I found out that in many cases people dont believe in social media because they dont know it well. They tend to think social media in the wrong way such as its all about FB or TW, its all about technology, ... But its not! A good part of our business is explaining what social media really is and how to get it to work for us all.

Develop an editorial calendar. Now its time to get specific on what youll do in that 90-day plan. Develop a theme or focus-area for each month. Determine the type of content youll post and frequency of the content.

Hi Rachel, very good post... One thing I would add though (perhaps in point 4.5!) is that it is essential that every social media strategy/plan must get key stakeholder buy-in... Social media cuts across so many different departments within organisations (customer relationships, marketing, HR, IT to name a few) that for it to be seen as simply an adjunct to the marketing department is the sort of error that could result in the plan being unsuccessfully implemented. Once all the stakeholders (and/or staff) appreciate the value of social media and how it can help develop &f this is not the case, its safer and wiser dont even have a try.

Determine your target audience or ideal client. Its important to identify exactly who you want to reach in order to develop a solid plan of action. Be as specific as possible. Consider industry, gender, age, purchase habits, income level, education level, etc. For the purpose of this blog, lets say that your plan is to target brides.

Build a maintenance schedule. This is where we get to the nitty-gritty. Create a maintenance calendar of daily, weekly, monthly, and as-needed tasks. Consider things like monitoring the accounts and responding to the audience, continuing to build the audience, and writing the content for the day, week or month.

Decide on the message. Now that youve established your goals and decided on your audience, its time to determine how you plan to reach them. What do you have to say? What value can you offer? Using brides as an example, you may want to inform them of ways they can save money and still have the wedding of their dreams.

Evaluate. After 90 days, review your progress. Were your goals met? Did you reach your intended audience? What worked and what didnt work? Should you shift your focus or maintain what youve done? Are there other forms of media you want to consider? Be honest with yourself about these results and adjust your social media plan accordingly.

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Assign responsibilities. If youre like many business owners, you might intend to do it all yourself. But I find thats not always realistic. Be sure to assign a specific person to each task even if it is you. Also consider the time involved in completing each task so you can schedule your time appropriately.

Rachel Strella is the Owner of Strella Social Media, a company specializing in social media coaching, strategy development and management.

Hi Rachel, I am Amir

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List your current marketing outlets. Review this list and consider what can be integrated to maximize the use of social media. For example, if you use direct mail, could you add the links to your Facebook n page or Twitter handle? If time or money is a concern, also consider what marketing activities can be shifted or replaced with social media. If youre running costly print ads in a local news, but find youre not getting the results you want,new york escort would it be reasonable to start to shift some of those funds to hiring part-time staff to manage your social media?

Many businesses are unsure of how to effectively leverage social media as part of their marketing efforts. Some merely post messages once a year on their Facebook n page or on THow to Create a Social Media Strategy,witter only to say that social media didnt work for them. For a small business with limited resources, it might be difficult to hire in-house or even outside social media help, so they continue to blindly navigate the waters. It pains me to see this, so Ive decided to share a formula we use for our clients when determining their social media strategy. My hope is that small business owners can use this as a template for getting started with an effective social media plan.

Set a 90-day plan. Its tempting to try to do it all, but in order to remain consistent, you must start small. If youve decided to use Pinterest and YouTube, a reasonable 90-day plan could include building your social media community on these channels (Social Mediaremember to use your traditional or offline marketing avenues to help you get started) and engaging that audience with consistent, compelling content.

Your advise is really appreciated

First, your article is interesting ! It gave me some ideas and filled some gaps in my social media strategy.

Keywords: Best Practices, Strategy, Social Media, Strella, Social Media Rachel Strella, social media plan, social media strategy

Great Share. LinkedIn has always been a mystery to me in many ways. Engagement is not as easy as on other sites.

Good for you Jeff to have the huevos to say all this. I too believe its time to understand what Facebook is and use it (or not) according to your companys goals. For most, itll be of very little value. And every move they make only solidifies what marketers already know: its a media, a publicly ...

Thank you

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Determine channels for reaching your audience. Where is your audience? If you are targeting brides, you might find that more brides are using Pinterest or watching YouTube videos. You could display DIY boards on Pinterest. You might create short video clips with money saving tips. You could even feature video testimonials of brides who have used your service and saved money. For small businesses doing it themselves, I recommend starting out with no more than two social media channels.

Nice one Ari, same situation here.I have been a Pro Flickr member since 2005 and today downgraded to a free account for the reasons you have discussed here.I too find the UI painful and annoying. It may sound odd but I feel it is now too focused on the photos and not the users experience. Its also about discovery and the UI to do this is now buried below the images, out of the way.The old ...

Great post Rachel!

Id be thankful, if youd advise me on a strategy in my S M unit to promote our social media venues to our employess in order to make use of the word of mouth techniques, etc . Im really confused about what can I use or apply to get those employess motivated to leverage their companys social media and play a key role in branding the company and report any complain or something

Luca Leonardini

Determine marketing goals. Get clear about the specific objectives you want to achieve. We all want more clients and more money, but consider the steps it takes to get the business leads that result in more business. Reasonable online marketing goals could include: increase in website traffic or foot traffic to your location, increased customer feedback on social sites, and generating more email opt-ins.

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I was confused by the statement:Through the stages of page set up, you can choose to incorporate title tags, meta tags, and keywords through Google+s step by step process no extensive knowledge of coding needed your blog, Google+ page, and even individual blog posts more ...