10 steps to setting up a Social Media Plan to reach your (potential) Customers

Social Media blog II from Freshbridge New Marekting Agency

Social Media is a great way to reach your (potential) customers. Of the more than 7.9 million Golf players in Europe at least 5 million can easily be targeted and reached through Social Media. The big question for many organizations remains is how to reach these people and get your message across. It all starts with getting a clear plan in place.

Here are 10 steps to get you started:

1. Define your Goals and targets
2. Define your Customer Groups and their interests and insights
3. Where are your Customer Groups online and choose the channels to use
4. What are your Competitors doing?
5. Define Content Themes you want to talk about
6. Define the frequency of the Content Themes
7. Define Content within these Content Themes that can be posted
8. Adapt Content to the different channels and define your Social Identity
9. Listen and interact with your fans and followers
10. Learn what works and adapt your content and plan

Define your Goals and targets

Start by defining your goals and targets. What do you want to achieve? This provides direction for all of your activities. If it doesn’t contribute to your goals you should ask yourself if you should be doing this.

Define your Customer Groups and their  interests and insights 

Who are they? What interests them? What are their emotional triggers? What motivates them? How do they interact and share with others? Where do the different targets groups differ from each other?  This defines how we interact with our customer groups. The sweet spot for interacting with your Customer Groups is where the goals of the organization overlap with the interests of the Customer Groups.

Where are your Customer Groups online and choose the channels to use

It also important to analyze where these Customer Groups are online and what kind of Social Media platforms they are using. You want to reach your Customer where they are so this defines which Social Media platforms your organizations should start using.

What are your Competitors doing?

Analyze and learn from them. Copy their best practices. Most of the information of what works and what doesn’t work is open and accessible to everybody. See which post has more likes, comments, shares, replies or retweets. This is a clear indication of which content posts work better than others.

Define Content Themes you want to talk about 

Based upon your organizations goals, the interests of your Customer Groups and by learning from others define the different Content Themes you want to talk about and interact with your Customer Groups.

Define the frequency of the Content Themes

Also determine the frequency of the Content Themes with which you want to talk to your Customer Groups. You might want to talk about a certain Content Theme once a month and another once a week. Try to limit sales content to around 20%.

Define Content within these Content Themes that can be posted

Fill each Content Theme with ideas for Content Posts and interaction with your Customer Groups. Try to come with Content that you Customer Groups will want to share with their friends, would want to interact with, or stimulates them to take action.

Adapt Content to the different channels and define your Social Identity

Create and adapt the Content Posts to each Social Media Channel you are using.  copy and visual execution are very import . Every Channel has different ways of interacting with it’s fans and followers. Twitter is more text based than Facebook or Google+.  Every Channels also has different ways of talking to it’s users. Adapt if you want to be part of the conversation. Also define a Social Identity to use in all your visual and copy execution. This ensures a coherent way of communicating and ensures your identity is clear when others share your content.

Listen and interact with your fans and followers

Listen to what your fans are saying and react to them. Help them. Offer them advice. Thank them for their advice. It’s a conversation and if you want to build a relationship you need the communication to go both ways.

Learn what works and adapt your content and plan

Feedback is almost instant. Your will quickly see what content works and what content doesn’t work through the number of likes, the kind of comments, etc. Learn from this and quickly adapt your content and plan to make it better.

Social Media has a lot of potential if you focus on your goals and on the interests of you Customer Groups. These 10 steps will define how to reach your goals and interact with your Customer Groups on Social Media. It will give you a clear structure and plan.

Get In touch with Fresh Bridge
T. +31 070 7620269
M. Roderick Cremers +31 06 51821045
E. Roderick@FreshBridge.nl