Social Marketing – The 5 Critical Preliminary Steps For a Successful Social Media Marketing Plan

You would need to be living under a rock not to notice the Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube icons everywhere. It seems like the whole world is jumping on the Social Media bandwagon and this is wonderful news if you are an entrepreneur! Social Media Marketing is the perfect platform for businesses that would like to market their products and services online.

Social Media Marketing is based on building connections and relationships with people who you resonate with. Then it can be used to market your products and services in a conversational way like we used to in times past when everyone gathered together on the front poach on Sunday afternoon to talk about their week.

The technical term is Word Of Mouth Marketing. Word of Mouth Marketing is the old fashion kind of marketing that has worked since the beginning of time. Studies show that this kind of marketing is 3 times more effective than other forms of marketing because people are jaded by traditional marketing. They believe less than 17% of the marketing messages they see but 78% of recommendations they get from their peers.

But STOP, before you get excited and just jump in and join all the social networks willy-nilly it is important that you do some research first. Each site will ask you to create a profile and you want to make sure that what you write will speak to the people in your target market. You want to attract those people who need and want your products and services.

Here are the 5 steps I take with all my clients to make sure we create profiles on the Social Media sites that do their job correctly.

Step 1 Decide – You need to decide who your Target Market is. This is one of the most important steps for any successful marketing plan but many entrepreneurs avoid it. Most marketing experts say it is impossible to market successfully to everyone. The sooner you narrow your focus and pick your specific target market the sooner you will see results.

Step 2 Discover – Discover the pain that keeps the people in your Target Market awake at night. What problems do they need solutions to? This step will help you decide what products and services you need to provide. This could also stop you from creating a product or service that your target market does not care about which could save you tons of time.

Step 3 Determine – What products and services do you offer that will be good solutions for the pain in your Target Markets? If you don’t have a product or service that will address this problem maybe you should consider creating one.

Step 4 Develop – Now it is time to create your Social Media Marketing Plan. Be as specific as possible. List the 3-4 social networks you will join, how much time you plan to spend joining the conversation and what kind of content you plan to submit. You also need to decide how you will measure your success.

Social Media is a long term marketing strategy so be prepared to stick to your plan for at least 3 months and then measure your results. Then you can decide if you will continue on your currant path or change directions.

Step 5 Do – The final step is to do your keyword research. Keywords are the glue that holds the Internet together so it is very important to have a clear picture of the exact words you need to use in your profiles and content sour sites y will be indexed by Google. Once you have your list of suitable words keep them by your computer and refer to them whenever you are writing anything for the Internet.

Lots of business owners skip this step because keyword research can be boring and it is somewhat of an art to do correctly. But if you take the time to do this step (or better yet hire an expert to do it for you) you will be rewarded with your site listings on the first page of Google!

I invite you to connect with me on my social networks by clicking on the Social Media icons over on the right of this page. A great place to learn more about Social Media Marketing is my Facebook Fanpage . You can also access it by clicking on the Fanpage box on the right. Here I post links and tips that will help you improve your Social Media Marketing Plan.  Also I welcome your comments so please feel free to write one below.