Chapter 3 Social Media Marketing Strategy and Social Media Marketing

 While being on social media is a very important part of marketing, having a marketing strategy is also very important if you want to succeed. A social media marketing plan is a "living document" according to the textbook. It helps keep goals straight and has the actions needed to help complete the goals. 

The first step in this process is to identify a target market and create personas with the key traits a company wants to target. Step two is conducting a social media audit.  This also includes social listening, a S.W.O.T. analysis and a competitive assessment. Social media listening monitors the internet to see what is said about a specific brand. S.W.O.T. analysis is strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Plus, a spreadsheet would help with competitive assessment. Step three is to establish goals, objectives and metrics. Every single goal has to have S.M.A.R.T. goals, objectives and metrics. S.M.A.R.T. stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. Step four is to determine resources, roles and responsibilities.  Step five is to establish a tone of voice. People don't respond well to a voice that is too impersonal, so companies need to think about how they want to sound to their audience. Step six is to select a platform. You have to choose a platform that makes sense for the age and demographic you are targeting. Step seven is to create and optimize social media networks. It is important to stay active and up to date on social media. Step eight is to create a distribution and content strategy. You have to determine what type of content will be in social media posts, how often you will post on different platforms, the content and the times and days of a week to post. Step nine is to create a social media calendar and schedule posts to keep you on time and organized. Step ten is to track, analyze and tune. You have to track the strategies you are using and if they aren't working, figure out a way to change that strategy. 

I've never really thought about how much goes into marketing, and how things I'm interested in always seem to pop up on my for you page. But I am part of a target audience that brands have created a plan for. All the clothing and jewelry ads that pop up on my instagram definitely use steps like this. Now every time I see a brand pop up on my social media, I'll think about these ten steps.