What should be your social media marketing plan for 2018?

Social Media Marketing has seen such rapid evolution in the past that even in a time span of a single year, a significant amount of changes can be observed. The evolution and dichotomy of Digital Marketing that began from SEO and other operations of the sort, is by in itself a proof of how much change we can expect in the upcoming years.

While changes in the social media world are imminent, we must be well prepared for what is to come and build our own Social Media Marketing Plan for the next year – 2018.

4 Must haves on your Social Media Marketing Implementation Plan for 2018:

Before we set out an action plan, it is important to identify what platform works for you – which mostly depend on where your target audience are at. It is really important to list these factors down before you go in detail about your strategy. The layout must also be constructed with careful consideration of your team members. Once this is set, you can move on to listing the specifics as and when you narrow down to them.

#1 Going Live:

Live streaming is something that came up about a year ago and has seen itself being used by people from all walks of life. With tools such as BeLive, that lets you go on a live stream with a number of features added such as adding captions, cues and having a conference like stream with multiple users. You could also schedule your going live and let your audience know well in advance.

#2 Augmented Reality:

While the leading social media platforms have already adopted AR, there seems to be an increase in their usage, with new filters coming in. The launch of the new iPhone with its ARkit platform is going to make way for brands to create their own AR apps. It’s not going to take long before other smart phone manufacturers include these features and make it more available and economical.

#3 Influencer Marketing:

We’ve already seen our fair share of influencer marketing with celebrities endorsing products and brands on their Facebook pages and other social media handles. This trend has only been going upward the last year is foreseen to still go up the ladder. Build relationships with influencers whom you are certain that your audience will lend their ears to.

#4 Ephemeral Posts:

We’ve moved into an era where story-telling is done mostly with images and with ephemeral posts, social media has made it easier for people to spread their tales with added elements to make them look livelier.

While the above would fit for businesses of all sizes, there are specific things that smaller businesses can follow to create a social media hold for themselves.

5 Tips To Shape A Social Media Marketing Plan for Small Businesses:

Although domain specific plans have to be laid on the canvas, the basics have always remained the same.

#1 Layout your goals

Social Media goals come with variations from one organisation to another. Identifying yours is of paramount importance. Most of your goals would fit under one of these categories

• Branding
• Audience Building & Engagement
• Lead generation
• Boost search engine ranking
• Customer Service

#2 Identifying your channel

Your customers are not bound to be on all social networks. Find what social media channel you’re comfortable with and what percentage of your target demographic is present there.

#3 Numbers don’t matter!

Relevant audience base is always the key. There’s a huge difference between having thousands of different audience from different parts of the world and having a few hundred who live in your vicinity and are likely to buy your product.

#4 Create A Content Bucket

When you’ve gotten down to leveraging social media to its fullest you need to make a content bucket and calendar. Schedule your posts and also keep your eyes open to any new trend that suddenly pops up – be the first one to talk about it!

#5 Tell Stories!

The human brain is more of a story processor. Narrate your brand’s stories, use images and videos wherever possible because the way we consume online content has changed over the last few years, owing to the expanding user base and cheaper internet.

Guest article written by: Sorav Jain has been recognized as one of the ‘Top 25 Social Media Professionals of India’. He is an avid blogger and has written several social media blogs not just on his own blog site but has guest blogged as well. He has delivered numerous informative lectures at the Confederation of Indian Industry, NASSCOM. He has hosted over 300+ social media workshops across India, Sri Lanka, and Dubai. His numerous writings, on the social media subject, range from the latest social media marketing strategies to be implemented on Facebook advertisements to Instagram marketing and a lot of other related topics. He also spearheads EchoVME, that was recognized as ‘The Best Social Media Agency of 2013’ by CMO Asia.