Social Media Planning: Casey Gollan’s Essential Guide
(PRWEB) July 25, 2013 -- In Social Media Planning: Casey Gollan’s Essential Guide he outlines five important steps for any business to take in order to ensure their business has an advantage prior to them even signing up for a site.
He takes time to address the major social media networks and includes examples of how businesses can use his steps to make their sites work for them.
“Creating a social media plan is a good first step for getting your business involved in social media,” says Gollan. “After reading my post you should be ready to implement your own individualised plan whilst also being aware of metrics to measure against to allow you to gauge the results and analyze your potential.
“After working with businesses over the years and helping them grow I feel that creating a social media plan is similar to creating any type of marketing plan. And planning is essential.”
But he warns that social media strategy is never static:
“As you create your social media plan remember that the plan will ultimately need to be a living thing. The strategies will change and there is every chance that so too will the people involved in them.
“However, by starting your social media plan today there is no doubt you are setting yourself up for social media success tomorrow.”
• Step 1: Assess Business Goal(s)
It’s important for a company to work out how social media fits into their business goals such as generating more leads, increasing revenue etc. This allows it to target its social media activity more appropriately.
• Step 2: Create Social Media Goals
A goal, like a budget, cannot change. But the methods to reach a goal can change. This is the approach a business should take with social media planning.
When an individual gives a business permission to market to him or her they are asking the company to communicate its value to them. The social media goal of connecting with people on Facebook, for instance, can lead nicely into the business goal of earning new clients and increasing revenue.
These days a business should view social media as an overall segment of marketing and an area where they can expect to make sales, business mentor Gollan counsels.
• Step 3: Perform Customer Research
A business should look at the social media sites its competitors are using. This gives them an idea of how potential customers are using social media and where they need to focus their efforts (for instance Twitter and Facebook are good for B2C and LinkedIn B2B).
Using Google keyword searches are useful for finding particular customers eg ‘business executives using Facebook’.
• Step 4: Perform Social Media Research
Facebook is the largest social media platform. If a company’s competitors have more than 1000 ‘likes’ on the site then it’s worth considering for their social media plan.
Twitter Search is an excellent online tool for research on that particular site. Hashtags work equally well for keywords within an industry or sector. A potential Twitter plan could be for a business to tweet five times a day within the first month.
So far marketers and specifically online marketers have been the first users of Google+ but the Google search engine is making good use of information on these pages particularly for location-based business. A company’s plan could be to create 20 posts in a month – a 50/50 split of their own content and that of others.
It’s important for a company to have a central base for their social media activity and this is where blogging comes in,” says popular company coach Gollan.
Much of the content shared on all social media networks – whether personal or commercial - originates on a blog. Free content management software such as WordPress can be installed on most business websites. Businesses should consider creating around five posts within the first month and share these across all their available social media channels.
• Step 5: Assign Roles and Establish a Schedule for Execution
Creating blog posts and posting information on social media networks takes time – which is often underestimated. The only way to succeed with a social media plan is to assign roles and establish a schedule. A company may also need to outsource the work to a third party.
More information on how businesses can reap the benefits of social media, as well as other marketing and coaching advice take a look at Gollan’s website today.
Casey Gollan, Casey G Pty LTD, 1 800 680 993, [email protected]
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