The Foundations Of A Kick Ass Social Media Marketing Plan

In last weeks article we explored why every business needs a strong social media presence, hopefully the article got you off the fence and on the train to social media town for your business. If it did, great, but I’m sure now you’re thinking, “Ok I’m going to finally take this leap and open a social profile for my business, but then what?”

Have no fear, today I’m going to lay down the foundation that you need to start building a kick ass social media marketing plan for your business.

First Things First

Before you do anything at all you need to start with knowing your target audience that you plan to reach like the back of your hand, think of this step as if you’re creating the blue print to your marketing plan before you begin the manual labor of laying the foundation for your kick ass social media marketing plan. By thoroughly knowing your target market you’re able to not only determine the best way to reach them, but also where to find them because each platform appeals to a different demographic- yes even Facebook, and though analyists say that everyone has a Facebook account some demographics are more active on it than others.

So get very specific with your target audience, you need to know everything from their age range, gender, nationality, marital status, geographical location, and interests-the more you know the better.

Discovering Your Voice

No I’m not talking about the excellent singing voice that only you and the shower know you have, I’m talking about your style of conversation that you’re going to use when you start marketing to your audience. Will your content be informative? Will it be entertaining? Will it be comedic? Will it be inspirational, maybe even spiritual, or a mixture of all of the above? What ever voice or voices you decide to use make sure you stick with it through and through so your audience knows what to expect from you and can start building a connection with your content. This serves as the rubarb to the foundation of your marketing plan and will help you with staying consistent through the type of content you produce.

Crafting Your Story

We’ve heard the age old adage, “Facts tell, stories sell” and for the most part its absolutely true. Even businesses that take a very informative approach to their social media marketing have a story that they tell through out the process of their marketing strategy, so now that you know your target market and you’ve discovered the voice you want to use its time to start working on the story that you want to tell.

The key to crafting a good story is to center it around two things:

1. The audience

2. Their emotions.

That’s right, as great as your product might be, as awesome as your business has been doing since launch a good story isn’t about any of that

its ALWAYS about the customer.

When you started your business you realized that you could solve a problem in people’s lives and that’s what you want to focus on when you tell your story. Sure, you can be vulnerable and talk about your personal journey, but you always want to tie it back into the customer and how you’re solving their problem for them.

Another key point that you want to keep in mind while crafting your story is the trigger of emotions. Why?

Because emotions create action, get it?

So think about what emotions you want to trigger in your target audience through the content you provide. Do you want to invoke anger, joy, sorrow, laughter, shame? Maybe appreciation, gratitude, hope, and relief?

It really doesn’t matter what emotions you decide to use as long as you use them and you can always start off with a few in the beginning of your story and end with others that move your audience even closer to taking action- in the marketing world we call this, “the customer experience”.

The simplest way to think of it is like this, you’re marketing plan is like a great movie and every great movie touches on human emotions to suck the audience into the film and make them feel like they aren’t watching a movie, but they’re actually a part of the movie.

So there you go you my fellow entrepreneurs, these are the basic foundations you need to develop a kick ass social media marketing plan for your business. There are further details that I could have discussed but I wanted to keep it simple in order for you to take action and not suffer from paralysis by analysis.

So take action today, start honing in on your target audience, developing your voice, and crafting your story and next week we’ll dive into the different types of creative content you should be focusing on for each social platform and why.

If this article has been helpful to you please give me feedback by filling up that empty green heart, sharing your thoughts with a comment, and sharing this with your social network it would mean a lot to me. If you’re feeling like this may be a little out of your lane or you simply don’t have time to develop a social media marketing plan for your business feel free to contact me and lets have a conversation about how I can help you grow your business like you’ve always wanted it to grow.

Christopher Grate-Lets Grow Together