If Content is King...then Planning is its Top Advisor

If content is considered the social media king...then 'planned strategies' must be its top advisor. Many businesses start marketing via social media without a planned strategy. This might work for a little while, but may cause undesirable effects in the long run.

A social media campaign must be perfectly planned from the onset to be effective. Considerations must be made for: what social media outlets will be utilized; to who will implement the campaign; to how the business with interact with target markets. This is where planned content comes into play.

Although social media marketing is not overt, like traditional marketing, it is still marketing. By strategically planning your SMM campaign and ultimately your content, your business can maximize the effectiveness of its social media campaign.

Reasons for Planning Content

1. You can target certain demographics. You can plan to use content that appeals to specific target demographics to draw them to your social media campaign.

2. You avoid sending out the wrong message. Recently, I was informed of a new business owner using their personal Facebook page to push their business. That doesn't seem so bad...right?

At the same time as pushing their business, their profile page was filled with notifications of the business owner playing of Texas Hold Em' Poker, all day long. They came off looking like a gambling addict and maybe lazy. These are very negative images for a business, especially a startup. This image was a result of neglecting to plan what their social media content would be and who was seeing it.

3. Planning content allows the business to have greater control over what products/services are being marketed. If a business feels a product or a service is not selling, they can utilize a SMM campaign to bolster sales.

A client of mine has business with multiple revenue streams. We sit down and plan strategic ways to covertly market these very different products. Properly laid content is the best way to push specific products that need to move.

4. Additionally, if a product or a service is not selling well, planning more content around that product may lead the business owner to find out the reason why. Client interactions are important to the developing (or changing) products to suit client's needs. By generating meaningful content, businesses can gain valuable feedback from clients that can directly affect their businesses.

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