Choosing Social Media Platforms & Allocating Resources

A company should not adopt just one social media platform as its main/primary channel. Likewise, just because it’s the latest/greatest social craze, doesn’t mean a social media platform is worth a company’s valuable time and resources. Social media needs to be a part of the IMC campaign – not just an afterthought. When it comes to determining which social media platforms to use and how to allocate resources, digital marketers should not go with their gut. Instead, they should develop a social media strategy to ensure its efforts are strategically aligned to help meet company goals and objectives by using the appropriate social media platforms and allocating resources appropriately.

IDENTIFYING SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS 

When it comes to identifying the appropriate social media platforms for your IMC campaign there are several things you must consider.

Identify the business goals.

Digital marketers need to look at the company’s overall needs and determine how to use social media to help attain them (Daoud, 2014). For example, is the company looking to increase sales, retain loyal customers, etc.? Econsultancy’s Chris Lake (2009) says that a widescreen approach to social media measurement looks at goals like the aforementioned ones – sales, loyalty, etc. After all, zeroing in on details may be a waste of time due to problems that can occur such as attrition (Lake, 2009). 

Looking at the big picture, however, is not going to be enough for the C-suite. They are going to want proof that social media (or social optimization) is working. Lake (2009) says social optimization is all about driving engagement and interaction, but not to fret, because there are many things that can be measured.

Set marketing objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs)/metrics. 

According to Lake, the objective of any social media strategy is “to provide the right tools, so people can engage with your brand/people/products/services onsite and offsite (2009). You want people to:

• Make noise; 
• Store and share things; 
• Love your website; 
• Visit more frequently; 
• Refer your company to their friends; 
• Buy into your brand; and, 
• Buy your products. 

Engaged customers are more likely to perform these actions, and to measure engagement you’ll need to provide people with the tools to measure KPIs/metrics around your objectives (Lake, 2009). There are a number of social interaction KPIs/metrics you can put in place around downloads, ratings, email subscriptions, etc. See a complete list of Lake’s KPIs/metrics.

Once you know what you want to measure, you can choose the appropriate analytics and tracking tools you’ll need. Analytics software, such as Google Analytics, is not designed to track social media data. However, installing social media metrics plugins or using a free tool like Tweetstats can address your analytics software for social media (WVU, 2015).

Identify Ideal customers.

Knowing your target audience’s age, income, interests, etc., makes it easier to target them on social media. In fact, engagement is usually low if a company doesn’t have an accurate profile of its ideal customer (Daoud, 2014). For example, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, if you’re targeting Latino women younger than 30, you’ll want to include Instagram in your social media strategy. See the chart below for more demographic information on the different social networking sites (Duggan & Brenner, 2013).


(Duggan & Brenner, 2013) 

Research the competition.

When developing a social media marketing strategy, you should research what social media platforms your competition is using. This will provide insight on what’s working so that you can include the tactic in your IMC campaign. When analyzing your competition there are a few questions to answer.

1. How many fans/followers do they have?
2. What is their posting frequency?
3. What type of content are they posting (i.e., promos)?
4. What time of day are they posting (Daoud, 2014)?

Choose channels and tactics.

As soon as a new social media platform is released, many companies just go ahead and create an account without researching if it’s the right place to reach its target audience. You can use your buyer persona to determine the platforms that work best for your company (Daoud, 2014). If you know your target audience spends 30% of its time online on Facebook and 10% on Twitter, you not only know what your primary and secondary social networks are, but you know running a Facebook ad is a better strategy than eating up time composing tweets.

Create a content strategy.

A sound content strategy focuses on three areas: type of content, time of posting, and frequency of posting. 

Type of Content – The content you’re posting depends on the social platform you’re publishing to. What form should the content take – video, text only, etc.? If your target audience hangs out on Tumblr, for instance, posting great multimedia content is key. Content also has to match the tone of the social platform (educational or entertaining, funny or serious, etc.). 

Time of Post – Each audience is unique; so, you need to figure out the best time to post content. For example, a B2B company might determine the best time to post content is during business hours – not during week nights and on the weekends.

Frequency of Post – It is also important to strike the appropriate balance of number of posts. Too few posts means you’re not engaging enough with your audience. On the other hand, too many posts and the number of unlikes and unfollows could increase (Daoud, 2014). 

ALLOCATIONG RESOURCES

In order to effectively budget for social media marketing you’ll need to look at the tactics you’re using to achieve the company’s goals and objectives. First you should make a list of the tools you’ll need for your social media marketing efforts – CRM, social listening software, etc. Then you’ll need to determine approximately how much it will cost for all the advertising you’ll be implementing, including the services you’ll outsource (i.e., graphic design). Ultimately, you would want to establish your strategy first and then determine the budget that is needed to support your strategy. However, many times the budget is determined first and then tactics are selected that fit the budget (Daoud, 2014). 

A social media strategy shouldn’t be written in stone. As data is analyzed through the year you may realize some tactics are delivering results while other aren’t working as well as you thought they would. As insights are gained through analytics, adjustment should be made quickly to the strategy (Daoud, 2014). 

REFERENCES

Daoud, H. (2014, July 16). 8 essential elements of a social media marketing strategy. Retrieved from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/essential-elements-social-media-marketing-strategy/

Duggan, M. & Brenner, J. (2013, February 14). The demographics of social media users – 2012. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/02/14/the-demographics-of-social-media-users-2012/

Lake, C. (2009, October 30). 35 social media KPIs to help measure engagement [Blog]. Retrieved from https://econsultancy.com/blog/4887-35-social-media-kpis-to-help-measure-engagement/

WVU. (2015). Lesson 3: Social media analytics & advertising channels. Retrieved from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_29082_1&content_id=_1454155_1&framesetWrapped=true