Create a Social Media Plan to Help Your Online Marketing Succeed

Non-stop sometimes refers to airplane flights. Today, it refers to the chronic buzz surrounding social media.

While I consider myself a heavy social media user, what I find lacking in most efforts is a reason other than the bandwagon for hopping onto Twitter or Ning or Facebook or snuff, for that matter.

Tim Berry, of Palo Alto Software, created a logical and much needed post called "
Social Media Business Plan in 5 Easy Pieces" over at the OPEN Forum by American Express.
He is the founder of a very successful Business Plan software. His systematic approach stems from his background as one of the top business planning experts -- after all, he wrote the book on it. His blog is a fun read, too.

I learned a bunch reading Tim’s post. The highlights include:

1. Set the review schedule
2. Set the business objectives
3. Set specific concrete steps
4. Match tasks to owners.
5. Develop useful metrics.

On #4, I have this challenge with a small project right now. Who is going to do what. The load quickly becomes unmanageable if you don't share it. More specifically, you need people to take ownership, to be accountable to the tasks. Tim states:

"Without ownership, the likelihood of implementation goes way down. When it’s to be done by a group or a committee, it’s just not as likely to be done.

"So for twitter, for example, who is responsible for which accounts? Who is doing what searches to find tweets related to those topics? Or in Facebook, who is responsible for page updates, and trolling the web for mentions? Who is doing which blog, and how often?"

Of course, his last bullet point is: Ready, set execute! Every all star that I know in the biz plan world knows a plan without execution is meaningless. Thanks for the great post, Tim.

If you've been flying by the seat of your social media pants, this post should add some clarity to your online marketing efforts. It will also help you make sense of the ever-present "buzz" around and create an actionable plan -- which is what many of us, including me sometimes, need to make our social media efforts pay dividends.

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TJ McCue is the content guy at Q4 Sales and the founder of Sales Rescue Team.