One of the biggest hurdles for businesses getting started in social media marketing also happens to be a very necessary foundation. Creating the plan and committing it to paper could be the single biggest step an organization takes in getting on a path to success in social media marketing.
In part one of my social media calendar series I gave four tips for getting started establishing your social media calendar. In this post I’ll outline a few tools available to help you depending on what your social media objectives are.
Social Media Objective: Content.
If the primary objective for your organization is to be seen as a thought leader or to drive your public and media relations, content should be at the heart of your activity. Scheduling is vital when it comes to content as it helps make sense of topics over time and clarify an editorial perspective. The first key is to adopt an editorial- process, much like major publications. Presumably a blog is your primary vehicle for establishing your content as king. You can use a generic calendar like Google Calendar or this great plugin if your blog is on WordPress.
Social Media Objective: Commerce.
If you’re a business with a product or service to sell, let’s face it, money talks. The holy grail for social media is proving social media ROI and the best way to do that is through commerce. The thing is, most businesses have a great start on this already. Start by translating your existing, traditional, promotional calendar into a social experience. FanTools is a web-app (created by my company) that helps you do just that with a calendar feature. Start with what you have and expand your promotions over time responding to real-time engagement with your growing fan base.
Social Media Objective: Listening.
Since social media is seen by many as the evolution of word-of-mouth advertising, listening becomes a vital objective in your businesses social media strategy. If you’re just get started I suggest you get very familiar with what searches can be done on various platforms. Set up Google Alerts, get comfortable with Twitter’s native search. Once you’ve mastered that tools like Hootsuite help you develop a more robust approach to monitoring your industry and your brand across the social web.
What tools have you found to keep you on the path with social media?
