qubeSocial - your local social media marketer

Developing a marketing plan for 2018 is not exactly an easy position when the techniques we use to reach customers are changing at a breakneck pace.

That being said, a plan is still a worthwhile investment: there are some attributes that separate those that succeed and those that don’t, and one is a proper social media marketing plan.

Firstly, what is a Social Media Marketing Plan?
Before we dive in, it’s important to understand what a social media marketing plan is in the first place. Simply put, it is a document that outlines what you hope to achieve through your social media efforts, how you anticipate measuring your efforts, and what activities you’ll undertake to reach your goals.

At qubeSocial we apply the WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHERE, HOW and WHEN strategy which you can download anytime as single page document for starters. If you need a hand filling it in or developing your social media marketing plan further then please don’t hesitate to drop us a line.

If you’re ready to start, then read on…

It’s really important to understand WHO you are targeting. 
This will help with insights and also budgets as most platforms can provide you with expected numbers based on your desired target audience. Describing the target audience by both their Demographic and Geographical information brings you a long way to understanding who you are targeting. By applying to this a PRIMARY audience: (i.e Prospects and Customers) and a SECONDARY audience: (i.e Industry, Community, Network) you can developing your content expectations and response behaviour.

Then you need to define, WHAT problems you solve for your audience?
It’s important to understand why they are buying from you. Then define what actions you’d like them to take, such as:

  • Purchase
  • Enquire
  • Connect
  • Download

You will need to think about the landing page your sending people to and what action is appropriate.

Now the hardest part, define the WHY they are buying from you.
Most people think they know it or worse don’t even explore this before going out to the market. Define how is your solution unique, what makes it different to other businesses out the in your industry. Which brings up why do customers buy from your competitors and not you? If you can provide any proof or guarantees, testimonials, press releases to support your claims then you have built up opportunities and credibility to why they buy from you and not them.

It’s important to cover WHERE have you been communicating with your audience.
If you can learn from past promotions or platforms this may assist with defining you keywords or key phrases? These can be what the prospects and buyers type into Google. It also assists with future marketing tactics & content strategies you apply to blogging, hashtags, video’s and email newsletter that compliment your social posting to your desired audiences.

I am assuming here that you have a brand or campaign in place and understand HOW you will communicate.
Knowing the look and feel of your brand or campaign assists greatly in making your WHY visually unique. Applying a slogan can also assist with calls to actions and visual prompts. Developing you content strategy for  your website, blog, news etc. is vital. This allows you to then apply it to your Social Media Advertising directly on the Page or as a Post Promotion to a saved audience or interest group. Of course assigning a budget and timeline here is crucial.

Finally we can look at WHEN you will post.
You should develop a Weekly Schedule and track the Insights/Measurements such as Likes, Reach, Engagement (Post Clicks), visits to your website or landing pages. Explore whether time of day also enhancers these Insights.

So now you have a clear understanding of your WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHERE, HOW and WHEN, your done right? Unfortunately not, you now need to put a plan in place. Time to grab your favourite thinking beverage and read on…


Here’s how to go into 2018 with the best possible plan:

What do you hope to achieve?
Before we go any further, it’s important to summarize your entire social media marketing plan. How does social media fit into what your business is doing on a daily basis? What platforms will your business be engaging on? Who makes up your core social media team? Don’t worry about going in depth too much; you’ll do that in subsequent sections of your social media marketing plan.

How do you anticipate measuring your efforts?
It’s important to outline your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and objectives/goals. A KPI is a value that can be measured, and that demonstrates how effectively you are achieving your objectives. Depending on what you’re hoping to achieve, you may select different KPIs.

For example: YouTube Channel Subscribers isn’t a bad KPI if your strategy is very heavily dependent on video. If you plan on spending only about 10% of your time creating video, however, then YouTube Channel Subscribers isn’t such a meaningful KPI.

Some of the most popular KPIs:

  • Instagram Followers
  • Facebook Likes
  • Facebook Engagement Metrics
  • Social Shares (across platforms)
  • Links clicked to visit website or campaign landing pages

Once again, and I can’t stress this enough: it’s important to pick the KPIs that will be the most meaningful to you and your business, as opposed to anyone else’s.

