Why is Visual Social Media Marketing Important?
The reason why it is important to implement a visual social media marketing plan is because a strong visual marketing strategy can do the following:
- Attract significantly more traffic to your website and business
- Encourage more social media shares of your content
- Invite more interactions with your online content and articles that you write
Start With Research
Start by researching your niche and see the kind of images that are generating interest. I am know you can find free stock photos from various websites, but I also think it is important to be creative and clever and design your own banners and take photographs on your own that can be used in your Social Media Marketing Campaigns – these unique images will generate interest. So do some research on the various social media marketing platforms and start seeing which images are getting shared the most.
Take Some Time…..
Take some time and explore sites such as Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter paying close attention to the visual elements that people are liking, sharing, and commenting on that are related to your niche. You will find a source of inspiration. Allow your creativity and inspiration flow.
Define Your Marketing Goals
Consider your marketing objectives so you are able to build a strategic plan to generate results that help grow your online business and obtain more exposure. The more traffic you can generate, the better SEO results you will begin to see.
Determine What You Ultimately Wish to Achieve
Specifying your marketing goals and objectives can help you approach visual social marketing more strategically and help you get better results. So ideas for goals you might have are:
- Build Brand Awareness
- Attract Website Traffic – this seems to be a common one especially when you are getting started.
- Grow Sales
- Engage New or Old Customers – Adding visual elements to your website can be an extremely powerful way to engage potential customers/clientele. Customers who are engaged are actively participating with your business on social media.
- Generate Feedback
Know your Customers
After you define your marketing goals, you will want to clearly define your target audience or whom you are trying to reach via your visual social marketing efforts. Pay close attention to what they like and share online. Knowing your customer and potential new clientele behaviors is critical in understanding the type of content that appeals to your specific audience.
Develop a Visual Content Plan
After you get a good idea of who your customer is, you want to determine the content you will create as well as when and where you will post and share it. The timing of the day can also have an impact. Try to share different times of the day at first to experiment with what works best.
- Are your customers generally online in the evening?
- Or are they on early in the morning?
The content plan should link to your marketing objectives and the topics which interest your customers.
Create the Visuals
Once you have developed a visual content plan, you will want to start desgining the visual assets you need as outlined in your content plan. Build a collection of visual assets you can use and reuse as a part of your strategy. Keep an organized collection on your computer. I mentioned the use of Cana in one of my other press releases I published here at IBOT. Allow your creative juices to flow and you will amaze yourself.
A number of mobile phone and tablet applications allow you to quickly and easily create visual assets that you can use on your website. The benefit of using these apps is:
- They are easy to use
- They are inexpensive
- They can be uploaded to social media sites directly from your phone or tablet.
Implement
Use your knowledge and judgement to post and share your visual content online. Consider using visual elements on a variety of social networks. Although I know this can be argued, but I do not think you necessarily need a different visual element for Facebook versus Pinterest versus Twitter versus Reddit.
Last Step: Track & Measure & Refine
Analyze the results of posting your visual content, strive to learn from your successes and failures, and then make adjustments and refine your strategy. Do not become discouraged if your first experiments are not a success. Remember, we cannot succeed until we have failed a couple of times.
For More Tutorials
If you want more tutorials, please feel free to visit my tutorial page because I have many more. Thank you for reading my tutorial on how to create a social media marketing plan. I hope it has been beneficial. Please comment and share this page with your friends, because I am sure this tutorial may help someone.
14 thoughts on “How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan”
Thank you for the excellent information. I am presently working on building a website and this info has been incredible. I particularly liked your suggestion on a content plan that would include when and where I would share my content based on my audience. Great information!
Hi Andimax:
I am glad you found this article on creating a visual social media marketing plan to be helpful. It can be a bit overwhelming at first, but I am hoping this will help everyone see that that is achievable and helpful in growing your online business. Be sure to check out my other tutorials and learn more about the ease of working from home.
Sincerely,
Steph
Wow what great information! For the longest time I did not know what SEO meant. Since you had the link to it I clicked it to see. You explained so clearly and I found that very useful.
