Website Social Media Plan

Failure to create a plan means that you are planning to fail. How many times have you heard this old saying and yet thought it didn’t apply to you. If you haven’t taken steps to develop a social media plan for your business then you are planning to fail at integrating social media into your online presence.

To help you develop your social media plan, I have include a simple 4 step process below that should give you several tips that will help you to create a strong social media plan. Thanks to www.freshpeel.com for providing the image below.

Step 1: Listen

As you listen to your consumers about your products and services, it will help you fine tune what you provide to them. It also means that you listen to feedback about your website to make sure that it’s meeting the needs of your target consumers. Being able to assess the social activities of consumers means that you interact with them on social networks where they can share their input. Try implementing a focus group from within your consumer-base that will give you feedback and help you become more targeted in your efforts.

Step 2: Plan

Developing a concise plan that incorporates your business objectives is very important. Your objectives should include some of the feedback and input that you received during the “listen” stage. Try to include objectives that help increase your brand’s awareness among your consumer-base.

Step 3: Strategy

In the 70s, Diana Ross released a song called “Do You Know Where You’re Going To?” and this is what business owners should be able to answer about their social media plan. Having a strategy in place means that you have taken your plan and create specific steps that you will take to implement the plan. You strategy should take into consider the impact it will have on your consumers and your industry. Make sure that you have key support staff in place to support your social media strategy plan. Look at your strategy like it is the marketing key to your social media plan.

Step 4: Tools

It is important that you have the correct tools to help your implement your social media strategy plan. Some of the tools that you should use would include those that allow you to monitor progress, integrate your efforts on multiple social media website, or tools that will allow you to network with others in your industry. One simple tool that you might want to implement is a toolbar on your website that will allow you to integrate interactivity instantly with your website visitors.

As you watch the video below by Diana Ross, start thinking about the question, “Do you know where you’re going to?” and how you will answer it when it comes to developing your social media plan.

One question that I’ve been asked many time is, “What’s so important about a social media plan?” In a nutshell, social media is a business tool you can use to help grow your business. Having a plan in place can help you monitor your progress and determine your ROI. It can also help you determine where and how you are connecting to your target customers.

According to Mashable.com, Tweeters mostly consume news, MySpace users want games and entertainment, Facebookers are into both news and community and Digg’s audience has a mixed bag of interests. As a business owner, this is important information that you should take into account when developing your social media plan and your online presence.

Whether you have a product or services, it is important that you know where you can find your target customers on line and how to reach out to them to make a sale. Business owners can no longer afford to ignore implementing a social media plan or having an online presence to grow their business.

To help you develop your social media plan, I want to share a 3 simple things that you can do to get things going:

• Use a social media monitoring tools to measure your efforts on each social media website. You can use services like:
  • Trackur.com
  • Radian6.com
  • Google Trends
• Determine which social media websites are best for your industry where you can find your target customers. Using one of the tools below can help you get a better understanding of your industry.
  • Compete.com
  • Google Insights
  • Quancast.com
• Make sure that you understand your business and how you want to integrate social media into your online presence. If you need help, the you should think about taking the Website Social Media Plan Summer Camp 2010.

Have you noticed that there are graphics on the internet that display different words associated with a specific topic? Have you been trying to figure out how to create your own graphic like this? Then what you are looking for is a “word montage graphic” website or program. Below are a couple of  websites that you can use to create your own “word montage graphic” or “tag cloud”.

The graphic to the right was created using the website Wordle.net. The words in this graphic all center on things associated with WordPress. You will be able to paste the words that you want to include in your montage or enter an URL for a website. You can even use your del.ciou.us account to create a montage.

Another website that will help you create a “word montage graphic” or a “tag cloud” is TagCrowd.com. The unique way that you can create one on this website is by entering your website address and letting it pull keywords from there. Or you can upload a file that contains your keywords. Or finally, you can type in or paste the words that you want to use. The image above is a tag cloud for YourPassionateBusiness.com.

If you have products or services that you would like to market on your website, one of the things that you will need to do is create is a sales page. To create a sales, there are several components that you need to include to make sure it is success.

When you learn and understand the needs of your target audience, it is like throwing dice and getting the outcome you want every time. To help you develop your sale page, I have provided a short list below:

• Make sure to include section headers on your page and apply “Heading setting”
• Include a short introduction about the purpose of your sales page to your web visitor
• Build interactivity into your sales page by including testimonial audios on your page. Including written testimonials would be good too.
• Understand your target audience and write content that will explain how you can meet the needs.
• Ask for feedback from business associates about your sales page before you release it. Their feedback will prove to be valuable.

These are just a few of the basic things that you need to include in your sales page. Be creative as you develop the content and include pictures. If writing content for a sales page is not something that you feel is one of your skills, feel free to complete my contact form and let us know. This is a service that we provide to business owners.

If you, like many business owners, have multiple WordPress websites, one of the things you might consider doing is setting up a WordPress Multi-User (WPMU) environment similar to WordPress.com. You don’t have to have hundreds of WordPress websites in order to create a WPMU and take advantage of the ease of managing WordPress websites.

Whether or not you are considering setting up a WPMU, below are a list of various reasons that can help you determine if you need to create a WPMU environment.

• Allows you to upgrade WordPress core files and plugins all at once.
• Use plugins to map domains to individual WordPress websites.
• Create a beta blog/website to test your content privately.
• Save time when managing content for different websites/blogs.

Read what a couple of satisfied WordPress MU owners have to say about it:

“I am thrilled to have found Kim Beasley!  I never knew WordPress had Multiple User accounts and used to spend time finding and installing plugins on each individual site.  With the MU solution, you install once and activate where needed – a huge time saver!  I can also tell Kim what I want my sites to do and she finds a way to make it happen.  Streamlining my online presence by moving most sites to the WordPress MU, and hiring Kim to maintain, update and tweak things now and then, has left me with more time to focus on my core business.  I would recommend her services to anyone looking for a true pro who is timely, dependable and knowledgeable about all things WordPress.”

~ Tara Reed
www.ArtMarketingWithTara.com

WordPress MU has dramatically changed the way I market and run my business.  I am able to instantly create niche blogs to support my marketing campaigns.  I can select from over 20 custom themes thanks to Kim.  :-)  I can log into them individually or from the backend of the master blog to add and update content.  I am able to create an enormous business image without a large expense.  Normally when you want to create a new site, you have to hire a web designer and wait weeks to launch it.

WordPress MU gives you the power to create a new site in seconds.  You can customize it with the plugins and widgets and then add content and SEO info.  Your new site can be up and running within an hour.  I love the fact that each of my sites has a different look but they complement each other.  Being able to point unlimited domains towards my one installation makes WordPress MU invaluable.

~ Jerrilynn B. Thomas

http://WomenPartner.com