Building an actionable social media plan
Most social media plans have the same problem as most marketing plans – they aren’t “actionable”. They often do a great job of describing the current state of affairs, customer psychographics, company “brand” …and then the client says “now what?” So I’ve decided to begin a series of posts that will help you create a social media plan that can become a living document for your personal or business social media activities. In this post, I’ll describe the main components. In the following posts, I’ll explain how to create each component. I’m by no means an expert in social media, but I DO know the components small businesses and entrepreneurs need to create a road map for any promotional activity, online, in traditional media or on the ground.
To being with, let’s start with the basic pieces of the plan – PLEASE pipe in with ideas or areas that you think I may have missed.
1. Business drivers – why are you engaging in social media? Is it for brand identity? To sell more widgets? To get people to buy your book? You really need to know and rank the business drivers that are key to engaging in this campaign. “Because we should” is not a sufficient reason. I’ll go into this more in the next post, but Kent Lewis has a strong list of possible reasons and you may have more of your own. Post them in the comments if you do.
2. Goals – Include goals that are both quantitative and qualitative, as later on you will need to use these to put together your measurements. Jennifer Laycock says the three primary goals are to build the brand, increase conversions and increase presence, while Marketer Insight identifies 6 more specific goals. I think you can create much more specific goals that fall in those categories. Ideas might be “Drop Alexa ranking to 100,000″ or “accelerate recruiting process” or “drive traffic to the website.” Again, make sure that goals can be measured in some way.
3. Tools – Now is the time to decide where you’ll engage. This can be tricky. I just had a discussion with a B2B company that originally thought Facebook would be one of their primary tools. But when we talked through it, Facebook wouldn’t do much for them to reach their goals. So it will be more of an ‘autofeed’. Make sure you know the main tools (above and beyond just Facebook and Twitter) and then carefully review each one to decide where you will spend your time. And more importantly, how they will interact with each other. Remember, your blog is part of your social media toolkit. So might be article directories, external blogs you frequent and forums.
4. Content Guidelines – You’ve got to decide what you’ll tweet/post/blog about. One easy way to start is to determine the keywords that drive folks to your site or business. Then blow it up from there. Don’t stay too focused or you’ll get boring (to yourself and others.) Think of your social media platform the same way a magazine editor might think of a monthly publication. Determine high level topics, and then brainstorm ideas under each topic. I will definitely write more on this later, but check out Beth Hodgson’s post on this topic back in April too.
5. Frequency Guidelines – You need to build a simple matrix defining the frequency in which you’ll post to every tool/account. Remember these should be minimums. I’ll provide a sample matrix later with some suggestions but even if you’re just getting started now, put a little spreadsheet together with your accounts on the side, and frequency on top. It will help guide you, I promise.
6. Monitoring – Decide how and when you’ll monitor your social media. It can be as simple as checking Google Analytics and Alexa once a week, and running alerts daily. Or you can get into tools like SM2 or Radian6 if it’s warranted.
7. Measurements – Take the goals you’ve set down and measure how you’re doing. I recommend re-setting qualitative goals once every 2-3 months, more frequently if you’re growing rapidly. If this is a particular interest don’t stay on this blog – go to KD Paine’s measurement blog. She is the grande dame of online measurement and you will find no better resource. I’ll give you some quick and dirty ways to do it too at the end of the series.
Stay tuned on Mondays as we write our plans together. I’m editing the Wax plan as I write this…should be interesting!
Tags: building a social media plan, how to write a social media plan, measuring social media, social media plan for small business, social media planning
July 26th, 2010 at 11:20 am
Great article, i have been trying to market my business through facebook and twitter but these tips really help. What other sites do you recommend?
July 26th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Excellent points!
Social marketing, marketing that produces accountable, measurable results,is far more process and systems oriented than creative.
July 27th, 2010 at 8:54 am
Great article, thank’s for share
July 27th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Breaking into social media is quite a puzzle, and unfortunately, I seem to me using it more as a feed than interactive center. It seems like the greatest breakthroughs I’ve had were when random customers spread the word themselves and started a positive chain reaction.
