Social Media Executive Primer Part 2

Define Your Strategy

The first step in social media marketing planning is to define your social strategy. Here are four components of a well thought out plan:

1. Who are You Talking To?
It is vital to identify the audience you plan to target through your social media marketing efforts and to research where they are most likely to be found - Facebook? MySpace? Twitter? LinkedIn? If you do not know, send out a simple survey to better understand where your target is doing their online socializing. Of course, you’ll want to offer something of value in return for the completed survey but it can help substantially with planning your social media marketing strategy. You’ll know where your target audience can be found in the social world and save a great deal of time and effort from trying to reach them on sites they do not visit.

2. Set Your Goals
Set goals for your social media marketing efforts and measure your performance routinely –ideally monthly. If your goals are not being achieved and efforts are not paying off, it may be time to re-evaluate what you are doing and how you are doing it. Magic is not likely to happen overnight. It’s important to be realistic as to what you can expect from your social media marketing.

3. Create Action Items
To get the plan in motion, you need to create and document action items with owners and deadlines for each. Otherwise, you’re plan may never come to life as well as it could. And track these action items so you’re efforts are organized. One action item should be to create a calendar of marketing events (if you don’t have one already) to optimize your online outreach and keep all your marketing efforts aligned.

4. Implement Your Bag of Tricks
You don’t have to scramble to hire a social media marketing expert or purchase social media marketing management software. Use your in-house tools, tactics, and technologies to get you started. If you have an online marketer, tap into this resource to manage your efforts. If you already have marketing campaigns underway with content and strong call-to-actions, use social media marketing to promote these other marketing tactics.

If you have a website analytics tool, use that to monitor social media sites referring traffic to your site and potential spikes in visitor traffic caused from your social media marketing efforts. Social media marketing is an extension of your current marketing efforts so utilize what you already have in place.

Part 1-Social Media: An Executive Primer
Part 2-Define Your Strategy
Part 3-Define Your Purpose
Part 4-Define Your Voice
Part 5-Audience Relationships
Part 6-How to Start
Part 7-Measuring Success
Part 8-Social Media Do’s and Don’ts

Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about Social Media Marketing Best Practices

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant