The development of a great social media marketing plan has a lot in common with any marketing planning. Of course!

Everything begins and ends with identifying, reaching and converting audiences and markets. So here is what you need to think about if you want to move beyond random posts, posting your events or some news about your organization without getting traction on social media.

1. What are you trying to accomplish? Really: why are you still trying to sell tickets on Facebook? This is social. Be social, in a purposeful manner. Sales follow good relationships.
2. Which social media networks are your audiences using? This is important to know … look for the data on the networks or in general user statistics from your own audience surveys or other intelligence.
3. Which social media networks do you like to use? Frankly, if your dislike of a social media network is so strong that you don’t want to spend time on it, perhaps you need to find someone able to get the most from a tool like this. Ideally, you enjoy the tool and many in your audience are using it, too.
4. Are you capable of curating your content yourself? You have to seriously consider who is best positioned to run your campaigns and maintain an ongoing responsibility for your social media.
5. Do you have access to the means of content production? You know photos and videos are really important to use, but bad images and sub-par video isn’t going to help establish a profound mutually beneficial relationship.
6. Have you defined and honed your voice? How you say things can be as important as what you say. Are you fun? Earnest? Friendly and welcoming in a casual tone way; or do you fill up the status update character count with with long, well-structured sentences that make a reasoned case for a particular performance. Think about who you are and, therefore, who you need to sound to connect with audiences effectively.
7. How much time can you invest? Social media is free, isn’t it? Well, your investment might be more in time than money and as we all know, time IS money. So don’t underestimate the hours needed to build and maintain an effective social media presence.
8. How much money can you invest? Social media can be a lot cheaper and a lot more effective at reaching and engaging your market than most other advertising avenues. You will also get some powerful statistics in return. Still knowing your size of market and potential market will help you establish reasonable budgets for boosting posts. Without boosting, only a fraction of your potential will be fulfilled.
9. Can you measure effect / conversion? Yes, you can. Look at your Facebook reporting, add links to sales transactions or e-news sign ups or whatever your goals are and then measure where the traffic on those pages came from. So make sure you also have web analytics on your website and connect the dots. It is worth it to see what works and what doesn’t and hone it based on actual results.
10. Have fun and learn something new about your market, or about what is working and not working in your social media marketing — at least once a week! People change, your audience evolves, your potential markets shift – what worked last year may need to be adjusted because of these external shifts. Keep an eye on your actions and the reactions it generates.