Making sure your goals are SMART
One of the most useful acronyms ever is SMART, with respect to ensuring you’ve set SMART goals:

Specific: well-defined outcomes
Measurable: able to assess how well we did/are doing
Agreed-upon: all stakeholders are aligned on the goals
Realistic: possible to achieve given resources and time constraints
Time-based: just the right amount of time to achieve the goal

A social media marketing plan should always have SMART goals. Run your goals through this process, and it’s relatively easy to see if you are doing a good job at setting yourself up for success at the outset. It’s all too often that I’ve seen a client create a goal that’s MART or SART or another acronym, but remember, we’re aiming for 5 out of 5.

What activities will you undertake to reach your goals?
Now that we’ve outluned our goals clearly, it’s important to develop a breakdown of activities for each social platform you plan to engage on. Your breakdown should includes the following:

Platform focus: While your social media marketing plan will have an overall focus, each platform should have a particular reason that you’re focusing on it. What can you get from being on this platform that you can’t get from other platforms?

Percent of time allocated: This is relatively straightforward, but out of a total of 100, what percent of you and your team’s time will be allocated to this platform? It’s crucial to figure this out at the beginning to figure out how important this platform is to your overall strategy.

Percent of budget allocated: Their are all sorts of costs that go into putting together a winning social media marketing plan. Besides your full time staff, the top two costs will be for freelancers and for advertising. Once again, this is an opportunity to review if you’re approaching your plan the right way. If you say Instagram is your most important platform but you’re spending just 10% of your overall budget to building your following and engagement, your budget and goals are misaligned.

Synopsis of the strategy for this platform: What do you hope to achieve on this platform? What will your top activities be on this platform? How often will you be engaging in all of these activities? What is the timing, or cadence, for all of the activities on the platform?

For example, on Pinterest, your strategy may be to pin/repin content five times daily, and engage with others’ content fifteen times daily on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Snapchat, you may have the goal of snapping three still photographs and two videos daily, with the secondary goal of responding back to 100% of all responses from fans within 60 minutes, from 9am to 6pm daily. The key thing here is to be as thorough as possible so everyone is aligned with respect to the social media marketing plan.

One last thing. On a platform by platform basis, I recommend breaking up all activities into two different areas:

Organic strategy: What are all of the activities you’ll be undertaking apart from advertising? This can include outlining what types of photos you’ll be taking for Instagram, how often you’ll be posting inspiring quotes on Facebook, and so on. Generally speaking, most of your strategy should be organic.

Paid strategy: An increasingly important part of your social media marketing plan is your organization’s advertising strategy. Simply put, social media isn’t free; those days are long gone. In this section, you should be outlining what types of ad products you will be buying. For example, Facebook has the most options, from Brand Awareness Carousel to Engagement Text Post to Lead Generation Ad Form. Snapchat has solutions broken into three categories: Raise Awareness, Increase Consideration, and Drive Action. The choices on a platform-by-platform basis aren’t endless, but they’re pretty close.

Keep iterating on the above format for each platform, and you’ll be on the path to 2018 social media marketing success!

If you need a hand filling it in or developing your social media marketing plan for 2018 then please don’t hesitate to drop us a line.

Whatever your online marketing needs are we have you covered.

Reputation Management

Take control of your online brand and business reputation.

Brand Analytics

Monitor all of your locations at once.

Content Development

All your blogging and copywriting needs covered.

Packages

All packaged up and ready to go!

Social Marketing

Making social media management easy.

Online Advertising

Let our marketing strategists do the heavy lifting.

SEO & Visibility

Robust keyword strategies.

Products

Best of breed online marketing products all in one place.

List Management

Ensure business listings are accurate across the web.

Website Development

Custom websites optimized for local search.

Loyalty & Experience

Engage customers more effectively in-store.

Whatever your online marketing needs are we have you covered.

Reputation Management

Take control of your online brand and business reputation.

Brand Analytics

Monitor all of your locations at once.

Content Development

All your blogging and copywriting needs covered.

Packages

All packaged up and ready to go!

Social Marketing

Making social media management easy.

Online Advertising

Let our marketing strategists do the heavy lifting.

SEO & Visibility

Robust keyword strategies.

Products

Best of breed online marketing products all in one place.

List Management

Ensure business listings are accurate across the web.

Website Development

Custom websites optimized for local search.

Loyalty & Experience

Engage customers more effectively in-store.

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