The first part of any successful marketing campaign is to do a thorough analysis of what you are working with and what your goals are. Determining the proper course of action is dependent on figuring out where you want to end up. Is your goal to sell a product? To increase brand awareness? To manage your brand and converse with your audience? Realistically, the answer is “yes.” What I mean is that your social media strategy should be a combination of all of these things.

Social media is unique because it gives you an opportunity to talk directly to your customers, clients, competition and friends all in one place and in the open. You can use social media to humanize a company as well as to nurture your business relationships.

Setting Goals

The first step in analyzing what you would like to do is to set some goals. Break them down into time frames and map goals for each. What are your short term, medium term and long term goals? Once you start examining these questions, you will start to see your plan forming a cohesive structure.

Some potential goals include gaining more Facebook ‘Likes’ in order to initiate more conversation and sell directly to an opted-in audience. Or getting more followers on Twitter for the same purpose. Your goals might also be as simple as getting on Pinterest or Instagram to connect to an entirely different audience. Whether your goals are to get in the game, advance in the game or dominate the game, mapping them out is step one towards building your plan.

I prefer to separate goals into short term and long term to start, then add a few other segment in. Perhaps you define short term as the next three months and long term as five years from now. That’s fine, but where do one year from now plans go? Have a few segments and string them together. Perhaps your short term goal right now is to get a Pinterest account. Then the ensuing short term goal once you have it is to get active on it. Then there will be another short term goal with getting results from it. That adds up to a goal for about six months to a year from now maybe. Create a timeline map and fill in your goals with each platform over time and for your overall strategy in the same times.

Mark Your Territory

Before you can dominate the social media market, you need to make sure you are in it. If you don’t already own the name you want for your profiles, get to getting! Securing your name is an important step in controlling your brand and your message. Even if you don’t plan to use YouTube or Instagram for marketing, sign up and get your name off the market. Not only will this ensure that you own the name if you do decide to market there, but it keeps others, competitors or otherwise from having access to your name. Better to own your preferred username and never use it than to not own it or have control over it.

At this point, you can start to branch out your goals into not just the overall plan, but a channel-by-channel plan. Set your Facebook goals. Create a Twitter gameplan. Build your LinkedIn profile to get it done. Examine what Pinterest and Instagram and YouTube and any other sites might offer your company. If you think you have a reason to be active on a network, set goals and get active there.

Connect

Once you have your profile created, build it out with all of the relevant information. Be sure that your website and links to other profiles are set up and your businesses contact information is up to date. You can create a virtual daisy chain between all of your profiles to alert your audience where else you can be found. Perhaps someone that saw you on Twitter spends far more time on Facebook. Point them over there. Maybe someone who saw your product on Pinterest wants to communicate more. They should not have to jump through hoops to find your Twitter profile or a link to your full website.

Sharing and following should be made easy on your website as well. If you are using WordPress or a similar CMS to run your website, you can likely find a good plugin to help share your information. This site uses AddThis as our main WP plugin to allow you to share or follow us right from the site. Most plugins are pretty customizable and allow you to connect many sites at once. When you have all of your profiles made, you need to allow people to find them. And if you blog regularly (you should – we’ll get to that!), allowing people to easily share what you write is important.

So in step one, we are analyzing what needs to be done to create the best possible social media strategy. You could say we are setting ourselves up for future success. Lay the foundation for success. Set your goals, determine what you want out of social media marketing, reserve your name and create your profiles, then connect them to your main site and each other. Once this is done, the foundation is built to market to your audience. Now all you need is to develop your plan and get some good content out there!

PART TWO:DEVELOP!

The Impero Media Social Media Marketing Gameplan

• PART ONE – ANALYSIS
• PART TWO – DEVELOP
• PART THREE – IMPLEMENT
• PART FOUR – TRACK, OPTIMIZE & REPEAT

Defining a strategy with your social media channels is both simple and complex, depending on how you go after it and how much you are willing to do to make it happen. Far too many people think “hey, I’ve got Facebook and Twitter accounts, I can do social media as well as anyone!” That is like saying, “I have a typewriter, I can write the next great novel!”

While you may have the next great novel in you, we both know that it is far more important to know how to write than it is to know how to use a typewriter. Creating and implementing a good social media marketing strategy is far more inline with being an expert in marketing than it is being in expert at using Facebook or Twitter for personal use.

