case for getting involved in social media.
The form provides a coherent framework for explaining to everyone involved in your social media effort — employees, volunteers, or contractors — the task you’re trying to accomplish and why.
Book 1, Chapter 3 includes a Social Media Marketing Plan, which helps you develop a detailed tactical approach — including timelines — for specific social media services, sites, and tools.
In the following sections, we talk about the information you should include on this form.
Establishing goals
The Goals section prioritizes the overall reasons you’re implementing a social media campaign. You can prioritize your goals from the seven benefits of social media, described in the earlier section “Understanding the Benefits of Social Media,” or you can add your own goals. Most businesses have multiple goals, which you can specify on the form.
Consult Table 1-1 to see how companies are using social media to reach their goals.
TABLE 1-1 Matching Social Media Services to Goals
| Goal | Customer Communication | Brand Awareness | Traffic Generation | SEO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Good | Good | Good | Good | |
| Good | Good | Good | Good | |
| Good | Good | Good | Good | |
| Periscope | Okay | Okay | Okay | Okay |
| Good | Good | Good | Good | |
| Snapchat | Okay | Okay | Good | Poor |
| Good | Good | Good | Good | |
| YouTube | Good | Good | Good | Good |
Adapted and interpreted in part from data sources at aokmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/CMO_Social_Landscape_2016.pdf and information from https://cmo.adobe.com/#gs.dnbpdi
Setting quantifiable objectives
For each goal, set at least one quantifiable, measurable objective. “More customers” isn’t a quantifiable objective. A quantifiable objective is “Increase number of visits to website by 10 percent,” “add 30 new customers within three months,” or “obtain 100 new followers for Twitter account within one month of launch.” Enter this information on the form.
Identifying your target markets
Specify one or more target markets on the form, not by what they consume but rather by who they are. “Everyone who eats dinner out” isn’t a submarket you can identify online. However, you can find “high-income couples within 20 miles of your destination who visit wine and classical music sites.”
You may want to reach more than one target market by way of social media or other methods. Specify each of them. Then, as you read about different methods in this book, write down next to each one which social media services or sites appear best suited to reach that market. Prioritize the order in which you plan to reach them.
Book 1, Chapter 3 suggests online market research techniques to help you define your markets, match them to social media services, and find them online.
Estimating costs
Estimating costs from the bottom up is tricky, and this approach rarely includes a cap. Consequently, costs often wildly exceed your budget. Instead, establish first how much money you’re willing to invest in the overall effort, including in-house labor, outside contractors, and miscellaneous hard costs such as purchasing software or equipment. Enter those amounts in the Cost section.
Then prioritize your social-marketing efforts based on what you can afford, allocating or reallocating funds within your budget as needed. This approach not only keeps your total social-marketing costs under control, but also lets you assess the results against expenses.
Valuing social media ROI
Return on investment (ROI) is your single most important measure of success for social media marketing. In simple terms, ROI is the ratio of revenue divided by costs for your business or, in this case, for your social media marketing effort.
You also need to set a realistic term in which you will recover your investment. Are you willing to wait ten weeks? Ten months? Ten years? Some forms of social media are less likely to produce a fast fix for drooping sales but are great for branding, so consider what you’re trying to accomplish.
Costs usually turn out to be simpler to track than revenues that are traceable explicitly to social media. Chapter 2 of this minibook discusses techniques for figuring ROI and other financial metrics in detail.
