With my classes, currently, we are moving into that time of the semester where we are beginning to create social media marketing plans.

I would encourage anyone out there who is using social media to market their business to have a plan. So many people just jump in without thinking, and then are discouraged when they don’t get the results they expected.

There are many reasons for this:

• posting irregularity
• posting the wrong kind of content
• at a loss for what kind of content to post
• posting on the wrong social media for your audience/demographic.

You really do need to create a social media marketing plan!

1. Goals: it’s important to know what you want to achieve so that you’ll be able to see when you’ve made it! Also, it’s important to understand who your demographic is, and where they hang out online. If, for example, you are trying to reach baby boomers, you shouldn’t be trying to do that on Snapchat–they aren’t there. Match your audience to the correct social media audience.
2. Next up, generate accounts on the appropriate social networks. Make sure you use the same name, if possible. You can get accounts on all of the social networks if you like, so that you can reserve your name/presence on there, but keep the accounts private until you are ready to use them.
3. It’s better to start small. For most businesses, I’d recommend starting out with a blog or an e-newsletter, and a Facebook page for a business. You might also want to add on to that a LinkedIn account (especially if your biz is B2B) or Instagram (if you have a visual element), and possibly Pinterest (because it’s such a great source of content).
4. Post regularly. This means daily on FB, monthly if you have a newsletter, and at least weekly if you have a blog. Consistency and great content is the key!

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