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4 Steps To Formulate Effective Social Media Marketing Plans

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Article by Sarah Dessen

4 Steps To Formulate Effective Social Media Marketing Plans – Website Promotion – Online Promotion

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Social media has changed our lives ever since it came into being. Besides connecting us across borders, it has also allowed us to bridge communication gap and establish long-lasting relationships. Business promotion has also become easier with steady increase in digital media consumption. Almost every entrepreneur is now using a considerable portion of his marketing budget in digital marketing activities, and even recruiting trained online advertisers for enhanced brand promotion.

Using social networks for creating brand awareness becomes successful when you’re are able to frame concrete digital marketing plans. This is something which becomes a priority the moment you take your business online. Here are the 4 steps following which you can devise effective social media marketing plans –

1. To begin with, you’ve to consult your in-house marketing team and understand the immediate commercial priorities of your company. In case there’s a forthcoming product launch, you need a different strategy for that. On the other hand, if you’re looking to add more fuel to your existing digital media campaigns, an altogether different set of plans is needed. So even before you start framing any online brand advertising plan, you need to understand why you would be spending time and money on digital media activities.

2. Hire social networking experts or digital marketing consultants to assist you frame social media plans. Just make sure the professionals you’re hiring are experienced and have handled digital marketing projects for organizations similar to that of yours. You can use the Internet to find whereabouts of such professionals.

3. Next, conduct a series of market surveys and check what your competition is doing on social media. Review their social networking channels and check what strategies are being used. You can again seek assistance from social media marketers for this. It will become easier that way. Once you’ve a fair idea about how your rivals are using social networks to promote their respective brands, you can always strive to create innovative digital marketing plans, of course, which are different from their online marketing strategies.

4. Finally, try to avoid creating any social media plans for a period of more than 4 months. This way, you can keep experimenting with your digital marketing strategies and keep doing something new and different to attract more people.

There you go. Follow these 4 steps and formulating effective digital marketing plans will become just a piece of cake for you!

About the Author

Sarah Dessen is a prolific writer who has published many articles highlighting the importance of creating effective social media marketing plans. Many of his articles on blog development and management have been published in leading online directories and article submission forums.

Use and distribution of this article is subject to our Publisher Guidelines
whereby the original author’s information and copyright must be included.

Sarah Dessen


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Free Downloadable Guide to Social Media Available on LocalHood Marketing's Fan Page

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada (PRWEB) October 05, 2011

LocalHood Marketing has created a new fan page on Facebook.com and they are rewarding fans of the page with a free downloadable guide to social media marketing. The guide is entitled “Social Media Profits …for your local business.”

Information about social media marketing is ubiquitous on the web and often confusing and overwhelming for a small business to implement. The Social Media Profits guide claims to offer a simple system to help local businesses create a manageable social media plan in just 15 minutes a day.

The guide discusses 8 social media sites that a local business should be aware of. To prevent overwhelm, a marketer is encouraged to focus their attention and planning on three networks in particular.

An excerpt from the guide reads; Three networks above all others constitute the “Big Three”. Unless your audience absolutely does not hang out there, it’s best to sign up for and create a presence on all three… You don’t even have to visit all three individually to post on them (more on that later). You can literally publish content to all three networks with one click, in less than a minute or two.

The guide claims that there are two trends driving the phenomenon of social search. The first is the massive increase in mobile use. The second is an increasing reliance on word of mouth recommendation and the breakdown of privacy barriers on the net. An excerpt from the guide reads; People are now used to living their lives publicly, and don’t hesitate to make themselves heard.

The guide goes on to explain why planning is key to social networking success and where a local business should focus its attention for maximum results. There is a summary intended to help a reader understand what the top 3 social networking platforms are and their importance in the local business marketing mix.

Information in the guide also points out some pit falls to avoid citing one critical mistake it claims marketers make in social media and how they can avoid it. It discusses what it claims are the three fatal flaws that derail some social media marketing plans before they even get started.