July 27th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
It might feel as though you have had “random” moments of positive reactions but I bet if you looked at your activity over the past few weeks, you would see a particular rhythm that you maintain. And that rhythm helps you get more of those ‘random” bonuses. (Like the old adage, the harder we work the luckier we get?)
Most great social media folks are really intuitive in how they go about it but for many business owners, hoping you get lucky isn’t enough to justify budget. That’s why they need a plan. It’s obvious you’re already proficient and know the benefits!
July 28th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Social media does have a role in marketing, but that role depends on our business and how it best fits the needs of our business. It also depends on the effort we are willing to put forward when it comes to social media.
July 29th, 2010 at 12:01 am
Great article! I never was able to make out how facebook or other social networking sites could be put to such use! Would wanna read in more detail on this topic…
July 31st, 2010 at 6:13 am
Thank you for an excellent article and valuable tips. Once your social media plan is ready, you have to systematically implement it and be patient!
August 9th, 2010 at 9:38 am
[...] is the second post on Building an Actionable Social Media plan. Refer to the first one if you need a refresher on why we’re doing [...]
August 17th, 2010 at 8:25 am
Action should be taken in a way such that you should be very accurate and in a proper way with lots of vision in it.As we should be the very clear in our ideas about where we are promoting.
August 24th, 2010 at 9:18 am
The potential payoff for corporate social media participation is enormous. These companies will have a better sense of how they are perceived by their target audiences, they will establish a two way dialog with key stakeholders and they will empower their customers to speak with them, not at them. But without a strategic approach to social media, it’s difficult to succeed. Hopefully this 5 step plan can help a company get started.
So… thanks for share your plan!
August 24th, 2010 at 9:46 am
I always like Chris Brogan and Brian Solis Mashable of course is a great one for curating good advice.
August 24th, 2010 at 9:47 am
That’s right, but I think you still have to engage. I’ve found several new partners and customers, particularly through twitter.
September 12th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
I had a possibility to buy a smartphone, but I didn`t, I`ve got accustomed to my ordinary phone. But I liked your article.
September 12th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Great stuff here. Thanks
September 12th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Thanks for the updates. Not sure I would’ve been able to do this without them. Cheers once again.
September 12th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
This is a wonderful blog,
September 12th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Thank you for an excellent article and valuable tips. Once your social media plan is ready, you have to systematically implement it and be patient!
September 12th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
Action should be taken in a way such that you should be very accurate and in a proper way with lots of vision in it.As we should be the very clear in our ideas about where we are promoting.
September 12th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
Social media does have a role in marketing, but that role depends on our business and how it best fits the needs of our business. It also depends on the effort we are willing to put forward when it comes to social media.
September 30th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Using social media for marketing is a challange. Thanks for sharing.
October 4th, 2010 at 11:59 am
[...] or weekly basis. Try coming up with it daily for your social media! In this post in a series on building an actionable social media plan we’ll show you how to create guidelines for social media that turns your daily [...]
October 14th, 2010 at 7:04 am
[...] that you determined your content, your networks and the main structure of your social media campaign it’s important to determine the frequency with which you’ll post. Certain networks [...]
December 2nd, 2010 at 4:47 am
For your articles or blog posts to be effective, you need to find that ideal balance between quality and quantity.
December 8th, 2010 at 12:02 am
Exploit every article you write by embedding a appealing opt-in form inside your signature box. Incorporate a high perceived value bribe and start constructing a huge subsciber lists to sell to on an ongoing basis.
March 18th, 2011 at 7:05 am
Excellent Post. Your post is very informative and useful for the bloggers or who are holding blogs. Social media marketing is the best way to promote your blogs as well as to get a huge amount of traffic to your blogs everyday.
July 15th, 2011 at 12:57 am
Great article! These steps are important for developing a social media strategy, though it should be mentioned that engaging in social media is not a one time thing, but more so a long-term commitment. Just like in real-life relationships, you must dedicate the time and continue to devote attention to keep them alive…wouldn’t you agree?
December 28th, 2011 at 1:54 am
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