How to write a social media plan

Maybe you are already doing it, maybe you are thinking about doing it, either way you need to make sure you put together a sound social media plan for your business. There are many reasons to join social media. Two-thirds of the global internet population are on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Facebook alone has 400 million users. Twitter, with its population of 110 million users is adding 300,000 users a day! Who?wouldn?t?want to tap into that traffic?

Where to start?

First think about what you want to accomplish in social media: build brand awareness, interact with your customers, understand buyer wants and needs, improve customer service, gain insight for new products, increase your website traffic, build search engine rankings, drive traffic to events or generate sales leads. Each of these goals are plausible for social media, so choose those important to you and your company and design your approach around that end goal. Make sure you have a measurement for your plan. For example, bench mark your web traffic before your social media plan is in place, then measure your monthly web traffic after the plan?has been implemented?to gauge whether you have reached the goal of increasing web traffic through social media.

Second, put a plan in place with realistic timelines for defining your goals and strategy:

• Determining your team (internal and external)
• Setting up and branding your accounts with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube
• Creating your blog
• Time needed to begin listening and learning about?your targeted online community
• Creating content like videos, whitepapers, podcasts and more.

Third, ask for the resources you need. You can tap social media consultants to help with getting your strategy in place, train your team and setting up an editorial calendar. It is best that you don?t use outside help for running your social media, since an internal voice of the business will lend credibility to your online presence. The people chosen will need to have a deep knowledge of your customers, industry, products as well as the company. You will want?people with?distinct personalities?that fits the way you want your business portrayed. You will need?people with integrity, curiosity, good communication skills, technologically savvy and a strong work ethic. Choose wisely.

You must remember this?.

The most important thing to remember when executing this plan, as you do in all your marketing efforts, is to incite a call to action! Drive them to your website, whitepaper, blog, etc. Ask them to participate in some way with your social media through questions, polls?and opinions.

If you write a strong social media plan, and work diligently at creating content and engaging your community, you will find success in social media. It will take time and hard work to create a following, but it will come.

What do you think? ?Did I leave anything out? ?What has been your experience?

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The original article, ?Writing a Sound Social Media Plan? by Tanya Babcock was originally published on the Brand Gal site.

Original article

Photo Credit

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Source: http://leaderswest.com/2013/01/19/how-to-write-a-sound-social-media-plan/

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