Social networks have long been essential in our lives, especially if you have a business. It is very possible that you are wondering what a social media marketing plan is for and how to make one. In this article, I am going to tell you how to make a marketing plan with social media correctly.
To efficiently manage your social networks you must have a defined strategy and that’s where the social marketing plan or social media plan comes in.
Boris Soler is a stylist from Malaga who works impeccably on his social networks. Today he is a reference for traditional hairdressers who see in him a mirror to look at in order to succeed in the online world. Currently, Boris is a speaker at the famous TEDx talks and teaches social networking courses for hairdressers.
In addition, he teaches courses or seminars in which he teaches how to work with social networks to create a personal brand, just as he has done.
It is a clear example that working properly social networks can create a good personal brand for your business.
How to make a marketing plan with social media
What is a social media marketing plan
A social media marketing plan or social media plan is a digital marketing strategy, applied to social networks through a document, template or guide that helps us identify and proceed with the steps to follow towards our goal in social networks.
In social networks and any other type of digital marketing strategy, it is necessary to follow a series of steps before taking any action. That is why through the use of a social media marketing plan, you will be able to work in a few optimal conditions towards your goal, which will make you not only be more effective but also optimize your time.
In order to prepare your social media plan, you must follow a series of previous steps, in which the analysis of your situation, your competition and the objectives you want to achieve will be the basis for doing it.
We will see step by step all those points that you have to follow:
Analyze your brand and your current situation
Before starting to prepare on how to make a marketing plan by social media, it is important to know the status of your brand. You have to identify all those aspects that differentiate you from the rest as well as each of the strengths or weaknesses of your business.
First, we will observe our business internally:
- We sell products or services
- We are a B2B or B2C business
- Actions that we have made so far
- Online reputation of your brand or business
- Do I have the means to perform digital actions?
Analyze your competition
In the same way that it is important to analyze your own brand. It is equally important to identify what your competition is doing and in what way. Also important to observe it’s positive and negative points.
This information will be very useful to make your own strategy. Be careful, do not do exactly the same as them for two reasons. Your brand must be unique and the second is that what works for the competition does not necessarily have to work to you.
To carry out this analysis you have tools such as Fan Page Karma, BuzzSumo or Google Trends that will be very useful for you.
Analyze your website
If you want to know how to make a marketing plan on social media, it is essential to carry out an analysis of the usability and accessibility of your website.
Do not forget that one of the goals of social networks is to increase web traffic. Thanks to our social media goals we get potential customers to the web, but when the page arrives it is not optimized, it will not convert.
We must count aspects such as the usability of the place. Make sure the information is easy to find. It will be great if our user quickly identifies the values of the brand and the objective to be achieved and especially if the site is ready to be used through a mobile device.
Define your target audience
To know who your target audience or ideal client is, you should be clear about the following information:
Age, sex, location, purchasing power, consumption habits, pain points, and needs.
Once you have created this profile, define which of your products or services can help you solve your problems or cover your needs.
Only if you know your ideal customer perfectly will you be able to give them valuable content and create tailor-made products and services.
Choose the right social networks
In a social media marketing plan, it is basic to define which channels you will use, as you know, each network works for some sectors better than for others. that is why you must carry out a preliminary analysis of which networks are the most appropriate for your business or brand.
Do not try to cover more than you can, it is better to be in two social networks correctly than in four bad. Measure the time you can spend and channel your goals in those networks.
Define the contents for each social network
Once you have defined your channels of dissemination and communication for your brand, you must select which content is the most appropriate for each of them.
Each social network has its own tone, do not automate Instagram posts to Facebook (which is something I see a lot) denotes neglect and gives a bad brand image.
If you want to publish the same image on both channels, you can do so, adapting the copy and the hashtags for example.
Define your goals and select the metrics
When you prepare a social media plan, you must know how to make a marketing plan. You must have well defined what your objectives are, since depending on the current need of your business you can establish your strategy and use the KPIs that allow you to measure the effectiveness of this strategy.
The KPI’s are the parameters that help you measure the actions you are carrying out, to see if you are achieving the objectives previously set.
If the objective of your business is to reach more people, the KPIs that you must take into account are the following:
- Scope and impressions: The reach KPI will tell you the number of people your post has seen, while the impression KPI will be the number of times your posts were viewed.
- Number of followers: the number of followers of the brand in Social Networks will be a clear indicator of the status of the visibility you are achieving with your strategy.
Another important objective is engagement, for me fundamental.
Engagement is the ability of a brand to generate a relationship with its audience. The more engagement you have, the more engaged is the audience with your brand and, therefore, there are more possibilities for the user to end up buying your product or service.
To know how to make a marketing plan that committed to your fans, you must measure the following KPI’s:
- Number of “You Like Me”
- Comments
- Shares or Shared
Another very important objective is the capture of leads through social networks. To measure if you are doing it correctly, the KPI you should use is the number of visits to the web from Social Networks. You can also analyze with Google Analytics the visits you receive to your website from social networks (social traffic).
Crisis plan for social networks
Social networks have many advantages for your brand, but you do not have to forget about the possibility of encountering an incident that requires specific attention. That is why before a criticism, complaint or claim on social networks you should not respond without having a crisis plan that tells you how to act in these situations.
You must plan different scenarios of possible complaints or criticisms. Be sure what to answer and in what tone.
The most important thing in these cases is to act as quickly as possible before a comment ball is generated.
Start your Social media plan (Editorial calendar)
To know how to make a marketing plan, you must gather some previous analysis of your brand and that of your competitors. After having chosen which networks will be the most effective for your strategy and having your objectives well defined; it is time to create your social profiles.
Now the time has come to execute your social media marketing plan and for this, you need to create a publication calendar. This calendar, along with some tools is the most effective way to work on your social networks.
