How to Plan Social Media Marketing Strategy

January 2010 by Ankush Kohli  |  How to Plan Social Media Marketing Strategy  |  Share

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Social Media Marketing Strategy

Few of my friends, who were looking for job change, got many calls for interview. Most of time, interviewer’s main query was regarding “Social Media”. Below mentioned are the major questions they’ve asked for:

  • How to create social media marketing campaign?
  • What’s the plan & strategy behind social media?
  • What are the activities you’re going to do?
  • What the goals are?
  • How much time you’ll spend and time to display the results?
  • How you’ll measure the results and what will be the expected results?
  • And what are the risks behind Social Media?

So I thought to write my next post about “Designing Social Media Marketing Plan”. Here’s the post content, start with “Why” word:

Why Social Media:

  • The most effective way of getting users attention OR To reach online people.
  • People tend to take part in online conversations and are happy to communicate with brands.
  • The information found on the Social Web can be genuinely interesting and quite informative when applied to a business.



Social Media Marketing Plan Steps:

  1. Start with the Goals
  2. Do research to Design the Strategy
  3. Take a Call on “Actual path”
  4. Put into Practice
  5. Result Measurements
  6. Risks
  7. KPI (Key Performance Indicators)



1. Start with the Goals:

  • Increase brand awareness
  • Build authority
  • Learn more about your target audience
  • Gain inbound links
  • Educate and inform customers
  • Improve customer service
  • Monitor brand reputation
  • Reach new channels of customers.
  • Customers Testimonials
  • Direct connection between customer & the company
  • Generate leads & drive sales.

2. Create a Strategy Based on Research:

  • Determining if your target audience is online
  • Examining the successes and failures of other social media campaigns
  • Creating realistic timelines
  • How to measure the results

3. Actual path:

  • Building Relationships
  • Creating a Schedule
  • Staying the Course
  • Measuring the Results
  • Making the Right Tweaks

Now, it’s time implement all the plans. In simple terms, you need to adapt below mentioned practical steps:

4. Put into Practices: Mix of content you intend to create, and build work flow around it.

a) Methods:

  • Write/Read a blog
  • Share a Photo, Video
  • Bookmark a WebPage
  • Post a Question OR Start a Poll
  • Give replies to asked questions OR participate into other’s Poll
  • Add a Comment
  • Write a review
  • Subscribe to a Website
  • Being everyone, not only in your own domain

b) Community:Most social media strategies have to address community and how you will embrace the people you seek to gather around your business.

c) Neighbors:Reach out to others in your community, comment, and share.

d) Attention:Build awareness and encourage relationships with the media you’re making.

e) Pay attention and participate in the networks whose audience matters to you in the context of your business objectives. Don’t waste time in the networks that fail either test.

5. Measurement:

  • Reader comments
  • RSS Subscribers
  • Twitter Followers
  • Facebook Fans
  • Click Throughs
  • Diggs
  • Stumbles
  • Podcast Subscribers
  • Search Results
  • Links
  • Impressions
  • And last but not the least Analytics.

6. Risks:

  • You might lose control.
  • People talk about you in a bad way.

7. KPI: To know the “performance metrics” in a simple way, I’ve named them as KPI and terms are:

  • Traffic
  • Links
  • & Branding.

I’m expecting huge comments like my other posts about this social plan, please feel free to post your queries, feedback & suggestions.

Read Twitter Marketing Plan, Strategy & Tips.

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  • Thanks Farshid, Sridevi, Ryan and Varun for your valuable comments.
  • I completely agree with Tim. You need regular fresh useful content in social media campaign.
  • All the best for your social media marketing campaign "bloomtools".
  • bloomtools
    Great article. I have recently started social media campaign for my site. So this post will help to make strong strategy for that.
  • Varun Rajasekaran
    good article....simple, short and sweet.
  • good prescriptive guidelines. i've also written about use of social media for business in a couple of recent posts in my blog at tektrends.wordpress.com. i've argued that social media is generally a channel for marketing and tends to be tactical. as such you need to strategize and plan prior to engaging in social media programs. i think it is pretty much is in line with your post; e.g. start with the goals, create strategy, etc.
  • yes, I agree with aaronsavage - sales (or conversions) are the bottom line, but of course to get the conversions you need really good content. And that's the difficulty. You either need to be in the know with new stuff, or you have to have a long-term plan to produce informative/educational content.
  • Hello,

    I read your post. It is very interesting. And I am sure its very Beneficial for me.
    Keep Going
  • Very nice post.Really very informative one.
  • One thing that I do see neglected alot in Social Media Marketing is the ability of a marketer to adapt to a specific persona. Just the same as we would do in face to face sales as well. Certain markets respond better to certain personas, which is a large part of how I market through social media as well. Jsut something to add. :)
  • Hi Aaron,

    First of all, thanks for your comment. I understand it's your personal thought and I respect it.

    But the fact is I was writing only about "Social Media" not about the "Digital Marketing". The pleasant thing is you're agree fundamentally with me & my definitions.

    Ankush
  • aaronsavage
    Whilst the general prescriptions you make on this article are right, I do take some issues with your definitions of success. Social Media is part of the overall Digital Marketing Strategy which is part of the overall Marketing Strategy, and so the goals should be inherited from that and expressed in a similar language. We wrote a blog post about this entitled Digital marketing strategy and digital marketing tactics, and another which looked more specifically at why it is a good thing to have an End to End Digital Marketing Strategy.

    An awful lot of Social Media campaigns do a very good job of generating interest but fail to do anything with it which is a crime and potentially suicidal when you have bills to pay. This is an uncertain marketplace still and so prescribing success in terms of market size or brand awareness isn't enough. At the end of the day all marketing is sales and if it doesn't lead to sales it isn't effective marketing.

    It's about having an overall Digital Marketing Strategy. Use social media and other traffic drivers to entice people to your site and then let your site offer information to tempt people to register with you Don’t seek to ram sales down their throats, concentrate on building a relationship which also builds your email marketing list. You can then notify interested parties of your products so that you can convert them to customers. If people have signed up to your list, they want your emails and it isn't SPAM so this can be one of your most powerful marketing tools.

    In marketing, a little learning can be a dangerous thing but testing to learn from results is a great technique.

    I don’t mean to pick holes because fundamentally what you say is correct I just have issues with viewing social media in isolation instead of part of the whole and I hope the information is useful to you and your readers.
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