Having said that, being an expert in marketing is not rocket surgery. Knowing how to operate the profiles in your social media channels is a major part of being able to market on them. While you don’t need to be a social media butterfly, being active on social media sites definitely gives you an edge over anyone who is clueless on them.

The biggest deterrent to a good social media plan, other than simple ignorance, is lack of time. By ignorance, I mean that people either think they can half-ass their social media sites and not have any plan or they don’t think there is any reason to be active online. Either way, you aren’t going to get anywhere.

As for lack of time, there are two solutions for that. One, hire a professional. People like myself do this for a living and can learn your brand, help you create your campaign and strategy and implement it for you. If done right and your product is good enough to close sales, you will make more than you spend on your online marketing and grow to see it the same way you’d see any other form of advertising. The second solution to a lack of time is to put in the effort where you can to create a comprehensive strategy, then make just enough time to do what you have time for the right way. If you can only make two hours a week for social media marketing, there are ways to make the most of that. Using those two hours to schedule five posts for later that week goes much, much further than using those two hours to post three things right then and there and then closing your laptop.

What I’m saying is that having a plan is way better than not having a plan. Putting the time and effort into creating an effective plan before you get started is critical to achieving success. You wouldn’t launch your business without a plan. You wouldn’t launch a television advertising campaign without a plan. You wouldn’t build a website without a plan. Why would you do this without a plan?

I have created an outline that will help you create your own gameplan step-by-step. Enjoy this plan while it is free and hopefully using it will help your business and social media presences grow. Just don’t forget about me when you become rich and famous!

The Impero Media Social Media Marketing Gameplan

• PART ONE – ANALYSIS
• PART TWO – DEVELOP
• PART THREE – IMPLEMENT
• PART FOUR – TRACK, OPTIMIZE & REPEAT

It was about that time again to order new business cards and I once again did fresh research into what company to buy from. I was hoping to use a local printer, but for several reasons, I was unable to and ordered online. After doing my research, I decided to give Moo.com a shot and to be honest, I couldn’t be happier.

I’ve ordered in the past from OvernightPrints.com and VistaPrint.com, but was neither majorly impressed nor utterly disappointed in either. Upon receiving my cards from Moo, I can revise my prior opinions to say that those other companies were nowhere near Moo in terms of quality or delivery.

To start, the packaging that the business cards arrive in is exquisite. I ordered some of the regular old matte print cards, which arrived in fancy little black boxes that double as carrying cases. The quality of the “low budget” card from Moo far surpasses any other business card that has ever had my name on it — and that includes several companies that I did not do the ordering for. They are thick, heavy stock and the printing quality is top notch.

I also ordered a small batch of the much pricier “Luxe” cards. These things are beasts. And I mean that in a good way. They are thick and heavy, but not at all in a bad way. And as part of the deal with Luxe cards from Moo, I had the option of adding a colored sheet in the middle of the card. What I mean is that the Luxe cards are actually made up of multiple thin pieces of paper, then (for lack of a better technical explanation) smashed together to make one thick card. I had a red sheet inserted as it went with my color scheme and it adds just the right amount of awesomeness that I was looking for. The cards feel like luxury and look like a unique and classy way to share my information. They also arrived in a magnetic closing white box, wrapped beautifully in a purple ribbon. It was quite the presentation.

As for the ordering process, it was no more difficult than any other. Moo has slightly different dimensions than other printers however, so I had to make a few minor adjustments to the design before getting them printed. If you are designing your own cards, you can download a template from them to put your design on before you upload it. If you have a designer, tell them this. If you are just starting, Moo has an amazing selection of templates to build your own design. I take pride in designing things and like to think I have a decent eye, so I’m reluctant to like most stock designs, but I would use several of their stock designs in a heartbeat. Might save myself some time next time actually!

After getting my designs uploaded, the checkout was like any other site. I had a coupon for free shipping (Google Moo coupon codes and you will likely find a few), and the cards actually arrived a few days ahead of my original schedule. I placed my order late at night on a Wednesday and they were in my hands the following Friday. There are options to expedite the process, but I thought that was a pretty impressive time frame for the price of free.

As for price, Moo is not cheap. If there is one negative, it is that they are expensive compared to the competition. Having said that, I am quite certain that my next business card order placed online will be with Moo. I paid more than I wanted to but I was blown away with the product once I got it. The Luxe is heavy and luxurious and the stock matte is the best business card I ever had until I opened the Luxe box. Assuming these things get me enough business to necessitate ordering more business cards again in the future, Moo has earned a loyal customer.