Inbound Marketing: Social media strategy planning tool
“Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there; they cause change. They motivate and inspire others to go in the right direction and they, along with everyone else, sacrifice to get there.”
– John Kotter, professor, Harvard Business School
Are you a true marketing leader?
Does your marketing department have a well thought-out strategy with clear marching orders? Hopefully that question is a gimme, but here’s a harder one…
Have you set the strategy for your social media marketing?
Developing an effective and methodical social marketing strategy was the most frustrating challenge to social marketing effectiveness, according to the Marketing Sherpa 2011 Social Marketing Benchmark Report.
And for good reason. Social media marketing is a huge paradigm shift for most marketers. It is a change from the command-and-control days when marketers owned the airwaves and printing presses because they had the power of the purse.
Social media has democratized the means of communication. Now, every customer is also a publisher. And the best you can hope to do, as overused as this saying may be, is to join the conversation.
Social media strategy planning tool
Of course, that doesn’t mean that creating an effective social media strategy is impossible. And anything you invest resources in, even if you’re just incurring a soft cost like your own time, should have a plan of action designed to achieve a goal.
If you don’t know where you’re trying to get and what you need to do to get there, then why even bother?Vocus, a company that provides on-demand for public relations management, has created a pretty nifty, interactive social media strategy tool to help you outline your goals and determine the most effective tactics to meet those goals.
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The tool infuses data from the Social Benchmark Report, as well as the MarketingSherpa Social Marketing ROAD Map Handbook, into what is, essentially, an interactive social media strategy app.
This is just the first release, so if you use the tool, please give us feedback in the comments section below, and let us know what you’d like to see in version 2.0.
Related Resources:
Strategic social media marketing advice from your peers
Social Media Chart: Which channels are the most effective for inbound marketing?
Social Media Marketing: Facebook news feed optimization
Social Media Marketing: Tactics ranked by effectiveness, difficultly and usage
Categories: Inbound Marketing social media, strategy, tool
Very good post you have here, thanks for sharing
I believe that social media has to be an integral part of any media plan, whether online or offline. It has to be intertwined with all marketing activities and be a part of over all media planning
Joining the conversation is the most vital part of social media. Being active, answering questions, and creating a dialogue with current and potential clients is a great way to establish yourself as an industry expert and to build credibility with them. An active social media account plays a role in Uncertainty Reduction Theory as well: http://www.grmwebsite.com/blog/.
Looks like a useful tool in helping people/companies explore a social media strategy. Thanks for sharing.
Your 2011 Benchmark Report,combined with the dynamic and very relevant Vocus Social Media Strategy Tools truly equip us with a ‘Sherpa-like’ elite Guide on the paths, towards our Social Media Everest !
Engaging and edifying tool – really appreciate the customized report!
Nice. Shared it on 9 relevant LinkedIn groups.
This tool would be fabulous if I could get the final workbook to download and/or print. I’m working on a Mac, anybody else had a problem with this?
Interesting! Thank you for sharing! Do you know how accurate this tool is in measuring social events?
Thank you so much for commenting. This tool is a great resource for planning out your social media strategy. It does not provide a measurement tool for social events, however, you’ll see under the Track and Measure step, it offers some of the most telling metrics you can look at to measure social media engagement. I hope this helps, thanks again!
-Erin Hogg
Reporter
MarketingSherpa