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8 Steps to Creating a Social Media Page

by | Dec 15, 2015 | Articles, Marketing

1. Editorial Calendar

One way to starting any social media account for business is to plan and editorial calendar for research documents. This outlines the tasks at hand, the dates they start, along with the dates they should finish. This kind of chart makes the calendar of activities creative and organized. There is not one right way to do a calendar; you can make it suitable for your own business needs. There are different ways to format a calendar, and the activities are always changing. A calendar will help you keep track of events, and the deadline they need to be finished. Below is an example of how an editorial calendar should look:

 

screen-of-editorial-calendar

 

2. Add Pictures

You can use illustrations to make your content more enjoyable to read. Pictures are able to get your ideas across in different ways than text could. Adding pictures can help the reader better understand your content. There are many tools out there to be able to enhance a picture’s quality. You can always screenshot pictures if you do not have access to graphic design software.

 

3. Pay-per-click Advertising

Advertising is essential to get the right following for your business, and build your audience. Make sure to find your target market in order to get the most for your money. Paid promotion involves social media, and displaying ads. You must define your budget before starting with paid promotions. This will help you to decide which targets are best for your company.Websites like Twitter and Facebook allow you to create ads, and target them towards customers based on their interests, keywords, and which websites they had visited previously.

screenshot-of-social-metrics

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) displays ads on search engine pages. Two of the most common ad display tools are Google AdWords and Microsoft’s Bing ads. You can promote by: Having a list of keywords, using exact match, ad bidding, and engaging the user to the right page.

 

4. Five Goals of Sales

Brand awareness – Brand awareness is the amount of people that saw your ad. People cannot choose your brand, if they are not aware your company exists. You have to make yourself known throughout your community. It is ideal to impress people so your brand is what people are talking about throughout town.

Engagement – After people know your company exists, the next step is for them to engage and interact with your brand. The amount of people that shared content, or wrote something about the content shows that your brand connected on an emotional level with them.

Customer loyalty– Customer loyalty is the amount of repeat customers or amount of people who subscribed to channel. How do you get your customers to stay once they have purchased the product?

Lead generation– The amount of leads made in a transaction either through email or asking people personally if they would like to hear more about your brand. The amount of people you gather to participate in your brand are your leads.

Sales – The percentage of site visits that ended up as customers is the most important part of the transaction. It’s knowing that what you are branding is exactly what will help benefit one of your customers. Letting people know that buying your brand was the right choice, will lead to future increases in sales.

 

Screenshot-of-steps-for-sales

 

5. Content Marketing Machinescreenshot
Plan, Team, Ideas, Production, Audience Development, Conversion, Measure and optimize.
The first step are your goals/plan. The objectives should define what you are looking for in the outcome, with most being a lead or sale. Your plan will essentially take your business from where they are today to the end goal.

The next step is gathering your team to reach that goal. You need to know which workers on your team will take part in this project, much of it relying on the company’s budget. Many people will submit ideas into this content marketing machine, but you need one person from the company to control it: the managing editor. Their job is to put together the editorial calendar, go over content production and distribution, generate leads, and record the results. With this person, your business will not be a machine, but rather a small appliance.

The ideas portion of the machine is where many team members struggle. Many marketers report difficulty in finding enough content. It is necessary to produce content 3-5 times a week. The majority of your content will be about the customer and their interests, and less about the products themselves.

The next step of the machine is Production. As your content marketing machine is being generated, you need to run the centerpiece of the marketing machine. This is the editorial calendar, which goes over who will create what piece of content.

Audience Development is where you need to get visitors to your content after you have produced it. This can be done by: identifying influencers, finding search keywords, developing paid traffic, and syndicating content.

The last step to the content marketing machine is measurement and conversion. As you already have content being produced, and visitors,The machine works by having content as your input and an audience as your output. But eventually, the audience(your output) will begin to deliver the content(inputs).

The graph above is a content marketing manager, to help your business with: objectives, customer relation, support, upsell and brand awareness. Following this path will take your company from where you are today to where you want to be.

 

 

 

6. Brand Awareness
This allows you to put down ideas on a paper, and figure out what your company stands for. The SWOT analysis can be used to understand your company’s strengths and opportunities. This helps to define your company’s mission statement along with your brand strategy.

 

screenshot-of-brand-awareness

 

7. Understanding Your Reader

The company should have a persona, and know its values. Ask your customers questions in surveys or interviews, and get to know your reader. (screenshot of persona chart) A few ways to understand your audience is to conduct surveys or focus groups. This whole process of persona mapping will allow your content to appeal to your chosen audience.

 

screenshot-of-understanding-your-reader

 

 

8. Organizing Content and Flow

This allows you to take the content you had gathered and presenting it in a way that allows for maximum reach. You should identify the strengths and weaknesses of your content, and segment them into a simple chart, such as the one below:

screenshot-of-segmenting-content-and-flow

 

The key to using this chart is ensuring your company’s content has the right flow. Each great content schedule, being for tv or other media, has negatives and positives. This shows you must have the small success to appreciate the big success.

 

 

Citation:
Content Creation
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-content-marketing/content-creation
“Moz”

How to Build and Operate a Content Marketing Machine
https://moz.com/blog/how-to-build-and-operate-a-content-marketing-machine
“Toby Murdock”

The Ultimate Guide to Content Planning
https://moz.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-content-planning
“Simon Penson”