Social Media Marketing Gameplan – Develop

With your analysis in place, it is time to develop what you have into a cohesive social media marketing plan. Building a social media marketing plan should be treated like you would any marketing plan. You wouldn’t just wing it with your television ads or billboards now, would you? Treat your social media plan with the same amount of attention and seriousness that you expect others to. If you want your customers/clients/fans to respond, you need to put the effort into giving them something worth responding to.

Being “on” social media is no longer good enough for a company. It is certainly better than not being online or marketing at all, but nowadays, your competitors are likely already also “on” the social medias. That means you need to do more. You need to win the social medias.

There are plenty of people out there that will try to tell you what to do in this stage – that developing a social media marketing plan can be as simple as copy-cut-paste-go. It doesn’t work that way. If you are a little cigar shop and you happen to find a very similar little cigar shop’s social media marketing plan then maybe you can just copy and paste and it won’t completely fail. But odds are you are a unique business and your marketing plan should be equally unique. So our plan is here to help you determine what to do, not necessarily hold your hand to do it.

In your analysis, you should have come up with your goals for what you want out of your social media platforms. In the developmental stage, we will build upon them.


Goals & Success Marks

We defined and came up with short, medium and long-term goals in our analysis. Now we are expanding on them to develop them into a plan. How do you reach those goals? What is your definition of success?

With each goal, set a success mark. If your goal is to expand your Facebook presence and generate conversation, what is considered successful? Perhaps going from 25 to 100 likes is a good goal to start with that is easily measured. You can look at your Facebook Insights and measure how much you increase your reach. Set goals that you can measure with the tools available to you. Don’t set goals that just say ‘I want to sell more stuff because Facebook.’ Not really a good goal and not really measurable. Much better to say ‘I want to increase likes by 15 percent per month and double our average reach by September.

Setting goals that you can measure is the only way to measure success. There is no limit to what kind of goals you can set, but for each one, have a success marker to measure how you are doing along the way. The same process should be repeated for all of your goals, no matter how short or long-term they may be.

Ask yourself “what do I want to get out of this campaign and how do I know when I’m there?”

Goal Summary

  • Create Short-Term, Medium-Term and Long-Term Goals
  • Set a Success Mark
  • Measure Your Success vs. Your Goals
  • Re-Analyze and Establish New Goals Regularly

Strategy & Voice

Part of developing your plan is also developing your style. As a business, determining what your style and voice will be should not be ignored, nor should it be casually figured out as you go. These are important things to figure out before you get going. What tone will be the tone and voice of your company? Fun? Serious? Both? Whatever your tone and voice is, stick to it. If your company has several people monitoring your social media channels, they should speak with the same voice. There can be exceptions to this, but as a rule of thumb, this is the safe way to handle your corporate platforms, especially when you are just starting out.

This ties into customer service also. If you deal with customers in your business, you are likely to have a customer service situation arise on one of your social media networks. If and when this happens, your social media plan should be prepared. Create a chain of command to get the response from the power-that-be to the customer. Respond accordingly and by your plan, rather than having the issue unresolved or have someone improv it at the time. Develop a plan of action for this and similar circumstances and get it out of the way in the planning stage.

The one thing you never want to do is ignore negative comments or questions. Address them and deal with the situation rather than ignore them or delete the comments. Better to have a plan in place for this now than deal with the headache later.


All Those Sites!

The Conversation Prism. Click to Enlarge.
The Conversation Prism. Click to Enlarge.

This is where things get tricky. There are so many social media sites out there, how do you choose where to be active and once you do that, how do you plan for each network?

Each network is different and you should research each one before jumping into them. Like I said in our analysis, get your name reserved on every site you may ever use, even if you end up never using it. Build your profile as if you are going to be active on a network even if you don’t think you ever will be active there.

What networks you are active on depends on your company, your market, your niche and your goals. Look into what each offers and what their audience is and you will likely come away with a good idea of where you need to be.

Once you have determined where your resources will be used, you can go back and do a mini-analysis with each one. Set goals for each, pick a voice for each, and start brainstorming your content strategy for each. No matter what you do, you need content.

