What is a Social Media Plan?

A social media plan outlines your strategy and specific objectives for each social media platform you have outlined in your marketing plan. 

Your social media plan should outline which platforms your business is active on and how often you will post content.

A social media plan is effective in: 

-       Maintaining consistent posting schedules across all social media platforms

-       Avoiding last minute panic and rushing to find content to share

-       Allowing you to keep up to date and utilise trending topics.

Of course, it’s important that you recognise the differences between social media platforms when it comes to creating content and the frequency in which you post. You need to also understand that a post that may work on Facebook may not be suited to LinkedIn and some platforms such as Instagram will lend themselves more to visual posts. It’s imperative you acknowledge the strengths of each platform as you put your social media plan together.

As with any type of plan in your business whether it’s your marketing, content or social media plan, it should have some flexibility to adjust with the changes that may take place within your business or industry.

If you would like help putting together your social media plan, contact Absolute Marketing Communications.

Does My Business Need a Marketing Plan?

Every business needs a marketing plan. A marketing plan is a comprehensive document that outlines the strategic plan for your business. 

What is included in a marketing plan? 

A marketing plan should have the following elements:

-       A summary

o   This is a snapshot of your marketing plan

-       A background analysis of your business and your target market

o   Provide an overview of your business and your product or service. 

o   Identify your target market. Include any relevant statistics about the market and any key demographic information. You should also define your ideal customer, discussing their needs, buying patterns and motivation for buying. 

o   Include information about your competitors. Is there a product or service that directly competes with your offering? What are they doing to establish themselves in the market?

-       Your marketing objectives and strategy for your business

o   Outline your objectives, whether they are financial, about building awareness or engaging with customers. 

-       Your marketing mix

o   This section will outline your overall marketing strategy and how you plan to position yourself in the market to meet the needs of your customers. Include all activities and promotion you plan to use such as PR, digital marketing, advertising, blogs etc.

-       Your action plans and budgets

o   Once you have established your marketing mix, detail specific activities to achieve your objectives. E.g.: booking online advertising or producing a media release to announce your product or service.

o   Work out what your marketing activities will cost you. This is best broken down by activity, month by month.

-       Evaluation and monitoring strategies

o   It’s important to establish what works and what doesn’t. Review your marketing activities periodically to determine if they worked and whether you will implement them in future marketing plans.

 Keep in mind that your marketing plan is not a set and forget document. It’s important that you keep it up to date with any new opportunities that present themselves and tweak it to suit the needs of your business. A good quality, evolving marketing plan will make a useful reference document for your business.

If you would like help to develop a marketing plan, contact Absolute Marketing Communications. Contact Us.

Working on My Business. What I've Learnt.

While taking my own advice from my last blog article and working on my business rather than solely in my business, I finally managed to set up my business LinkedIn page. I must say I learnt a lot.

While I know about LinkedIn and its power as a networking tool, until I created a company page, I wasn’t in a position to view the interactions between followers and the content posted.

 Since having my LinkedIn page, I can see exactly how many organic visitors view my posts. Why is this important? Organic visitors are visitors to your site or content that are unpaid, so they are not captured through paid advertising campaigns. They are captured through the quality of the content, SEO etc.

The number of organic visitors can help you gauge the type of content that works. Whether it be the topic or keywords. This is useful when it comes to planning your content as you will be able to focus on topics that are of interest to your audience and further enhance engagement.

Follow us on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/absolute-marketing-communications

Living Vs Existing

Often in life, people talk about only existing and not actually living. It often takes a life-changing event for people to realise they’re not living life to it’s full potential.

The same can be said for small business. Often small business owners get caught up in the usual day to day activities without giving thought to the potential they can unlock to make their business prosper. It’s the whole philosophy of working in the business versus working on the business. Often it comes down to managing the work you have and not creating an unnecessary increase in workload.

While Covid-19 has had a negative impact on life in general, for some aspects of life there have been positives. The big positive is that families suddenly have more time to spend together. While there have been negative effects for a lot of business sectors, in some cases small business owners have had an opportunity to evaluate their businesses and implement some positive changes to help their businesses move forward.

 While no one has enjoyed the down-turn in business, this quiet time has provided small business owners with the time to actively promote their business and look at new ways to expand and grow. Time; that up until now wasn’t available.

What can you do to improve your business during this time?

-       Update websites (re-design, write new copy etc)

-       Update social media pages (re-vamp existing profiles or start new ones on other platforms you have not yet explored)

-       Research resources designed to help you promote your business (business directories, forums etc)

-       Database management (ensure your databases are current)

-       Work on content (blog articles, EDMs etc)

Working on these aspects of your business can give you a great sense of accomplishment and allow you to put processes in place that will ultimately help you to work smarter not harder.

If you would like assistance with any of your marketing communications activities, drop us a line. We’d be glad to help.