4 Key Steps To Define Your Social Media Strategy For Your Business.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) February 5, 2012 -- Last week I asked 6 questions to help you understand your market, your product and your goals for your business , and to start to think about Social Media marketing channels and Social Media Strategy . This week I want to focus on defining your Social Media Strategy and integrating it into your overall business plan.

Step 1: Define your overarching objective.

It is important to first define the overarching objective for your business and the short and long-term goals that will ensure you get there. Look at your past performance and what you have done. Is it working? If yes, perhaps your goals are already good and it’s more of the same. But perhaps you are not achieving what you want? Time to change your marketing plan and mix of activities.

Step 2: Define the key elements of your marketing plan.
What are the key elements of your marketing plan to grow your business? What new and existing business are you going after and how much can you get in 1, 2, or 3 months? What do you need to do to get that business? Check the 4 P’s
• Product: how would you define your product or service vs your competition? What is your current positioning? What is it that makes you stand out? What does your brand stand for?

• Price: how are you pricing your product or service and how does this compare to your competitors? Does the price reflect the relative value?
• Placement: how are you planning to distribute your product or service? How easy is it for your customers to obtain access to the product or service? Can you get it to everyone that may ask? What channels will you use?
• Promotion: how are you making sure your potential customers know about your product and service? Specifically what will you do to promote your product or service each month, and which methods provide the best return in generating leads and sales?

Step 3 Social Media Marketing as an integral part of your overall marketing plan.
• Market and customer research (including customer feedback). Utilize Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook to research you customers and competitors, as well as the usual Google searches. What is trending in discussions? What are your customers’ needs and desires?

• Brand awareness and product/service offerings . Using your website and blog, it is important to convey what your brand stands for at every opportunity. And, don’t forget to carry this over into your Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin background information and company pages. Having a strong message and ensuring consistency across the different sites is the key to good branding.
• Advertising and promotion . You can use all your social media sites to help you with advertising and promotion. Blogs are a great way to talk about your company and products and making sure interested parties know about your new promotions via Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin can drive more potential interested parties to your blog site or website.

• Public Relations . Talking about your company in your blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin can really help develop an awareness of the company, what it stands for and its products and services. Don’t forget to be prepared for occasional negative feedback or catastrophic events and to have a plan in place as to how you want to deal with it and what you want to say to your customers and readers.
• Lead Generation : Making sure your website and blog have landing pages that make it easy for your customer or client to leave their contact information. This may simply ask for their name and email, and perhaps a space for them to tell you about their needs, interests or questions.

Step 4 Define your action plan.

Your action plan should be a manageable list of activities to ensure you carry out your marketing plan. First make sure your product or service is clearly defined, that your branding is clear and that you have described how your customers can reach you and purchase your product or service. Create and link your sites. Use clear language with clear goals and defined completion dates and make sure everything is in order before you “go live” with your customers.

Hopefully this has given you something to think about. My goal is to make your life easier and to ensure you are as productive as possible. I hope you enjoyed this and that you will send me your comments, subscribe and link to my blog at http://mpconsulting.worpress.com , and if you need help, or need to ask me a question, click on this.

Free Guides are available from my blog site on a number of business subjects including: Strategic Planning, Business Plans, Marketing Plans, Social Media Planning, Public Relations Planning, Time Management, Negotiating Strategies, Effective Business Meetings, Due Diligence, and many others. To visit my blog, go to
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MP Consulting Services specializes in the areas of strategic planning, leadership, marketing and social media. Mark Philip, principal at MPCS, has over 20 years experience in managing businesses, both small and large, has orchestrated multiple turnarounds, built product pipelines, launched new products, sold companies and created significant shareholder value. Let me know how I can help you with your business challenge.

For More Information: visit my blog at http://mpconsulting.wordpress.com or visit my LinkedIn account at http://www.linkedin.com/in/markpconsulting

Copyright © 2012 Mark Philip

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