Alright. So the era of social media has emerged in these years, and its formidable power is strong enough to get more audiences for your product market. For this reason, you have to write for your company’s social media plan immediately. Everybody knows that social media is big and getting bigger day after day, so you need to write a plan to make your company to get involved.
Here are some ideas on how to start a superb social media plan, yet realistic enough to assure your company board member about the benefits of social media marketing.
1. Take a Good Impression of Unlimited Possibilities of Social Media
Start your social media plan with some surprising statistics and meaningful quotes about how the trend has changed from traditional marketing and advertising into social media. However, you can tell the big opportunity of social media by just relying on social media’s accomplishments. Include some insights, such as:
- 4 of the top 7 highest-traffic websites (Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Blogger) are social media websites
- Two-thirds of the global internet population visit social networks — Nielson, Global Faces and Network Places
- More than half of all people in the U.S. over 12 have set up a social media profile
- With over 400 million users, if Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the world
- Twitter now has 110 million users and is adding 300,000 a day
2. Explaining Social Media
Social media is a vast subject for many, so you need to put conscientious limitations on what it is. However, don’t start your plan with the definition of social media because it’s not as exciting as the first section about the big opportunity. It is very important to grab their attention first. Consider to include something like this:
“Social media is user-generated content on the Internet. It’s created with free or inexpensive technology with an easy-to-update feature, and can reach a niche audience or millions. It is more than some status updates or tweets, but also user-generated videos, photos, and audio. The company can be interactive with various comments from visitors, which can be useful for products review and Q&A sessions. As user-generated content, social media does away with controls associated with traditional media – and most of all, it removes the need for big media.”
3. Create a List of Goals
If you don’t have any further knowledge about social media advertising and marketing, it’s very possible that your top management afraids that social media is only a child’s play. It is for entertainment purpose only and does not have any economic value. You have to give them an enlightenment about social media for business. Tell them how you will use social media activities to:
- Build customers awareness about the company’s brands
- Strengthen the relationships with clients, prospects, and loyal fans
- Get better understanding of your buyers
- Improve customer service
- Discover new product ideas
- Increase the company’s web traffic
- Improve search engine rankings
- Generate leads
- Generate sales
You don’t have to promise to get all these things. However, whichever goals you choose, make them attainable and create a progressive schedule. Ask for a grace period (at least several months) for learning and experimentation until you have to start showing concrete results.
4. Make a Progressive Schedule
Social media marketing is not something instant or automatic. You need a certain amount of time to get its benefits. On the other side, the management won’t wait forever, either. Give them an idea of what your steps will be, which may include:
- Time to define goals, objectives, and strategy
- Time to learn on social media
- Time to determine team, either internally, choosing a social media consultant, or both
- Setting up accounts on Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube
- Finding your existing community of clients, prospects, and loyal fans on the main social media sites listed above, on niche social media sites, and on established industry blogger sites
- Time to set up your own blog
- The sequence of social media sites that you will concentrate your efforts on
- Time needed for listening to each online community
- Time to develop followers
- Time to create content, such as a blog, videos, white papers, podcasts, and more
- Time to learn time-saving tools such as RSS feeds, Technorati, HootSuite, BitLy, and more
- Dates of pre-scheduled progress reports
Write this timeline concisely. This is a working plan that you use every week, and change as you learn what works and what doesn’t.
5. Don’t Get Too Much
Since social media revolves around so many free tools, sometimes the expectations run high. So you also need to make your team understand there’s no guarantee it will be a silver bullet. Tell them things like:
- Social media is not a panacea. If your company or product is bad, social media is not going to make that go away
- While many of the tools are free, it can take a substantial investment in time and consistent effort to build up a loyal following on the main social media sites
- There is a substantial learning curve of the technology, language, and culture of the various social media sites
- Social media is always evolving, so successful methods can stop working
- Success may require effort from a team, not just one man show
6. Ask for Resources
Resources are very important part in social media marketing. Don’t be shy and ask for help, whether it’s a training, people’s time, or budget to pay for consultants, website hosting fees, a video camera, or useful web applications you later determine you need. Since social media requires near constant attention, tell them you need a laptop with broadband access and a smart phone with an unlimited web access plan too. Ask for something free, but priceless, since your top management to share their buy-in with your plan to help you get more cooperation from the rest of your company.
7. Recommend Who Does Social Media For Your Company
The first step of choosing who does social media for your company is deciding between doing it internally, hiring a consultant to do it, or a combination between both of them. You can shorten your learning curve with social media consultants who can train you and identify online communities where your clients already gather. However, your social media activity really should be done by your own people from your company. It’s just too hard to hire an outsider to be the authentic voice of your company.
Figure out who does social media within your company. Just remember that while the youngest member of your marketing or customer service team may be the most familiar with social media, they may not be the best choice to represent your company in social media. You want someone who has:
- Deep knowledge of your customers, industry, products, and company
- Exemplifies the personality of your organization
- Insatiable curiosity
- Integrity
- Good people and communication skills
- A quick study on technology
- Very strong work ethic
8. Execution
While similar to how you started your plan, you want to finish with some more strident points that create a sense of urgency. End your plan with things like:
- “We no longer control our brand – it is being shaped by our customers in social media with or without us, so we must engage with them to protect and enhance the brand.”
- “Social media is where our communities are shifting their attention; we ignore them at our peril.”
- “If we delay our entry too long we risk being left behind by our customers and our competitors.”
Social media is a vast universe of communities with various cultures. It can be daunting to start social media campaign. Bad social media campaign will make you losing your current audiences and time as well. Contact us today at The Website Marketing Group for professional social media marketing and advertising strategy for your company!