Map out what you want the sites to do for you and create a gameplan for content. How much to post? How often to post? What to post? There is no perfect answer for these questions so brainstorm and research your market to see what you can do. In all honesty, your content plans will be ever-changing, so a simple outline will suffice at this point.

Go through each site and brainstorm or mind-map what your content might be, then when you implement the plan, you’ll have a list of ideas to draw from. Always keep this list growing. No matter how much content you think you have right now, a day will come where you are drawing a blank. I personally like to keep a notebook with me all the time in addition to my Evernote account. Then when inspiration hits me, I write down the idea for later use.

Once you have decided what sites to focus on, have set your goals for those sites and have drawn up some content ideas for each one, you are about ready to move forward with implementing your plan.


Tracking

We’ll get to this more later on, but for now at this point in the process, you need to determine how you plan to track your social media marketing. If you are using Google Analytics on your website (and there is no good reason you aren’t), you can track referrals and traffic to your site from each network with that.

This will not only show which social media sites are performing better at sending you traffic, but also what kind of content is working best for social media. If a certain kind of blog post is getting tons of traffic from Facebook and Twitter and another kind of post isn’t, you can build off of that.

With Facebook, you have access to Facebook Insights on your business page that will effectively track your likes, reach, and Facebook stats quite well. There are many, many third party sites that track social media stats as well.

I personally like to still use a pen and paper for some things. Before you start your campaign, write down all of your stats. Everything you can find. Facebook likes, Twitter followers, Pinterest followers, Alexa ranking, website page views, etc. Anything that looks like a number gets written down. Trust me, you’ll be thankful you have this when you look back later. You can also keep track of your search rankings if you’d like and you can use that to cross-reference your social media marketing with its effect on your search rankings.

Search and social are friends and you should remember that and treat them as such.

We’ll go over what to do with your tracking later, but for now, just pick what you will use and establish your base starting points. As the plan gets implemented, keep track of everything and you can adjust as you need to over time.


Ready?

At this point, your plan is pretty much mapped out. The next thing to do is get to posting and implement your plan! Social media, activate!

PART THREE: IMPLEMENT!


The Impero Media Social Media Marketing Gameplan



Social Media Marketing Gameplan – Analysis

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



Social Media Marketing Gameplan

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.

imperosocialHaving 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



Review – Moo Business Cards are “Luxe-urious” and Worth the Price

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.

Moo Business CardsTo 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.


Adobe Injures Piracy, Shifts Creative Suite Entirely to the Cloud

Adobe has decided to officially kill the boxed version of its Creative Suite, virtually killing or certainly injuring your ability to pirate Photoshop, Illustrator and the rest of their products anymore. As someone who subscribes to their Creative Cloud package, I am quite happy to see this move made for a variety of reasons.

The new versions of the products will launch in June, titled Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, etc., and offer several new features. Offering their products in the cloud will not only curb piracy, but it will regulate Adobe’s finances. Rather than getting large chunks of cash when updates are put out, they will be getting regular, predictable monthly revenues.

I’ll admit that way back in the day, I stumbled upon pirated versions of Adobe’s software. I didn’t really know how to use them, but they got me interested in learning about them. Years later as my focus shifted from radio and audio production, I toyed around with several different kinds of photo and design software. When Adobe launched the Creative Cloud monthly package, I dove in and haven’t looked back. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Audition, Lightroom and everything else for the cost of one good dinner with my girlfriend each month. What I stand to make in additional business by not having to contract anything out makes the software pay for itself.

Additionally, I have worked very hard to do what I do. I paid for my software and put a lot of effort into learning to use it. I certainly don’t want to lose any business to the CEO’s nephew and his pirated copy of Photoshop in the future. I am glad the monthly price is affordable and hope it inspires more people to just pay for it. I thought the prices for the boxed versions were absurd and could hardly fault young designers for getting it any way they could. But there are no excuses now. Simply put, if you are going to ever charge for your work with this software, you can afford the monthly fee.

Also, selfishly, my fancy, futuristic laptop doesn’t have a CD/DVD drive! I can only put software on it that I download! Otherwise I have to extract it on another computer and put it on a hard drive. Who needs that hassle. Downloadable software is clearly the present and the future.

