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Developing Your Social Media Plan For 2011

Tom Sullivan — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 17:19:39 +0000

As the year winds down and the Holiday season swings into full force it is important for your business to think about your plan for 2011. You can follow these basic steps below for building your plan from scratch. You’ll probably need to revise it several times, but it’s a good idea to get started on this when you have some downtime during the holidays. Not everyone has “down time” but if you’re on, or waiting for a flight, on a long car ride (as a passenger) or simply in between items on your to-do list, do yourself a favor and start thinking about 2011.

1) Start with some notes: This is where your brainstorming begins. Think about what went well this year and what did not. Which marketing strategies were successful and which were not? If you can’t answer that question then you know you need to improve the tracking of your efforts. You should also jot down your goals for the year and then break these goals into monthly goals (even weekly goals if necessary). This will help you with the other steps.

2) Analyze individual efforts: Think about all the different elements of social media: Your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Videos, Press Releases, Social Bookmarking, etc. Now analyze each effort individually and what you can do to improve the effectiveness of each. Start to set aside how much time you’ll be willing to dedicate on a weekly and daily basis.

3) Determine your budget: Now that you have an idea of which elements of social media you want to focus on, as well as how much time you can devote to each, it is important to set aside a budget. Of course, this budget will depend entirely on how much of the work you’ll be doing yourself vs. how much you’ll need to outsource. Think about the value of your time and do a cost/benefit analysis to help you determine what you should commit to yourself.

4) Find a strategic partner to help you execute or fine tune your plan: If you have an employee who has been helping you with your social media efforts make sure they’re on board for 2011. Make sure they’re comfortable with your plan and what you need from them to make 2011 a success.

If you have some ideas that you’ve put together, but you need help coming up with a strategy, or if you’re new to social media and would like to see how it can benefit your practice you should turn to an agency to help. Even if you have experience with social media and have had successes, an agency can help to expand on past success, offer new insights, and free up more time for you to run your business.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to develop a social media marketing plan for 2011, consider talking to Turbo Social Media. We’re a full service social media marketing agency with a focus on ROI. Fill out this form for a free consultation or give us a call at 877-673-7096 x2.

Happy Holidays to all!

Strategy: The Importance of the Headline

Zack — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:30:44 +0000

In a previous blog post, Matt explained to us the importance of a “Call-to-Action” as a part of your Social Media Marketing Strategy. However, how do you get someone to make it that far? You may be offering $1,000 to every person that comes to your site, but if there is nothing to grab their attention, they may not stick around long enough to see what your call-to-action is. So the question remains: what can you do to peak the interest of your potential clients?

One of the best ways to to get a prospect’s attention is by using a great Headline (otherwise known as a Teaser). The Headline is what draws people in, as it is the first thing people read and it is at the top of the page, “above the fold.” If the headline does not give any incentive to the reader, then why will they continue on that site or blog post?

Tell me what you think is a better headline:

“Jim’s Painting Service, Serving the Bay Area since 1925″
-or-
“Jim’s Painting Guarantees Timeliness, Cleanliness and a Paint Job that will last 10 years, and we’ll put that in writing!”

Which headline grabs your attention? Who are you more likely to call to get a painting estimate? Believe it or not, we see more people using taglines and headlines with “Since….19XX” than proper headlines in the majority of business websites. If you cannot come up with a few great reasons why a prospect should choose you over your competition, then why are you in business? There must be a few great reasons for prospects to do business with you.

To learn more about Social Media Marketing, fill out the form on the right to watch our free video series or give me a call at 877-673-7096.

Thank You, and I encourage you to leave and comments or questions below. To learn more about the video series, Medical Professionals should click here and Entrepreneurs should click here.

Article by Zack Zucker, Director of Operations, Turbo Social Media

Social Bookmarking Spotlight: Mixx

Zack — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:58:59 +0000

As we have touched on before, Social Bookmarking is a large part of Social Media Marketing, as it helps create more buzz about you and puts more links out there to lead to your site. Here at Turbo, we really try to utilize as many of these Bookmarking sites as possible to increase to amount of traffic to our site. We have been seeing amazing results from Digg and Stumbleupon, but recently we have seen some significant growth from another site: Mixx.

Mixx is a wonderful Social Bookmarking site with lots of great features that encourage you to interact with other users and promote strong rankings. Much like other Bookmarking sites, you are able to follow friends and become fans of other users so you can be notified when they bookmark (or “MIxx” in this case) an article/video/picture that you might find very interesting. The power behind this, is the more you interact with this online community, the better chances of more people reading your articles, which we know usually translates into a larger group of people filtering into your website. This online community offers everything from commenting back and forth on different articles, Polls to see what other people are thinking about and a wide variety of categories from Sports, Business, and Entertainment to Tech, Health, Science and Fun

At first, it may seem Mixx is not as simple as some of the other bookmarking sites out there, as there is much more here to participate in. However, after spending a little time on the site you will see how easy and fun it can be to use. Also the simple complexity to this system also allows for more narrowed in topics, allowing you to really find the information you are searching for. I am personally a fan of quite a few Bookmarking sites, although, Mixx is by far my favorite, as it not only allows me a great way to interact with other users, but it also creates some terrific results.

Thank You, and I encourage you to leave and comments or questions below. Now would also be a great time to try “Mixxing” your first article. To learn more about the video series, Medical Professionals should click here and Entrepreneurs should click here.

Article by Zack Zucker, Director of Operations, Turbo Social Media