1. Identify Target and Objectives
2. Conduct Market Analysis (target group, trends, needs, competition, best practices, etc)
3. Plan your Social Media Program Components/Timeframe of Execution (including integration with traditional campaign)
4. Assessment and Allocation of Resources
5. Monitor, Measure and Adjust-Improve
More specific steps you should take when creating a social media marketing plan:
1. Participate and Learn: If you’re not involved in social media, get involved. Consider this as a learning - training period! At a minimum, join Facebook, LinkedIn, and start following some industry blogs. You will find it very difficult to sell or even construct a social media marketing plan if you aren’t familiar with the functionality, strengths and weaknesses of the various platforms.
2. Target Audience: Define your targeting audience(s) and key stakeholders
3. Market Research: Take each group (grateful patients, referring physicians, employees, reporters, influencers in the community) and outline your marketing objectives related to that group (keep it short and simple - KISS). Examine how each group currently uses social media. Look at industry best practices and review the activities of your top competitors.
5. Toolbox: Identify social media vehicles that help you accomplish your marketing objectives, by audience. This will become your toolbox. The vehicles you select need to take into account a number of factors including: resources available, desired outcomes, and ability to deliver your message/content. This assumes that you know the strengths of various social media platforms. (Hopefully you’ve done the earlier analysis of each group’s use of social media). This is the step that may require the most research. For example, you may not know what LinkedIn groups reach a specific target audience, so you’ll need to get online and start digging around. Join those groups and start following the conversation. Find out what these people care about and talk about. Another example, you’ll need to identify the top bloggers/thought leaders that you will want to influence?
6. Integration: Define the process you will use to make sure the program is integrated with traditional marketing and branding efforts of your organization. And don’t forget about PR and media relations. There are lots of great social media tools that can make your PR program more effective. Be sure to integrate that into the plan as well. Internal communications should also be integrated into the plan.
7. Plan Resources: Make your program sustainable and avoid social media fatigue! You’ll need to get tactical by identifying how you’ll use the platform given the resources you have available (internal or external). A great deal of information can be re-purposed and shared within various social media platforms. So think this through carefully. You also need to define workflow – and who will do the work. And who will develop content for these various outreach mechanisms? How will information flow within your organization to the content generators? Stay focused. Less is more. Better to do few things great than lots of things poorly. You can expand in time.
8. Measure and Monitor: Determine how you will measure results. You will want to build in measurement tools, in line with your set targets and objectives. Actively monitor social media. This should be part of your strategy. There are several measurement and monitoring tools available.
10. Policy: Develop an ‘employee social media policy'. With an increase in social media engagement by your organization, having an employee social media policy becomes more important. You would also need a response plan - how to deal with unsatisfied customers and who is doing it.
11. Respond: Make sure everybody knows your crisis response plan. Let a press release or official statement guide your response. Link the official statement to Facebook, twitter, blog, etcetera. Monitor mentions of the incident. Be prepared to answer questions. Do not argue with detractors, stay calm in your response - stick to the facts. Be honest and transparent. A swift, kind and honest discussion on twitter can turn into a disaster. Don't take it personal. An unhappy customer can have a big voice.
12. Adjust and Improve