To claim the guide, a visitor to the LocalHood Marketing Fan Page just needs to like the page while they’re logged in to their Facebook account. A second page will then display allowing the visitor to unlock the download. The visitor can choose to share the report or not. Since the point of social networking is sharing, its expected that most visitors will want to share the guide with their friends and followers by clicking a share button on the page.

About LocalHood Marketing

LocalHood Marketing manages the Canadian web presence directory LocalHood.ca which is in beta release. “LocalHood” is a LocalHood Marketing trade mark. For more information, go to LocalHood.ca. Questions can be directed to (289) 752-7335 or toll free 1-888-975-9222 email: info(at)localhood(dot)ca

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Creating a Social Media Marketing Plan

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Everyone is rushing to social networking sites, but do you really have a plan for how to best utilize this phenomenon for your business? There are millions of people online but only a subset of them are your prospects. You can waste a great deal of time and effort if you have not mapped out your plan for targeting your key prospects. I can tell you from first hand experience that you need to have a plan so that you can maximize your efforts.

Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Linked In are some of the most popular sites, but there are hundreds of others such as Plaxo, Meet-Up, Friendster, Flickr, Cafe Mom and Black Planet just to name a few. Here are some high level stats on the leaders.

Twitter – Founded 2007; Unique US Monthly Visitors : 21 million

Facebook – Founded 2004; Unique US Monthly Visitors : 87.3 million

MySpace – Founded 2003; Unique US Monthly Visitors: 62.8 million

YouTube – Founded 2005; Unique US Monthly Visitors: 87.7 million

Listed below are things consider when building social networking into your marketing plan.

What Image Do you want? The internet allows people to Google you, your company and gain access to a great deal of information about you with just a few clicks.

You must decide early on if you are going to build a personal profile, a profile for your business or both. I once had a prospect call our office who had already looked at company website, Facebook and linked in profiles before he decided to call me about my business. He knew a ton about me and quoted my background to me during our conversation. I was was confident in the information and profiles I had created online. In my case, I have both personal and business profiles on line but it all depends on what type of business you are in. In the business of consulting, personal reputation and experience is what your target cares about – they are looking for a marketing expert. Whereas if you are selling a product to consumers, the product should be the lead persona…unless your story is relevant to the product (i.e. testimonial) they really don’t care who created it.

Who are your Customers? Know who your target is and how to connect with them online. Don’t waste time connecting with the masses. I was advised to get on Twitter right away and to follow as many people as possible to get the word out about my business. I even joined tweet later to automate following folks who followed me. At one point I had up to following nearly 2000 people (the max based on followers) and had almost 1500 following me. I ended up with a global network of endless useless, chatter that was impossible to weed though. I had to un-follow a bunch of spammers in order to get and deliver more relevant tweets. The correct strategy would have been to selectively choose folks to follow by looking at the profiles of my prospects. See who they are following – media, other businesses – carefully look at their profiles before you connect. The automated twitter tools do not work well with a selective strategy…

Where do you customers hang out online? Your marketing research should reveal everywhere customers are online as well as offline. You need to know where do they shop, search, get news, weather, and chat. Is your target B2B or B2C and where are the best places online to market to them? Are they Gen Y’ers on MySpace or are they corporate professionals on LinkedIn? How do you find out this information? Survey current and potential customers and start to build a profile on them to understand their online habits and behaviors. Your target may belong to a social networking site but may prefer to network the old-fashioned way.

Understand the purpose and focus of the social networking site. Make sure you understand the nature of the group and make sure you understand the protocol and rules. For example, LinkedIn is not a generally a place to just sell…you can easily lose valuable connections. LinkedIn connections may be considered a higher honor than a Twitter connection. Twitter friends are more accepting casual chatting and open sales pitches due to the nature of the site. Be clear on the rules and learn how to play them.

