8 Keys to launch a Plan in Social Networks
One of the fundamental aspects of a business when facing the online marketing universe is to establish a plan to enter social networks, which as we know most of the time, is usually a real nonsense.
Do you know how many clients I’ve reached to optimize their strategies had developed a plan? That’s! What you think, yes, zero! And how many think they should have it? Some, but hardly believe it serves anything.
If you are looking for a simple step by step guide to developing a strategic plan in social networks attentive to this article, as in the next 7 tips I will explore how to launch a social media strategy for your brand.
Businesses often fail in their efforts in social networks because there is no structure or commitment. And in Social Media the fall is greater. But why does this happen?
- First because they think it involves less effort than they think
- Second because they assume that Social Media is the solution to their problems in the off line.
Then, when there are no immediate results and the objectives (objectives? If they are not defined), when they throw in the towel and say “this internet marketing is smoke”.
1. Visualize and reflect
Before starting to create your plan you have to know and above all understand that a strategy that results in social networks is a slow process. Honestly, it is not fast, nor half-gas. With an average / low budget avoiding promotions, contests that give away trips, hotel nights or fantastic prizes, your level of growth will be slow.
Also do not try to get published like crazy, constantly. Do not publish in the first week 50 updates on your fan page or 200 on Twitter and the following week, you tire and disappear or drop your publications excessively. Constantly updating tires your community, if you do very little lose interest in your brand. Therefore, it finds an intermediate point.
Surely the first interesting results, lead generation, some recommendation, some sale you can not attribute to social media until last between 8 and 12 months. Anyway you will be getting other benefits such as notoriety, modern brand image, competitor research, market research or positioning as an expert in a sector.
2. Find your best networks
The main part of your plan will revolve around knowing where your target is, Reason why a previous investigation is necessary.
Facebook is not easy with the naked eye, although once you have your fan page if you can carry out a campaign on Facebook Ads since its level of segmentation is very deep and you can see how many people you find on the network in a certain location with specific interests .
On Twitter you have the option to use the hashtags to check if the main kewyords of your sector have movement and users with weight participating.
In YouTube you can search the product that you sell to know if someone is already talking about it or check if there are many visualizations in the videos related to your sector.
In Pinterest for example you can investigate through your browser what boards, Pins or users you can find in relation to your industry.
Do not forget the vertical social networks, through a research process, analyze if other social networks are other networks that can capture a very specific target for your brand, such as Chicísimo, an example of vertical social network for fashion.
You have alert tools about some mentions that can guide you in the search like Google Alerts, Socialmentions, Mention or Rankur.
3. Style guide in social networks
Guide to styles in social networks Once you have identified the networks in which you are going to focus your efforts (I do not recommend more than 3 that need updating more or less constant) it is time to decide how you go To address your community and the frequency with which you will participate.
As I told you before, infrequent interaction is one of the main reasons why many companies experience poor results, but excessive updating will make your audience weary. The ideal is to find a constant rhythm, with information of value for your audience, between 20-50 tweets per week and between 10-15 updates on your fan page.
Think about what kind of schedules you are going to release your messages on a daily basis. You must initiate the conversations, propose topics for debate, conduct surveys, be natural, human, close and be prepared for when you touch respond.
In this regard remember that when launching tweets if it is interesting for example control the best time to do it on Twitter.
@Socialbro is a good tool that tells you the best times and the best days to publish your content on Twitter. This is interesting because with so much interaction, messages can go undetected while Facebook status updates have more time to stay (nor is it the same level of interaction).
In YouTube for example the interesting thing is to have clearly identified the title and main keywords for which you want your content to be found.
4. Create Expert content
Your fans and followers do not want ads, want conversation, recommendations, promotions and interesting offers. They do not want to know how big your company is, so they have already clicked on “Like” or they follow you on Twitter. They want interesting news from your industry and if the content is even better, since you will become an indispensable source for them.
It is said that when we talk about content, the ideal is “external” information between 80-90% and the “internal” promotion is 10-20%. If so, your community will generally follow with some interest your product and will be more likely to interact with it, to finish converting.
Among the best content you can offer are: blog posts, ebook, something know-how, video tutorials, case studies / success / failure and the creation of infographics. Remember that the images also generate a lot of participation and that interactivity can arise engagement.
MailChimp is an example with more than 30 manuals covering a list of topics related to email marketing, from best email practices to documents on how to more effectively use the features of Mailchimp to position your company as one of the Leaders in email marketing.
Now move it to your sector, what content do you think you may be interested in, are you so good that you can stand out from the rest by sharing your own content? Ahead!
5. Launch Competitions and Promotions
Competitions and promotions keep fans interested and entertained for some time. There are some who think that this kind of actions are “bread for today and hungry for tomorrow” Because most take actions to increase their community forcing users to become a follower of the brand in order to be eligible for the prize offered.
Try to launch some competition or promotion that brings together entertainment + knowledge, in which give value prizes for your community, I believe that in this way they are gaining brand and fans. (Man of course, if you manage a Hotel or Resturante do not give them an ebook with your services; P).
IDÓNEO: For example, if my company is working on online marketing, I can launch a contest / promotion on Facebook and among the participants, 3 free digital marketing plans are drawn.
WRONG: If on the other hand, I work in the wastewater sector and I run a contest to give away two hotel nights in order to increase my community is that something is failing. Unless you care about a pepper “this of engagement” with your community and only want fans, many fans. Not a quality community.
The more experiential and practical the gift, the higher quality the community around you.
6. Broaden your horizons
Once the machinery is running, you control the networks and their “modus operandi”, you begin to understand the behavior of users in each of them, you have a constant rhythm of updates and have spent several months, dedicates Time to experience new horizons.
And to experience new horizons you must know the behavior of the results you are getting based on the objectives and the kpis chosen for study.
How? I had not talked to you about goals and kpis before? Error!!! So many months working in the different networks and now we do not know what we will measure to know if your strategy is working !! Copy and paste this paragraph and take it to the first point of all. The fundamental, key, indivisible basis for all of this is to set goals and goals.
Do not stop and look for new solutions for your community in order to continue providing a quality service for example by creating new applications on your Facebook channel as Rosetta Stones, a brand to learn languages that has evolved over time .
7. Delegate tasks
If after a few months you are at the point of wanting to give way to other networks because everything goes on wheels and your business is growing do not let everything overwhelm you. When you want to realize it, you will not be able to cover everything. Maybe now you want to take the step and be present in Google+ because its contents position more or want to open new professional relationships in Linkedin.
But beware, the more you grow, the more danger you have of not controlling point 3, if you intend to continue with the same human resources to carry it out.
As your online business grows, so will your offline needs, and there you must invest in human capital. Identify team members: creative for infographics, bloggers / writers for your ebooks and own content, Community managers to manage communities, etc.
On Facebook, for example, it expands the range of administrators, do not be the only person who is responsible for updating and managing communities. The more administrators, the more time you can spend on other aspects of your social networking strategy.
Every business must be realistic with its situation. If you just think you should be in 1 or 2 networks, do it. No one better than you to know where you can find your target and the time you have. I’m sure you’ll see the benefits of having a defined strategy defined in social networks.
8. Social Analytics
Do you have a measurement strategy? What tools have you chosen to measure your ROI and IOR? Have you created a dashboard to check your progress?
