The Importance of a Social Media Plan

Research and planning is as vital in social media sites as it is in other forms of advertising and marketing. Every community is unique and will not respond in the same way. Though it may not be easy to keep track of the ROI of social media promotions, you should always have a set of goals. What do you want to attain with the social media content ? What impact do you wish to have? Why do you want to use social media websites? Do you want to:

Increase your newsletter or RSS subscribers?

If your plan involves increasing newsletter and RSS subscribers, you need to know the websites where users are likely to be familiar with RSS readers. Users of social news websites such as Reddit and Digg will be more likely to subscribe to RSS feeds compared to users of social network websites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Sell a service or product?

Do you wish to sell a particular service or product? You may attract traffic from several social news websites. However, are the users likely to buy anything when they visit your website or are they just looking for entertainment? If you are selling a product, it might be wiser to use social shopping websites and to contact influential bloggers within your niche. This was one of my main considerations when selecting a social media site to promote my Medifast discounts, Bistro MD promo codes and Diet to Go coupons.

Increase your site/brand recognition?

Do you want your brand name or website to be recognized instantly? You can use video and social news sites to help spread word about your brand or company. However, you need to have clear goals about what you wish to attain from this brand recognition.

Create a community?

Do you wish to create a community? If so, you will need to research on the best ways of engaging your audience . Do you want your readers to create content or do you just want more comments on your blog? If you want to see more comments, ask your readers for their opinions. If you want readers to write content for your website, you will need to the provide tools they need to do this.

You may want people to visit your website for more reasons than the ones listed above. The important thing is that you need to define your goals before creating content and submitting it to various social media websites. If you have no idea what your goals are, neither will your audience. Whatever your goals, you should have a clear and direct call to action.

What are your social media goals ?

This is a guest post by Charles Mburugu, check out our guidelines to guest post on WebTrafficROI

Image credit: Cambodia4kidsorg

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10 comments

Arthur May 11, 2011 - 9:25 am
I believe with evolving internet technologies like web2.0, media planning in specific and marketing in general has become altogether much more detrimental to the consideration phase of a sales funnel. Social media has become an integral part on any marketing campaign.
Alexis May 11, 2011 - 6:24 pm
That goes with the saying that "If you fail to plan you plan to fail" Social media marketing is today a MUST for any online business.
Frugal Living May 12, 2011 - 2:29 pm
It is highly important to have a social media plan in place before starting so you know what data that you need to measure and analyze
Lawrence@CreditDonkey May 12, 2011 - 11:41 pm
A wise man plans ahead of the time. Yes, plans really makes up a good factor in making a decision in a matter on hand.
Gunnar May 13, 2011 - 5:58 am
You know what I think is important as well? Recognizing that not all sites benefit from a social media presence that much. I see so much buzz about social media these days, but a lot of money is really being chucked down the drain with some of the campaigns I see. Don't have an example for you right now, but take a good hard look at each campaign before even starting it and try to figure out if it will ever yield an ROI.
exsuit May 15, 2011 - 12:39 pm
Having a social media plan (ie goals) will help you measure if you are succeding or not as social media cannot be (easily) measure in terms of ROI always.
asp .net developer May 16, 2011 - 1:29 am
A social media editorial plan to create the content you need to bring customers to your website.
Debrah May 26, 2011 - 5:39 am
Having a plan is highly important to have success in marketing process and see positive results.
Joomal Website Designer May 31, 2011 - 3:28 am
I do agree with you. In order to achieve desire result social media planning is the first and foremost thing that needs to be done. It is social media plan that helps us to quantify goals and establish a means of measuring success.
top drops August 17, 2011 - 10:13 am
It is always helpful to see how others suggest adding social media to a marketing strategy. I've been able to use suggestions from others to help my clients understand that social media marketing does not replace all other marketing.
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