The role of a marketing calendar<\/h3>\n
Most organisations have a marketing calendar that outlines the key campaigns for the year, typically broken down into monthly cycles. As with the content calendar, I discussed in the previous article, this helps define the big campaigns, the key messages, promotions, CTAs and the channels through which they will be delivered.<\/p>\n
Social media needs to align with this calendar. Typically the most successful campaigns are executed across multiple channels simultaneously, promoting the same core message, albeit with a slightly different execution in each channel e.g. paid search campaigns typically use product and offer led CTAs but social posts are more conversational.<\/p>\n
The marketing calendar is flexible and fluid, so it can change to allow the marketing team to respond to changing internal and external environments. There\u2019s no point defining a campaign for 6 months\u2019 time and then sticking to your guns even when the campaign is no longer relevant, or a competitor has trumped your promotion.<\/p>\n
Using a calendar doesn\u2019t preclude using social media to post custom content that isn\u2019t part of these wider campaigns.<\/p>\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n Download Paid Member Resource \u2013 Social Media Strategy Guide <\/strong><\/p>\n Understand how to best use social media in your marketing strategy as an individual or as a business.<\/p>\n Access the Social media marketing strategy guide<\/a><\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div><\/p>\n You can. And you should. <\/strong><\/p>\n An element of spontaneity is important to social media marketing, but always remember that there is (or should be) a set of guidelines that inform what and how you communicate. Don\u2019t go off brand, or post content that\u2019s at odds with your core marketing messages.<\/p>\n The marketing calendar gives you a campaign level plan; you then need to tweak the campaign assets to suit social networks.<\/p>\n Here are some examples\u2026<\/p>\n Product campaigns:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Events:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Always ask yourself the following question: \u201chow can we make campaign content interesting and relevant to our social audience?\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n Marketing campaigns create social conversations, even when the catalyst is another channel. For example, an offline ad can be shared by a user on a social network, which generates interactions with other users.<\/p>\n Do you have a process for briefing your social team for each campaign, even if social isn\u2019t a core element?<\/p>\n If not, put one in place. Your social team needs to know what is happening, where, when and why. It needs to plan how it can take advantage of this campaign in the social space and ensure that someone is monitoring brand social channels and brand mentions.<\/p>\n If the social world is being critical, you need to listen, learn and respond. If your marketing is getting love, you need to encourage and reward it.<\/p>\n Social and SEO should show each other love.<\/p>\n Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n Social signals have long been part of search engine ranking algorithms, and recency is important. You should look at how key content and landing page URLs can be shared socially to amplify reach. This includes:<\/p>\n SEO can also support social, by providing keyword data that can help social marketers understand what keywords people use to search and browse. This can help with copywriting for social posts, as well as for influencer research.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take the example of a shoe retailer. The SEO team flags to the social team that the search query \u201ccourt shoes\u201d<\/em> is trending and there\u2019s a new editorial landing page on the website with great content, including celebrity videos.<\/p>\n The social team can then use a social research tool like Buzzsumo to find out what content, and people, is most popular for this keyword. They can use this insight to work out what style of content would be of most interest to the social audience and identify relevant influencers to promote the content to. This can help generate new content that is tailored for the social audience, rather than relying on existing content.<\/p>\n It's also a useful feedback loop for the content and SEO teams, flagging what related content is getting the most shares. This can help tweak existing content or provide ideas for future content.<\/p>\n Your take away<\/strong> First, it\u2019s important to realise that paid social isn\u2019t just an extension of your paid search campaigns; different audiences, different tools, different execution.<\/p>\n I know paid media specialists who\u2019ve seen paid social campaigns fail because they simply replicate a paid search approach. There are a few similarities but we\u2019re talking about push versus pull marketing; just because the two channels have the word \u201cpaid\u201d in common it doesn\u2019t mean the same approach works for each.<\/p>\n The similarities:<\/p>\n The difference<\/p>\n Paid Social is a highly accountable form of push marketing; you need to segment and structure your activity so that you can optimise for ROI using the data you generate, but there\u2019s a different skill set required to that of a paid search practitioner in being able to research which groups of people are most likely to respond (totally different to KW research) AND knowing how to pitch to each segment through creative (slightly) less constraining than the PPC 25,35,35 text ad.<\/p>\n The key to effective paid social planning is blending the right resource. You need to roll in the expertise of planners, creative and biddable media experts. It\u2019s not often that the core skill sets required belong to just one person, but the temptation for many is to lump it onto one person\u2019s desk. The most important areas of expertise to have are:<\/p>\n \u201cPlanners can save themselves hours of time by talking to the client, and talking to customers \u2013 the people immersed in the subject matter are the ones who roll off the social media groups that target customers follow and the twitter accounts of the big influencers without even thinking about it.