Where are your competitors? Find out which social networking sites your direct competitors are on and make sure you are there as well. Become a fan or follow them to see what kind of activity and comments they are getting to ensure the strategy makes sense for your business. Analyze the content they provide and determine how you can differentiate yourself from your competition.

What is your communications strategy? What kind of content and information are you going to provide? You should have a communications plan that includes that what, when and where of your messages on social networking sites. For example, will you provide valuable secondary information to your target or will you deliver a direct sales message? If you have created a business profile, make sure your message is strictly business related – don’t start posting unrelated topics or personal thoughts on random subjects. Whatever profile you build, you want to keep the messaging consistent. Determine how often you will communicate and plan fresh messaging so you posts are relevant and timely. The important point is to be consistent.

How do you measure success? The channel has yet to truly prove a return on investment, but lots of businesses are banking that the awareness generated will impact sales. Consumers have an incredibly high level of engagement on these sites and spend more time on social networking sites than on email.

If you decided to jump on the bandwagon and engage in social networking for your business be sure you have researched your market and that you have a plan to communicate and measure results. Be patient! This is a new channel and you dont want to miss the boat – you’d better believe that your competitors are engaging in social networking so you should develop a strategy that differentiates you from your competition.

FREE sample Social Media Marketing Plan! Visit http://www.GoKeyPoint.com

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Local Business Consultant Pro

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Home Business Ideas For 2011

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Article by Bob Gill

The existence of the Internet makes it very convenient to search for home business ideas for 2011, whereas in the past we were limited to off line resources only for ideas. With the current economic situation making it difficult for large numbers of people to make ends meet, the Internet offers a huge resource for potential and existing home business owners to tap.

Online home business ideas may mean seeking ways to enhance an existing online website for many people. Search engine site optimization (SEO) or re-designing your site may be necessary in order to keep up with ongoing Internet trends, for example, or to bring more traffic to your site.

In evaluating trends for 2011, we need to consider the development of the Internet over the last 10 years. In the beginning, it was enough to become skilled at link building to gain a place on the first page of Google with your home business site. Then we found that keyword research had to be relied on to maintain our search engine position and to beat out competitors.

Today, Google has competition from the likes of Yahoo and Bing and, most certainly, from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Social media sites in particular continue to demonstrate that social interaction is being demanded by people on a very large scale. The social media scenario, then, is showing marketers that there is no better way to market your business.

A boom is certainly happening on the social networking scene. In a survey by Gigya, Facebook is said to drive 44% of people to social sharing; Twitter drives 29%. Yahoo and MySpace drive just 18% and 9% respectively. The traffic to these social networks is created through users sharing links, photos and videos.

In early January 2011 Facebook alone struck 600 million users worldwide – a staggering amount. The prediction is that Facebook will have 1 billion users by 2012. Such, then, is the power of social networking.

Let’s not forget Youtube. After just 5 years online, YouTube has achieved an enviable 2 billion views daily. For those Internet marketers who have neglected YouTube to market their business to date, you have no excuse in not using video as part of your marketing strategy for your home business as this medium continues to explode.

Mobile marketing took off rapidly in 2010 and the trend will surely continue in 2011. More and more businesses are using smart-phones and tablets as part of their business operations. A recent report predicts that there will be over 10 billion mobile units, including iPads and tablet PC’s, in this decade.

The Financial Times reports that according to Enders Analysis, the U.K. spending on mobile phone advertising is likely to increase from $ 71 million to more than $ 600 million by 2015, boosted by the ongoing popularity of smart-phones. The report further advises that mobile advertising could be 4% of total online advertising this year and over 9% by 2015.

With the advertising and home business opportunities available, then, through the likes of social networking, YouTube and mobile marketing, we have huge resources at our disposal to tap for home business ideas for 2011.

<font face=”Verdana” size=”2″>For more information on home business ideas for 2011, visit: Home Business Link</font>







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Digital Marketing Advice for Small Businesses – Your Digital Marketing Plan

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Article by Tracy Mu Sung

While the internet is a wonderful place to be, exposing you to inumerable leads worldwide, for many smaller businesses, hiring the services of a digital agency is just not feasible.

