Social Media Marketing Gameplan – Implement

Social Media Marketing Gameplan

In all honesty, developing and analyzing your social media marketing gameplan is the easy part. That means the implementation of the plan is the hard part. It’s time to take all of the work you have done and put your plan in place.

With your plan of action created, you already know which networks you will be active on and posting on, as well as how often and generally what kind of content you will be sharing. Seems like it will be easy to just go ahead and publish things and get going, right?

Well, sort of. If you have brainstormed enough content and pre-written blog posts and bookmarked relevant links you want to share, yes, this part will be easy. Just schedule and post. If you are planning on writing and sharing as you go, you have a full-time job ahead of you. It is definitely easier to have things pre-made, but it also comes at the cost of immediate relevance. You don’t want to share links or be creating blog posts about things that everyone else in your niche shared weeks or months ago. It is a good idea to have some pre-written content to schedule after your launch, but also leave room for new and immediately relevant content on a day-to-day basis.

So how should you publish your content and implement your social media strategy gameplan and what goes into implementation?

Scheduling

facebookscheduleNot scheduling some posts is just asking to make things harder. I think there is a very fine, actually thick, line between scheduling and automating. You can set posts up to post on all platforms 24 hours a day if you want. That doesn’t mean it is the best way to do things.

If you are planning on having two Facebook posts per day, you can easily schedule them right from your Facebook page ahead of time. Pick hours that statistically are best for your market and genre. If you are marketing towards local businesses that are open from 8 AM to 5 PM everyday, you might want to post your two posts at 10 AM and 1 PM everyday, or something similar. There is no good reason to be posting at 11 PM if your target audience is unlikely to see it or more importantly, act on it at that time. Be conscious of the hours that are most optimal with each site you are posting on and stick to those windows. Generally speaking, stick to business hours and early in the day for most sites. I personally find Twitter to be relatively effective at all hours, but Facebook to be far more effective before lunch. Trial and error for sure, but have a plan and schedule accordingly.

There are other sites, such as Hootsuite, that allow you to schedule posts on most platforms. This can be a very effective tool to plan your entire social media strategy from one place. They have free and pro plans and allow scheduling for sites such as Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn, either all at the same time or posted on each individually. Sharing your content where you want and when you want is far more effective than sharing it all at once in every location. Ideally, your audience will be following you on multiple channels, so you need to be careful not to spam them and overshare simultaneously.

How To Interact

We discussed creating a voice and determining who and how will speak to your audience. The next step is to determine how that voice will share content. Generally speaking, I feel that an 8 or 9-to-1 ratio is about right for interacting vs. selling to your audience. What that means is that for every one post you make selling your company or a product, you are posting another eight or nine times without selling anything. The goal is engagement, not just selling.

When you interact on social media sites, you should be interacting, not just selling. The goal is to talk to your customers or clients and create a conversation. Give them good content that makes them happy, entertains them and engages them. If you are a graphic designer, share content about design or typography now and then. Post photos that interest you and are related to your niche. Share good content from other people or businesses and engage in conversation with them also. Be the social media account you want interacting with you. Talk, engage and share. That’s what social media is all about and what you want your customers to do, isn’t it?

When it comes to selling on social media, you certainly don’t want to ignore it. Make that one post in your optimal ratio worth it. Offer exclusive discounts through social media to make your customers feel like they are getting a special deal. Measuring ROI on social media is not the easiest thing in the marketing world, so offering an exclusive online offer and measuring how much it is cashed in is a simple, effective tool to see how things are working.

Create Good Content & Share Good Content

Social media today is all about content marketing. Create and share good content and you will see positive results. Write for your customers and not for the Google robots and you will see positive results. Pick the right social media platforms to be active on and be good at it. Don’t try to be decent on EVERY platform on the Internet.

Like I’ve said before, social media marketing is not rocket surgery. Create and share good content and you are on your way. Give your customers and clients a chance to share your content also. Be sure to have buttons on your website to allow others to share things easily. Don’t be afraid to talk to people online. Start conversations on Twitter or just jump right into a conversation.

If you’re an introvert, the good news is that you can post and publish good content and good things will happen. If you are outgoing, you are in Position A to excel at social media marketing.

Create your plan and stick to it. Join the never-ending conversations that are always going on online. In today’s generation, you need to be at the party to be successful, even if you are late to the party.

SO now you are ready to implement the plan you have created. The only step left is to monitor and optimize your plan over time. Tracking analytics and trends will tell you what to do in the future. We’ll go over what to look for and how to optimize things in our final installment in this series next. Until then, you have all the pieces of the puzzle and are ready to jump into social media marketing.

This is not the hardest business in the world, but it is an ever-changing and time consuming one. If this seems like something you need to do but just don’t have time to do it, I know just how to fix that. Let’s talk and I will help you analyze, create and develop your plan so you have more time to commit to the things that drive your business on a daily basis.

PART FOUR: TRACK & OPTIMIZE


The Impero Media Social Media Marketing Gameplan