Do you have a strategic plan or a marketing plan? If you do, that’s the place to start with social media. It doesn’t matter whether you are planning for a small business, a tourism group, or an economic development organization. You start in the same place.
1. Get out your plan and look over all the goals. Which ones lend themselves to social media? Can you see goals where social media would help?
2. Now, write the action steps that put social media to work on those goals. For example, if your goal is to become an authority on your niche, your daily action might be to find and tweet five relevant links, or to answer two related questions on LinkedIn.
3. Next, put those action steps on a index card, like a checklist.
4. Finally, set a scheduled time for your social media activity. Maybe the first thing in the morning, or 30 minutes after your lunch. Follow your checklist.
There you go. A four step way to integrate social media into your existing plans. And to do it without giving up your entire life to do it.
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
A further step is to make a budget for advertising space on social media sites like Facebook, which uses keywords (not unlike google adwords) to target your ad toward users with similar interests.
Robert, that is a good next step.
I really like this concise list, Becky. It’s a very good resource for me to share.
Thanks, Paul. I wrote it for economic developers. Most of them have a strategic or marketing plan, but were unsure where to start on social media.