July 17, 2017

New To SM? Use Social Media Marketing Templates

By Jon Wade at FSE Online Ltd

Social Media is One of the Most Effective Digital Marketing Tools

 Nobody doubts the power of social media. But a successful campaign needs to be well organised. Templates provide a great roadmap to an effective campaign.

 There are more than three billion social media users worldwide. That amounts to around 40 per cent of the global population. No wonder social media is seen as an absolutely essential component of any digital marketing campaign.

With such a wide variety of users and platforms, it can be hard to know where to start. As with most things, the key to a successful social media strategy is managing a number of diverse components and measurables, and making sure they are all pushing in the same direction.

If that still sounds like a daunting task in the vast and amorphous world of social media, then the good news is that there are a number of free templates available to keep you on track.

 

Define the strategy

It might sound obvious, but the first step to a successful strategy is to truly define it, and set out your goals. When you start to complete it, you will quickly come to realise that some of these are not as obvious as you first thought. And if the strategy is not clearly defined and understood by everybody, what hope is there that it can be effective?

There are a number of great templates out there, including this simple PowerPoint template from US digital marketing company Hootsuite.

Work your way through the template in order to make sure both your business goals and your social media goals are clearly defined and are properly aligned, so that everyone is working towards the same end.

 

Know your starting point

You probably already have some sort of social media presence, whether it is on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or some other channel.

Before you dive in and reinvent the wheel, it is important to understand where you are starting from. What is your current social media presence like, how well is it working and how does that fit in with the strategy that we defined above?

Again, you can use a basic template to take you through each step of the social media audit:

  • List each of your social media profiles on a spreadsheet
  • Search social media channels for any other accounts using your name or brand
  • Define a mission statement for each social media profile
  • Make sure every profile and account is on brand
  • Create a central repository for ownership of passwords
  • Define an action plan for the establishment of new channels

 

Getting where you need to be

Now that you have decided where you are and where you need to go, it is simply a case of getting there! The simplest kind of template is an old fashioned calendar, but do not overlook its importance.

Of course, it is not possible to plan every piece of social media engagement in advance, and you would be wrong to try. Tweets and Facebook updates need a degree of spontaneity to ensure that they are fresh and relevant.

However, the single biggest issue that social media campaigns face is missed opportunities. Use your social media calendar the way that you will use any other, to make sure that planned content and promotion material goes out on time, every time.


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By Jon Wade at FSE Online Ltd