Your explained the process so easy, I am glad I landed on your website. Thank you and I will be saving your website to my favorites!
Hi Olive:
I am glad you find the information on my website easy to follow and comprehend. SEO is part of obtaining traffic to your website. Glad to hear you will be adding this site to your favorites. Please let me know if there is anything I can help with.
Steph
Hello Steph This is a great overview of how to create a social media marketing plan. You make it so easy for people to follow and you let us know the importance of having one. The steps are very straightforward and well laid out and help us get a mental picture of what’s required at each phase. I also liked you use of images they are very good (not to many) but very relevant to your article. Good work here Thank you 🙂
Thank you Peter. I tried to emphasize the importance of having a social media marketing plan as well as easily lay out the groundwork to demonstrate how easy it is. I am glad you thought my images were not too overdone. I try to create an aesthetically pleasing look without too much going on.
Hi Stephanie
Excellent tips on developing a social media marketing plan.
I really am having trouble in this department. I find the time management part to be a bit of a challenge. Before you know it, 30minutes has already gone by and you have only been onto one platform.
Have you experienced this kind of thing? I like your recommendation on the canva program.
Will be checking that out.
Thanks
Roopesh
Hi Roopesh
Thank you for visiting. I can totally relate to how hard it can be to manage your time. I struggle with that as well and I think most people do to some degree. My article on 4 Tips for Blogging through the Holidays might help. Even though, we are passed the end of year holidays, many of these tips can still be applied to managing time. Such the fourth tip in my article on the use of an alarm clock to make sure you do not spend too much time on one particular task.
Thank you again Roopesh!
Sincerely
Steph
wow, a lot of information to take in, i seriously need help with the visual so am going to bookmark you. thank you so much for pointing out how important it is to know your customers – call them clients, viewers, readers or what ever you like – they are people and need to be treated with respect and known as humans. so many seem to forget that, i love thats important to you 🙂 have an amazing day
Hi Lori:
Many thanks for visiting my website today. I am glad you are able to see my importance for treating our readers with the respect and kindness they all deserve. I can each question and each comment and make sure I answer their questions and concerns as best as I possibly can. Like you said, you can call them referrals, leaders, viewers, etc. — they are all people and need to be addressed as such.
Have a wonderful day!
Steph
Thank you for the detailed information regarding a social media marketing plan. Painting the right picture in the minds of others create an unbelievable attraction to what ever niche you are involved with. Your information is very beneficial.
Thank you
Troy
Hi Troy:
Thank you for checking out my article on how to create a social media marketing plan. I have aimed to provide as much beneficial information as I could on my website. The content on my website is geared toward the person who is brand new to the idea of building an online business. Perhaps people may be fearful and think it is not possible, but my aim for my website is to show everyone that it is possible and to not listen to negative thoughts of others whom will tell you it is not possible, because it is.
Steph
Hi, Steph Thank you for your great tips and information. I looked at your IBOToolbox and I need to bookmark this incredible page for your tutorials. How helpful! Wow, you are very talented and put in a lot of hard work to help your visitors. I feel like a social media marketing plan has been a little out of my league but you made it simple and straight forward.. I may just tackle it yet.. Goals are not my forte and wonder if you have an outline or tips on creating productivity goals for my website success. Thank you again.
Hi PJ:
Thank you for visiting my website today and for taking the time to leave a very thoughtful comment. I am glad you were able to spend some with the various tutorials I have here.
IBOT (Internet Business Owners Toolbox) is a great resource that I believe is best utilized in conjunction with Wealthy Affiliate. Using the benefits of each of these programs will help online business owners and affiliate marketers can the traffic and training they need to succeed. The training at Wealthy Affiliate is essential but the traffic and SEO benefits of IBOT are also important.
In answer to your question about tips on creating productivity goals for your website success, check out my article on 15 Ways to improve Motivation and Concentration. In addition, I have a free ebooks you may want to check out:
Money and the Law of Attraction by Abraham Hicks
365 Steps to Self-Confidence
30 Days to a Powerful Memory