Social Media: One Piece of Your Marketing Plan

When you create a marketing plan, you don’t want to leave anything out. A marketing plan without a website or with no print, radio or TV advertising is worse than a three-legged stool. It’s a two-legged stool – doomed to fail.

The same is true if you leave social media out of that plan. A strong social media presence is critical to the success of your business or organization. However, it is often a challenge to determine how best to connect with your target audience using social media. Just like knowing which print or TV outlet is best to reach your target audience, which social media outlets and how often you use them is just as critical. Here are a few ways to make sure your message is both clear and powerful:

Have someone in the company set the tone of voice for your marketing strategy.

Whether it’s the CEO or small business owner, someone needs to set the tone for social media output. Doing so will create a unified brand behind your organization that’s necessary in order to establish credibility within your target audience.

Your presence must be felt, and felt often.

You should engage your target audience on social media at least a few times a week. Provide your audience with updates on products and services and what’s going on in your industry.

And if you get feedback – positive or negative – make sure to respond on all the platforms you use.

Use these platforms to learn about your customers.

First and foremost, you should research which platforms your audience spends the most time using. From there you can figure out what message they want to hear.

Tailor your message based on their preferred social media platforms. If your audience prefers using Twitter, make sure you can prepare short but powerful messages.

Promote and engage.

Social media is meant to build new relationships and strengthen existing ones. Promote newsworthy information and engage customers by making feedback surveys and incentives.

Always remember that you should be connecting your brand to your audience in a way that benefits them and solicits their action. You always want to do two things with your social media – give your target audience a call to action and thank them for their loyalty.