It will be interesting to see if other software providers do the same thing in the future. If Adobe can offer all of these products for what it does, it stands to reason that other companies can offer what they have for even less. Hopefully this breeds some good competition. Way to go, Adobe.


Big Changes From Facebook and What They Mean

Facebook News Feed
The new look of Facebook
Facebook introduced some major changes to the News Feed last week, and they are sure to have a major impact on social media marketing and brand management.

Beginning with a new design, Facebook has redesigned their product and created a more all-encompassing News Feed, with an emphasis on user control. No longer will the News Feed be determined strictly by Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm, but rather be put out there for the user to sort on their own. Tabs to see your friends, events, who you are following, etc, will be available for users to flip through to get the content they want. A big emphasis was clearly put on making images front and center with the new look. Be prepared for a major shift even further into image based marketing in the coming year.

The redesign and focus on user control is wonderful news for businesses and brands. While you may not be able to force users to see your updates, no longer are you necessarily at the mercy of what Facebook decides. Rather than creating content that you think may have the most reach, brands can simply make good content. If the audience wants to hear your message, they at least have that choice again.

One of the struggles that many businesses have faced with their social media strategy, particularly in the last six months, is the guessing game of just what kind of post Facebook is sending to the most people. There are days where a short status update gets more reach than an image, and days where an image gets several times the traffic as a text-only status update. The guessing game led to a decrease in content value and an increase in trying to figure out the game. When a premium is placed on good content, everyone wins.

What matters when you are marketing online and trying to implement a strategy, is knowing what message you are sending to your customers. Not knowing if they are hearing all you are saying can have big effect on the success of your campaign. If this new News Feed allows all of your brands posts to be seen if the customer so chooses, that is a big step in the right direction.

Additionally, Facebook has revamped the design to cross over to all devices. Your browser on your computer will look and act the same as your phone and your tablet.

Facebook is allowing users to sign up to be switched to the new version as they begin rolling the new Newsfeed out to everyone. I for one am on the waiting list and will promptly offer my thoughts when I get a chance to drive this new ride.


How and Why Businesses Will Invest in Social Media in 2013

Seems that businesses are likely to be spending more money on social media in 2013 than they did in 2012. I would say I agree. I’m seeing more and more businesses starting to not only see the power of social media, but the necessity of keeping up with their competitors who are using it effectively. I’m seeing clients make great progress simply by having any social media presence. As more companies invest in this and treat it like an important part of their marketing strategy, the competition is growing and will yield even more social media business.

So what will happen in 2013 and where are the social media investments going? Here is a great infographic from Real Business Rescue that sums it up.


Social Media Strategy

Social Media Strategy & Implementation

Having a social media presence is now on a par with actually having a website. It is considered a crucial component to an overall marketing strategy. Today’s search and social algorithms change so quickly and so often, having a long term plan and help with your strategy can keep you from missing out on the key changes.

There are so many social networks now, that it can be difficult to figure out which ones you should be focusing on. Is your target audience on Twitter? Are they on Pinterest? Part of developing a good overall plan is to determine where your resources are best spent. Why focus on Twitter when your audience is elsewhere? And why ignore Pinterest when that’s where your audience is?

social media-2Creating a social media strategy is all about knowing where your audience is and you going to them, rather than the old marketing model of trying to make them come to you. The beauty of social media is that your audience has opted to come to you. It’s your job to take advantage of the opportunity they are giving you and get your message across.

What I will do is work with you to develop short-term and long-term strategies that will include both gaining followers, building your brand, and ultimately, converting those into actions. There is a fine line to be walked between talking to your audience and building your brand and overselling/spamming your audience and hurting your brand. By creating a long-term strategy, we are able to lay out a plan that can be followed that walks this line to get the results you want.

Part of the social media strategy and implementation is to integrate your off-site networks with your actual website. This means making sure that your social networks are linked from your site and vice versa.

It also means having plans in place so each network communicates in a specific way. Using analytic tools and metrics that are available, we can customize how and to whom your message is sent.