Social Media Marketing Plan: Strategies and Best Practices

SMM Plan

• An SMM (Social Media Marketing) plan details an organization’s social media goals and the actions necessary to achieve them.
• Key actions include understanding corporate and marketing strategies and creating promotional strategies.
• Without integrated strategies and solid SMM plans, successful SMM is unlikely.

SMM Planning Cycle

• Creating a social media plan is a continuous process.
• Skilled social media marketers:
  • Constantly monitor the progress of the plan’s action elements
  • Modify elements to improve results
  • Test alternative approaches
• The SMM planning cycle includes:
  • Listening
  • Setting goals
  • Defining strategies
  • Identifying the target audience (market)
  • Selecting tools
  • Selecting platforms and channels
  • Implementing
  • Monitoring
  • Tuning

Listen and Observe

• Five stages of listening:
  1. Listen to conversations about a brand or company.
  2. Listen to what people say about the competitors.
  3. Listen to what people say about the industry or category.
  4. Listen for the tone of the community.
  5. Listen to different social media platforms and channels.

Listening Centers

• The National Football League listens to Super Bowl conversations.
  • The 2015 game had 28.4 million game-related tweets.
  • In 2019, negative sentiment arose due to calls to boycott the game.
• Cisco demonstrates the importance of social media listening in B2B marketing by monitoring social media mentions about Cisco and current trending topics.

Social Media Listening Tools

• Tools for Social Media Monitoring:
  • Google Alerts: https://www.google.com/alerts (Free)
  • Google Trends: https://www.google.com/trends (Free)
  • Sentiment Analyzer: https://www.danielsoper.com/sentimentanalysis/default.aspx (Free Version)
  • Social Mention: http://brandmentions.com/ (Free Trial)
• Tools for Social Media Management:
  • Hootsuite: https://hootsuite.com/# (Free Version)
  • Tweetdeck: https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ (Free)
  • SproutSocial: https://sproutsocial.com/ (Free Trial)
  • Zoho social: https://www.zoho.com (Free Version)

Sentiment Analysis

• Marketers can track analytics through listening tools.
• This can be a form of data mining.
• The sentiments of customers towards a brand or post can be viewed.
• Even those of competitors can be filtered.

Setting Goals and Objectives

• Goals must be flexible.
• Key objectives of SMM include:
  • Provide customer service
  • Build brand awareness
  • Build brand preference
  • Drive direct leads or sales
  • Increase customer loyalty
• The SMART acronym:
  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Realistic
  • Time delimited
• The Valid Metrics Framework represents a framework for understanding SMM objectives and the metrics associated with them.

Determining Strategies

• Key questions for determining strategies:
  • What are the overall goals?
  • What was learned from listening?
  • What best practices can be applied?
  • Goals may change, so be flexible.

The Eight C’s of Strategy Development

1. Categorize social media platforms by target market relevancy.
2. Comprehend the rules by listening and learning how to behave and engage.
3. Converse by responding to other users, always remembering to be a contributor, not a promoter.
4. Collaborate with platform members to establish mutually beneficial relationships.
5. Contribute content to build reputation and become a valued member.
6. Connect with influencers to help shape opinions.
7. Community participation can elicit suggestions for improving products and services.
8. Convert relationships built in social media to the behaviors specified in the objectives.

Linking Goals with a Call to Action

• Define the desired action.
• Getting to the sale involves:
  • Click on blog post from Twitter or Facebook.
  • Sign up for email newsletter.
  • Sign up for webinar (collect lead scoring and contact information).
  • Have salesperson call.
  • Purchase.
  • Convert the customer to a brand advocate.

Self-Promotion versus Building an Army of Advocates

• Creating advocates is the final element in the Valid Metrics Framework.
• These advocates are passionate about the business and want to tell the world.
• Word of mouth (WOM) is the leading purchase influence in multiple countries.

Best Practices for Developing a Social Media Strategy

1. Start with a road map (SMM plan) specifying:
   • Target audience and characteristics
   • Plan for interacting with the audience
   • How to measure success or failure
   • How to adjust to stay on track
2. Listen before interacting.
3. Welcome audience participation, feedback, and collaboration.
4. Be patient.
5. Be flexible.

Personal Branding Exercise

• Incorporate listening into your personal professional branding strategy:
  • Define your personal professional goals.
  • Define your personal mantra or brand positioning statement; ensure authenticity.
  • Listen on social media; assess if you are perceived as you wish to be; make changes to improve the conversation around you and your professional brand.