Identify Social Media Platforms and Create Calendar to Reach Your Customers

Reach Your Target Audience by Identifying Your Top Social Networking Sites and Being Intentional by Creating a Social Media Calendar

Platform Identification

To continue our discussion on developing a social media campaign, it is important to choose the platforms that are the most effective sites to reach your target market. To discover the plethora of social media sites available, visit: http://namechk.com/. This website will allow you to check your name on the numerous social media sites, while displaying the many different platforms available.
The top three platforms are LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Remember that LinkedIn is used by business professionals, Twitter is widely used and is more instant, and Facebook is more of a relationship-building site.

UnderKnow your target audience and the social network they are a part of. Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest may all work or none at all. Infographic by Vocus on Facebook for business and personalstanding Your Audience

Understanding your audience is important. If your target market consists mostly of the general public, Facebook may be the perfect option. An interesting infographic describing Facebook in relation to business versus personal was published by Vocus to give you more insight on whether or not it is beneficial for you to focus on. If you need to reach the business professional to advertise your services, LinkedIn is an ideal platform for you to invest your time on. Have an amazing product that can only be told through pictures? Pinterest may be the site where you need to have a strong presence.

NOTE:  If you are not going to invest the time required to develop a strong presence on any social media site, do not create a profile! It is worse to have an outdated profile, than to not have one at all. Delete any profile you do not frequently use.

Developing a Social Media Calendar

Again, understanding your audience is vital to your social media success. Once you have chosen a select few sites to invest your time on, develop a social media calendar to keep you in line with your goals.

Your calendar should be based on your keywords mentioned in an earlier post, “Before beginning a social media campaign, you must develop a focused marketing plan,”, your selected social media platforms (including your blog), and the days of the week you will be submitting your information.

Hint: When developing your calendar keep in mind that you will want to check your Twitter feed, LinkedIn wall, and Facebook wall at least twice a day. With the use of keywords you can search for items of interest to comment on and begin engaging individuals you want to connect with.

Amber Gold Marketing, Amber Dixon, How to social network, what are marketing techniques, how to use social media, public relations and, marketing collateral, brand awareness, build brand, humanize brand, brand development
Humanizing Your Brand

The calendar will assist you with being intentional with your posts, while lessening the amount of time you spend on social media marketing. Using sites like “Hootsuite” are useful when you want to write a single message across numerous platforms. Using Hootsuite also allows you to schedule your posts so you can create bulk messages to be sent through the week. You must remember, however, that although your posts are pre-written, you still need to scan the sites to create a dialogue with your audience. You are humanizing your brand, and to do this you need to comment on posts (not simply “like”). Although you can outsource your initial posts, you can not outsource your dialogue with your connections.

To avoid looking like a self-promoter or “spammy”, you should share posts you find interesting and could benefit your connections, retweet news items that coincide with your keyword for the week, and write a blog post or article that adds value to your audience. You never want to write your posts that translate as “Look at me! I am wonderful and you want what I have to sell.” Instead, you want to be viewed as an authority in your industry while providing value.

Sample calendar: Representing one week

Sample Social Media Calendar

Sample Social Media Calendar

As you can see from this sample, each social media site is listed and the keyword chosen for that week is consistent across all platforms. This allows you to be intentional with your posts and reminds you to build relationships in the process.

Although I only listed a week, I recommend laying out a month at a time with a different keyword per week. You may want to choose two keywords per week if it would fit your audience better. A social media campaign and calendar is not a one-size-fits-all solution, so tweak the information to meet represent you and your company’s goals. Also know that you can reuse some of your posts in future weeks or even in the same week, but you must rewrite the posts to appear fresh. Do not cut-and-paste your posts. Remember to rewrite them if you are reusing them.

Next Educational Post

In my next blog post I will provide tools you can use to maximize your time on your chosen platforms to discover what is being posted or discussed on topics that interest you. With these tools and hints, you will be able to quickly find topics you can share information about, comment on, or gain exposure simply by sharing why you like a particular post or article. This is all part of the relationship building component that is required for a strong online presence.

Reminder: Bookmark and subscribe to this blog to continue learning marketing tools, tips, and insight. I also enjoy feedback and look forward to furthering this discussion.

–Amber

Marketing and public relations strategist assisting businesses by filling the marketing and public relations gap. Want to learn more about how we can help you grow your business? Learn More about AGM

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