Social media can be an incredible asset when running any kind of business. While not always free, its one of the best forms of “free” advertising you can have other than good old fashion word of mouth, of course! When utilizing social media for business use, it’s important to have a strategy and set clear expectations for why you’re using social media and what you hope to achieve with it.

Basic Tips for Starting Your Social Media Plan

Pinpoint Tools 

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, Flickr, Reddit… There are so many social media platforms that it can easily become overwhelming to master them all. So don’t. It’s better to master a select few than to barely make a presence on all of them. Select 2-3 outlets that will really work for your business and crush them before adding any extras!

Goals

Set 3 goals of what you want to accomplish with your social media platforms. A number of followers, the percentage of sales, increase in customer engagement, whatever works for your business!

Message

Decide what key messages or impressions you want your customers to understand about your business just by reviewing your social media.

Target Market

Review your target market groups for your business and decide which one you will be trying to reach with each social media tool. Let’s say you have two main target markets.  Target group A are busy professionals who need to-the-point information quickly. You’d likely utilize Twitter to reach this group as you can use simple bullets points to hook their attention and post during key break times, like lunch break hours. Group B is busy stay at home moms who have a hectic schedule of carting kids from school to practice and back home for dinner. They catch up on their social media needs while the baby has a nap. You’d likely reach this group on Facebook during the mid-afternoon. You can play with the length of the posts, including pictures and they can easily save your post to read later in case the baby wakes up!

Content + Frequency

Keeping each target market in mind, assign each key message to a social media platform. You may find some key messages will only be utilized on one platform while some will be utilized on multiple. You should also consider how often you will post of each of these platforms based on how often your target markets will see them.

With this information, you can begin the process of creating a basic social media plan that will assist you in making the most of your online presence.

Send me a snapshot of your social media plans using the #AmandaMarieBiz tag!

Chat soon,