12 Steps to Social Media Marketing By Lindsay Berry Posted on September 9, 2014 1. Research and know your audience! What topics and interests are they most social about? 2. Only choose to utilize the networks and platforms that best speak to your audience. 3. State your key performance indicators (KPIs). What do you want your social efforts to accomplish? What does success look like in quantifiable terms? 4. Write a social media marketing playbook. The playbook should detail your KPIs, audience profiles, brand personas, campaign concepts, promotional events, contests, content themes, crisis management steps, etc. Note that the strategy should be unique to each platform. 5. Align the members of your company around the plan. Assign responsibilities as to who is posting, who is responding, and who is reporting metrics. 6. Take 30-60 minutes at the beginning of each week or month to schedule tweets, Facebook posts, LinkedIn posts, pins, or other social media content. These can be original ideas, links to your own work, or links to outside content that may be useful or of interest to your audience. 7. Create a content bank using a spreadsheet and plan out the content topics, headlines, related links, desired scheduling, name of authors, and an area for management approval on every line. 8. Post relevant content relating to newsworthy topics and events in a timely manner. It’s important to share opinions as soon as breaking news happens. 9. Treat all social channels separately. You shouldn’t be posting the same message across all channels - remember who the audience is behind each platform. 10. Assign someone to act as a customer service rep to be responsive to user generated content and negativity. Don’t ignore comments and feedback. 11. Schedule reporting! Depending on your goals, reporting metrics can occur weekly, monthly, or biannually. 12. Reanalyze your plan on a regular basis. If something in your plan isn't working, switch it up or A/B test content to determine what your audience responds to better.