Digital agencies are a great investment for businesses whose website is important to them, businesses who don’t have the time to keep up with the ever-changing world of the internet, and businesses who like to outsource services to specialists for peace of mind.

However, for small businesses who aren’t yet at the stage where they can afford to hire a digital agency, this doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be doing any digital marketing at all. There are plenty of things small businesses can do for a small budget, and that won’t take too much of their focus away from their core business.

This blog post is the first in a series I will do to help all my friends and all those out there, who are small business owners who want to cover the basics of online marketing for themselves.

The series will cover web analytics, online shopping services, SEO, Social networking, online PR, Adwords and anything else that I come up with as time goes on.

Purpose of your website

The first step for any digital marketing strategy – is to think about what your website means to your business. Is it there for selling? For supporting current customers? For branding? An online portfolio? All of these? You need a purpose for your website, so you know how much effort, and what kind of effort, you need to put into your campaign.

Once you know exactly what your website is for, this will help clarify the purpose for all your online strategies.

Where are Your Customers?

The next thing you need to do is think about how people ‘might’ find your website online. You don’t need to know every way right now, but this brainstorm is important to get things going. Do you think you could get customers searching in Google? On topic blogs? on Facebook or Twitter? Is there a marketplace for your product on EBay or other online shopping stores?

By identifying these opportunities, you know where to initially target your marketing efforts. However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep thinking about this over time and keep your eyes open constantly for new opportunities.

Keywords – How do you describe your product/service?

Finally, you need to decide what keyword themes describe your business. Here, you might like to look at my previous article on keyword research. This will help you clarify what your customers are searching online for, and subsequently will help in the SEO, Adwords and social networking aspects of digital marketing.

Like all things online, your keyword list will need to evolve over time, so don’t think you can make this list then leave it, it will need to be reviewed every few months.

This article is the first in the “Digital marketing for Small Business” series, written for the official digital marketing blog of MooMu Media.

MooMu Media is a SEO agency in Sydney, Australia.










Biznessmeet.com Announces Social Networking for Marketing in the Digital Age

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Winston Salem, NC (PRWEB) February 14, 2012

Marketing of businesses in the Digital Age is essential for any company to succeed. The internet and explosive growth of social networking sites have given consumers instant access to global communication, information products and services. Companies who embrace this concept and take advantage of social networking sites can reach thousands of people in a very efficient and cost effective way.

Social networking and business go hand in hand. Word of mouth has always been a very useful way for companies to advertise their products or services. Business and social networking sites such as Biznessmeet.com are the modern day version of word of mouth.

Biznessmeet.com is an innovative and user friendly, virtual community that was created to provide a unique platform for individuals and businesses to connect with each other around the world. Biznessmeet.com is a website that brings together businesses and individuals to share ideas, discuss important topics and assist in selling products and services. It is free to join and by becoming a member, businesses and individuals are brought together in a social and professional perspective and simultaneously.

While Biznessmeet strives to be beneficial to everyone who joins, there are added benefits to being a premium member. Premium memberships are extremely beneficial for businesses and individuals alike. Businesses that upgrade to a premium membership are able to post and share any specials, discounts, promotions and savings with the entire Biznessmeet community. Individuals who upgrade to a premium membership are able to create a more in depth profile that includes their resume and any news or ideas that they would like to share with other members. Premium members can also share their experiences, business reviews, thoughts and opinions in a variety of ways. Features on the site such as Contact Feed, Biz Feed, Biz News and My Reviews are all ideal ways to create and expand a broader social network.

Expand with social media marketing plan with this cutting-edge social network today! Remember its not always what you know, but who you know. For more information please visit: http://www.biznessmeet.com

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Social Media Crisis Academy – Protect Your Brand The Right Way!

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