<\/p>\n Paid Social is much more intensive to manage to a high standard than Paid Search. Make sure you allocate enough man hours, and don\u2019t shirk on the research and planning \u2013 success comes from finding the right social groups to target and developing a great pitch to use in your ads. Cutting corners on this process will mean your ROI is doomed from the start!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Graham Everitt<\/a>, freelance e-business consultant.<\/strong><\/p>\n Social media ad tools offer a wide range of targeting and goal options, so it\u2019s important to get to grips with the platforms you plan to use before starting your planning. Work out:<\/p>\n Paid social and search informing each other<\/strong><\/p>\n Although they\u2019re different, you should ensure they\u2019re integrated. For example, you may already have spent a lot of time optimising paid search creative and landing pages, we can be used to inform paid search campaigns.<\/p>\n Your keyword data is full of useful insights. Apply your keyword learning to the social scene, and use these keywords to drive social keyword research. You will find some cross over and this can help save time in copywriting and ad optimization.<\/p>\n You can also make use of CRM data to help with social targeting by creating look alike audiences based on existing customer profiles. So customers acquired via other channels can help you build your audience profiles on social networks.<\/p>\n Your take away<\/strong> Above I outlined some ways use social media to promote events in the lead up to the event. Now let\u2019s look at how you maximise social reach during and after the event. I\u2019ve helped a few organisations create event social media marketing plans, and some simple activities can drive significant increases in social engagement.<\/p>\n Consider the following:<\/p>\n Your take away<\/strong> Wouldn\u2019t it be great to be able to deliver more personalized marketing to customers whose email addresses you have?<\/p>\n Well you can.<\/p>\n Using tools like Full Contact<\/a>, you can upload customer email addresses and append social data, such as Twitter handles.<\/p>\n You can segment your audience to flag high-value customers and then deliver personalized 1-1 communication via social off the back of campaigns delivered in other channels. For example, your latest email has some killer deals, so you contact your top 100 customers via their social profiles 24hrs early to give them special access.<\/p>\n Yes you can do that via email but the alignment of CRM and social data enables a more personal style of communication.<\/p>\n And yes you can do that via paid social using the remarketing tools offered by platforms like Facebook. But by enriching your CRM database with customers\u2019 social handles, you can build direct organic conversations.<\/p>\n So this is step 6 in the Smart Insights 12 step series on social media strategy and planning.<\/p>\n Did you find it useful?<\/strong> Please join in the discussion and share your experience in the comments field at the bottom of this page.<\/p>\n Keep an eye out for next month\u2019s article, \u201cResourcing for\u00a0social media marketing\u201d.<\/p>\n Missed the previous articles? Catch-up here:<\/p>\n Thanks Social media strategy and planning essentials series This is part 6 of my Smart Insights 12 part social media series. In the last part we looked at the role of content in social media; in this blog, I discuss how …..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":75277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_glsr_average":0,"_glsr_ranking":0,"_glsr_reviews":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[168],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"ASOS](\"http:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-08-at-10.45.47-550x344.png\")
<\/p>\nTailoring marketing messages for social media<\/h3>\n
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Briefing social teams to handle campaign activity<\/h3>\n
Social supporting organic marketing<\/h3>\n
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![\"Buzzsumo](\"http:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-15-at-14.28.33-550x344.png\")
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\nGet your social and SEO teams working together to analyse content trends and share information to help inform plans.<\/p>\nUnderstanding the difference between paid social and paid search<\/h3>\n
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\nMake sure\u00a0the paid search and social teams talk to each other if it\u2019s not done by the same people. Get them to share data, insights and plans.<\/p>\nUsing social networks for event marketing<\/h3>\n
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\nSocial media can extend the life of an event. Think about the content you can share to amplify the event reach and impact.<\/p>\nAppending social data to CRM contacts<\/h3>\n
Your thoughts, comments and personal experience<\/h3>\n
\nHow important do you think it is to ensure social is aligned with other marketing channels in terms of campaign messaging and content? What tips and techniques can you share to help others?<\/p>\n\n
\nJames<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/digitaljuggler.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/JG_1-e1456150429966.jpg\")
Thanks to James Gurd<\/a> for sharing his advice and opinions in this post. James is an experienced ecommerce and digital marketing consultant with more than 14 years\u2019 B2C and B2B digital strategy and transformation experience. He is the Owner and lead consultant at Digital Juggler<\/a>. You can follow him on Twitter<\/a> or connect on LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/div>\n