7 Creative Steps To Create A Social Media Marketing Plan

With 2.51 billion social media users in the world, you would think it is quite easy to promote your business online right? Just share your content on a popular social media site and voila! Your marketing task for the day is done? Well doing social media marketing is a little bit trickier than that. You will realize this pretty early on while you are battling to get users to like or start following your page, share your posts or get even a simple like for a product you are trying to promote. You can have the best product in the world and create the most beautiful adverts ever and still won’t get any reaction for your posts from the public.

The main reason for your marketing struggles is because social media marketing has become a marketing battlefield for businesses. Millions and millions of businesses are online each and every day, trying to interact with their audience, promote their products and get reaction from the public. Why would anyone choose to follow, like, share, comment on or react to your adverts when they have millions of other companies distracting them? Well, the answer is that their attention won’t come easy and probably doesn’t or you won’t be sitting there reading this article.

The key ingredient to successful social media marketing is to create a social media marketing plan that is effective, gives you great result and more importantly is easy enough to maintain so you will actually stick to your schedule. In this article we are going to share 7 creative steps to create a social media marketing plan that will actually get your business noticed!

Step 1: Determine Your Main Goals And Establish Challenges

Every major business leader, entrepreneur and successful marketing agent will tell you that setting goals is the best way to go about your social media marketing campaign. Goals are terrific for inspiring you to work harder, stay focused and keep you from getting distracted.

The first step to setting goals is establishing what challenges you would like to overcome in social media affiliate marketing.

Do you want more page followers?

Do you want more reaction from your audience?

Do you want to increase website traffic?

Determine your main challenges and set monthly goals for a realistic positive outcome that you would like to reach.

Step 2: Extend Your Efforts

Customers want to know that your business is doing everything possible to meet their needs and to provide them with a positive experience when they are interacting with you, using your services or simply having a chat with you. It is important to extend your efforts as wide as possible while you are developing a social media marketing plan. Focus on all aspects of your business like sales, customer service, research and especially on marketing. Don’t just do these basic business tasks, be curious about each division and always ask one question; How can I improve?

Step 3: Identify The Best Social Networks For Your Business

Time is limited and marketing can be expensive. There are more than 60 social media network sites and you simply don’t have the time to actively engage with the public on all 60 networks. The 15 most popular and successful social media sites include the following;

- Facebook

- YouTube

- Instagram

- Twitter

- Reddit

- Vine

- Pinterest

- Ask.fm

- Tumblr

- Flickr

- Google+

- LinkedIn

- VK

- ClassMates

- Meetup

Out of the 15 most popular social media sites you need to identify the top 3 – 5 sites with the highest likelihood of positive marketing for your specific product. Just because a site has 1.9 billion active users doesn’t mean it is the right site for your business. What makes a social media site right for your business is the likelihood of finding customers for your specific product or service on that site.

Step 4: Create Captivating And Interesting Content

The best way to create engaging content for your social media page is to frequently switch things up and to use visual content that is easy to read, easy to understand and easy to distribute as much information as possible. Your competitors are one of the best sources for content for your specific product or service. Use their ideas, modify their strategies and get your brand noticed. You can use all of the following visual tools to create content that will communicate to your audience;

Videos – Presently everyone prefers to watch videos rather than read an article. Demo videos are terrific for featuring products or showcasing the benefits of your services.

Guides – With guides you can add value to the audience and help them in more than just one way.

Infographics – The right picture will say a thousand words and that is exactly why this is one of the best content types you can use on social media.

Step 5: Find Business Opportunities

Is that client that is complaining about your service slamming your business name or is she giving you an opportunity to prove the quality of your service and to gain more clients?

Learn to identify business opportunities everywhere. There is an opportunity to make connections, gain shares, and increase website traffic each and every time someone mention’s your name, likes your products or interacts with your business. Ask yourself one question with each and every reaction you get; How can I accommodate this client better?

Step 6: Never Ignore Your Audience

The hardest part of creating a good social media marketing plan is not getting likes and shares. It is to keep your customers interested in your company. When you ignore a positive or even negative comment or don’t give a client enough attention the client will feel neglected and unappreciated and will move on to a business that values his or her input more.

Step 7: Evaluate And Improve

If a strategy is not working or if your social media marketing plan is not giving you positive results then you should switch your strategy and create a new plan. You can use tracking tools like Sprout Social to track the success of your posts and advertisements to see what type of strategies are successful and what should be avoided or improved upon.