What Is Your Long Term Social Media Marketing Plan

Marketers of this day and age should know how crucial social media is to building your brand and growing your audience? It seems however, when you look at statistics that only one third actually make the effort to engage in social media platforms on a regular basis. And not many of these have a long term social media marketing plan. What facets should marketers incorporate to social media as part of a long term strategy?

First and foremost, it is customer service, second a social media agency should focus on promotions across departments and third, monitor user feedback. Let’s take a look at a popular social media campaign that was created with a long term marketing plan in sight.

Starbucks Idea
Starbucks Idea is one of the oldest tricks in the book, where crowd sourcing is tied to social media to develop the best plans in town. Since its launch, Starbucks Idea has collectively developed 100,000 ideas in total and is still standing strong. It is not all about getting customer reviews and ideas, it is also doing something about that feedback. Like putting the ideas into good use. Starbucks Idea makes the process competitive by showcasing top ideas by using a voting system.

What can you do to achieve long term success through social media management?

Give your fans a voice, make them your priority. What do they want to talk about, what interests them the most? First get to know them before shoving your product in their faces.

As much as you have a plan written on paper, learn to be flexible. Some ideas seem great theoretically, but when it comes to putting it into action, it doesn’t work well. It is a trial and error process and you need to be up for it. Don’t forget to test your ideas first.

Create a consistent brand voice. Your social media team is bound to have different people, but that doesn’t mean it should be projecting different ideas. Create one message and stick to it. Your message should be consistently distributed across various social media networks.

Be as active as possible on social media sites. No one likes to post a query and have it answered only a week later. This shows lack of focus on the job at hand, and a sense of disconnect. Be connected to your followers, and to be consistently in conversation with them is one way to ensure the communications lines stay open.

You cannot measure everything, so measure only statistics that matter. What do you want the big picture to look like? This is how you should measure your overall goals.