Just about every organization these days has a Facebook page, blog, or some form of social media account, but are they actually leveraging their social media to market their business? While there have been several articles in the past that make social media marketing seem more costly than it's ROI, that's not necessarily the case. It's true that social media marketing isn't entirely free (it will cost you time or the investment in an agency or specialist), but it's possible to run a cost effective and engaging social media campaign across multiple networks - it just takes a little planning.

Getting Started

If we've learned anything from our friends over at Netflix in the past couple of months, it's the importance of securing your brand across the main social networks. Even if your social media accounts have been in place for a while, you should still check for your brand name across the other existing networks and secure those accounts so that they can't be used for other purposes. Try a service such as namechk to see whether your desired username is available on dozens of popular social networks and if it's not, to test which usernames could be registered. When choosing a username, try to be as consistent as possible, as social media profiles tend to be among the highest ranked results on Google.

Maintaining name consistency is important, but isn't enough by itself. You'll also want to determine your brand's "voice" across the social networks. This isn't to say that only one person should execute your company's social media efforts, just that those who speak on behalf of your company should reflect your brand in a consistent way.

Lastly, you'll need to determine your objectives. Is the goal of your social media effort to increase your number of friends/followers/group members? Or perhaps to drive more traffic to your website and increase conversions? Setting clear objectives is crucial for determining the level of your success.

Creating a Plan

How many times do you plan to publish content to Facebook each day? What about Twitter? Or your blog? These are all questions that should be answered by your social media action plan. Other considerations should be made as to who will be publishing the content and what types of content will be used; multimedia content such as video or images may need to be hosted elsewhere before being shared over the social media networks.

It's also important to determine you'll establish your social media presence. While you can send invites, cross-promote through your other social media accounts, and adds direct links from your website, attracting friends, fans and followers generally requires some traditional marketing measures. Be sure to include this in the cost to your company.

Most importantly, you'll want to work out an approval process up front. Unless you are the owner of the company, you're going to want to have approvals in place. Developing a process for content approval not only helps to schedule content for publication, but also saves time and reduces soft costs.

Measure your success

Both Facebook and Twitter offer their own metrics and Google Analytics can help track how effective social media sites are at driving traffic to your website or blog. Determine the data you desire the most (from followers to conversions, based on your prior objectives), and make sure it's being provided. There should never be any question as to how your social media marketing initiative is performing. You should always be aware of  your ROI.

If you're not sure where to begin, or are finding that you don't have the time to successfully leverage your social media accounts, let 360 PSG's social media marketing specialists prepare a unique social media marketing plan for your brand. The marketing team at 360 PSG will professionally craft, schedule, and publish engaging brand messages in your organization's voice and regularly manage all content across four social networks - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and your company blog. To learn more about our Social Media Marketing Plans and creative content writing, contact an account manager today!