a personal level with your audience.
• Build relationships with your target audience.
• Increase your authority in your niche… build trust and loyalty.
• Get more traffic to your site or blog. Give quality, informative information so it gets shared.
• Increase your conversion – sales. SEO will love you more by increasing your ranking. More traffic, better SEO.

2. Research. Find where your audience is.

What is your niche about? There are literally thousands of social media sites with different audiences and purposes.

• Do research and find where your audience likes to populate.
• Take a look at images on social media. What type of images are shared the most?
• Once you know the images that are liked, start creating your own. They will be much more effective in generating more interest.
• What is your audience liking, commenting and sharing, for example, on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest…

3. Social media marketing strategy.

You must absolutely know your reasons to why you’re doing social media marketing.

Example: You have a new product to introduce.

Use the right social media tool with a proper thought out strategy to what you are doing. You do not have to use every social media. Whatever social media you choose, you should have goals for it.

Example: Facebook Groups – informative content in YouTube, engage often with people in forums

4. Take the time to engage with your audience.

Social media is about you giving information that your audience can use and share. It’s a place where you are building relationships, your trust, and your reputation.

Do not sell through social media. If you want your social media marketing plan to be effective, do not make selling as the first part of your plan. The content you post on social media must provide good value to your audience and it must also direct them to another good content that will lead them to a capture page. This is where you can get their names, and emails and THEN you sell to them.

5. Sharing too often.

Much like email spam, too much sharing on social media can become an annoyance… social media spam.  When this happens, people stop paying attention to what you’re trying to say.

• Schedule your posts to come out twice a day over a period of a week. Consider also the timing of the day. Based on your audience type, you will need to know what time works best for them. Do some testing on time and see what works. Buffer is one of many tools that let you schedule your posts on particular day and time.

Remember, time is important to you and your audience. You want people to pay attention to your great blog to what you have to say.

6. Social media brand management.

Having a strong, well-liked brand in your social media marketing is your best asset over selling. It will help sell your products and services and much more.

If your brand is strong and you have a loyal following with your audience by engaging with them, your negative reviews or comments if you have them will not be diversely affected on your site. Take, for example, Martha Stewart bounced back after having some very terrible press.

7. Your first impression, make it right.

Social media is all about first impressions. It’s much easier to spend the time to make your first impression right than it is to fix the wrong one.

Social media… it’s all about word of mouth.

Got a new idea?

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Do you have a new idea? Social media gives you free access to your target audience. Maybe you already have an idea for something new. Why not test it out on your followers in your Facebook, Twitter… Find out why social media is so important to business.

Hey, I really would like to hear from you. Please leave me a comment below and I promise I will get back to you right away.