Social Media Marketing Plan: A Guide for Small Business Owners

Executive Summary

Project 1 – Minor – Principle Application Content: Social Media Marketing Plan The Social Media Marketing Plan can be an excellent vehicle for developing online brand awareness, customer engagement, and audience growth. This requires a solid, measurable plan and a commitment to developing consistent and valuable content. In addition, it’s crucial for you to have a clear understanding of why social can be useful for reaching specific business goals. Many small business owners launch their social media programs because they feel they need to and then scramble to understand both how they will make these work and how they will be managed. Most of them do this with no goals in mind and worse yet, no understanding of how social media marketing (SMM) actually works. Use the outline below, then find a business that is willing to let you work with them to develop a Social Medial Marketing Plan. You can adapt the outline below by adding/deleting individual elements to custom meet the needs of your business client. Format:. Use bullet points for key information. Make is “user friendly” for your client business so that they may be inclined to actually use your plan. Keep it simple by only selecting one product or service to represent in your social media marketing plan. Specific formatting of the document is up to you, but it should be creative (this is a marketing course), professional, and easy for the owner to glean information from. OUTLINE Section 1: Executive Summary Section 2: Overview of the Business Business Mission and History Business or Revenue Model (how do you make money?) Descriptions of your Products & Services Details of the Products/Services Target Audience Brief Review of Any Current Social Medial Marketing Efforts Section 3: Defining the Specific Social Media Goals/Objectives NOTE: It is impossible to reach and attain a goal without defining exact specifics. Too many business owners let social metrics define their goals, such as “More Twitter Followers”, “More Fans on Facebook”, “More YouTube Views.” What will the actual engagement strategies be? What are the positive engagement opportunities? Volume of commenting on a controversial piece of content? NOTE: You need to go a step beyond to define specific, actionable, and (most importantly) reasonable SMM goals. Here are some specific SMM goals you might use: Validate a new product or service using social media as a research platform. Develop buzz and interest around a new product. Engage users in social to generate relevant and targeted traffic to your site media. Gain market share by leading customer/client service through social media. Generate registrations to branded events through social media. Section 4: Identifying Your Social Media Marketing Strategy Choosing your social media tools appropriately is an essential piece of your online communications plan, so choose wisely. One of the keys to ensuring your success in social media is to create and implement a voice that resonates with your specific target audience. For each audience type, break down and research age, income, location, and reasons for them possibly buying your products/services. Section 5: Plan & Execute Content & Delivery What exactly are you going to do, how are you going to do it, and when are you going to do it? Finding, creating, and delivering engaging social media content does not happen on its own. Social media execution can be daunting, but with a proper plan it is doable and can drive real (marketing) results.