A Complete Social Media Plan

A social media marketing strategy will fall face first if it doesn't have the right kind of plan. There are business owners who are constantly looking to make their social media strategies perfect. One way of doing so is by going back to the basics. You may have started out with your social media campaign just because your competitors did so. However, it will run out of steam once your immediate plan is fulfilled.

A Plan is Vital for Social Media Success

Here is what you need to do in order to make your social media plan, complete -

Approach

The approach should be properly discussed. If your approach lacks a uniformity across social media platforms, then you are bound to turn off a large section of customers and potential ones. Get down with your marketing heads and decide on the issues that need to sorted out. If you are wanting to keep it professional, then keep it uniform across platforms.

Content

The content is another important issue that you need to figure out. Now, there are three parts to this point: The What, the Where and the When. 

What - Content needs to be crisp and must reflect your approach. It should be interesting and must make the visitor happy to have found the content. 

Where - Where you publish the content is another important issue you need to figure out. The content must be published in a place where bulk of your customers are. This way, you will be able to get the requisite exposure.

When - You need to be absolutely sure about the timing of your audience. Networks like Twitter have a very small link-life and if your link goes unnoticed to some, there is a lesser chance that anyone would check it later on. Use a lot of tools that automate postings when bulk of the audience is online.

Reason

Throughout the campaign, keep questioning yourself on why you are taking a particular path. Keep experimenting with new stuffs and make sure that your campaign is completely different to what others have. 

All in all, a complete social media plan can never be permanent. Just like the social networks that come and go, you need to keep your plan open-ended for future growth!

Photo Credit - Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How Social Media Monitoring Can Shape Your Business

Social media has made businesses all across the globe, stand up and take notice of this phenomenon. But with social media, you just cannot keep away from monitoring. In fact, monitoring social media is crucial to any business’s social media success. In this blog, I will tell you everything you need to know about social media monitoring. Have a look!

Why Is Social Media Monitoring Important For Your Business?

Social media is the new-age customer support. Earlier, whenever a customer had a problem with a company’s service, he/she would call them up. The customer support helped solve the problem (let’s just look at the brighter side of the picture). 

Now-a-days, people don’t use the phone anymore. Whenever they have a problem now, they get on some or the other network, Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. For example, have a look at this video in which a customer took the assistance of Youtube in order to drive home the point against the airline company. It went viral, by the way.

So, companies need to know what is being said about them across various social networks. And many need to go a step further by listening to what is being said about their competition. This will help in stopping a major PR breakdown later on.

Where Should A Business Look?

Typically, businesses must start with themselves – What is being said about them, their services, their employees, their offers, campaigns, anything.

Next, they must track the talk going about their competition. Furthermore, they can track their competitors’ employees and the whole “hiring and firing” cycle.

Tracking their area of specialization is another key strategy. Any new development must be reflected by your business with reference to new technologies, marketing strategies etc.

What Are The Metrics Businesses Look Forward To?

Mostly, metrics tie back to three essential requirements. Here they are –

•         Awareness – The number of mentions that your brand is getting coupled with the positive/negative sentiment that your brand is generating will tie back to awareness.

•        Sales – Things which tie back to “Sales Metric” are the Click-through, or offer redemptions.

•         Loyalty – If you want to know how to gauge this metric then you need to know the amount of recommendation your brand is getting from your customers.

One must know that monitoring a social network alone cannot help you get the complete picture. You need to take the assistance of many networks. Remember, monitoring can make or break your social media campaign. So, be very careful.