Social Media Planning: Strategy, Goals, and Implementation

This assignment explores the intricacies of social media planning, emphasizing its importance in modern marketing. The student delves into the social media planning cycle, highlighting the need for strategic content creation, user engagement, and the establishment of clear marketing goals. The assignment covers listening and observation techniques on social media platforms to understand user preferences, setting measurable goals, and creating effective strategies. It differentiates between self-promotion and brand advocacy, illustrating how individuals can leverage social media for personal branding or promoting external services. The assignment also includes a debate on the necessity of social media presence versus official websites for businesses, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each platform, and providing references to support the arguments. The student concludes by emphasizing the significance of a well-defined social media strategy for achieving business objectives, particularly in the context of small startups or individuals showcasing their work.

Week 4
Social media planning cycle
Social media has become essential part of our life to interact with friends and family. However,
if I view it from the context of marketing, then a lot of planning goes behind creating and
maintaining web pages. Social media planning is a continuous process that requires marketers to
plan, execute, review and revise the content to meet the expectations of the audience. Social
media planning increases website traffic, exposure, loyal followers and growth prospects
(Bekoglu & Onaylı, 2016). The social media marketing plan can be organized in a series of
different steps such as define social media strategy, social media positioning, create content,
optimize content, build social media presence, apply business basics, distribute social media
content, user engagement, integrate social media across the company, measure social media
results (Cohen, 2015). Some of the steps can be combined to develop a broad social media
marketing plan.
Ways to listen and observe the social web
I am particular about my social media profile. It must be attractive and include relevant content
for the users to visit my pages. If in business, I recommend to be attentive of the users’ likes/
comments and provide suitable solutions to make them feel heard. Listen them well and you
would find a gradual increase in your user following on facebook, twitter, Instagram etc.
Observe what all they like, dislike on social media sites through comments, likes, tweets etc.
Set goals and create strategies & link social media goals to actions
There should be clarity about marketing goals before moving on to the execution. Be specific
and clear about the marketing goals on social media sites. For instance, I would aim ‘to increase

the number of facebook likes to 100K by December 2017’ or ‘To increase profit by 10% through
Instagram’ etc. So, I have statistics with me to decide on the market strategies. I will keep on
updating my social media pages on regular basis to hold the interest of the users. Better to have a
schedule to refresh the social media pages to keep the momentum going and achieve the goals
set. You can have online competitions to attract more users on the facebook page and increase
the activity or trend on twitter with a quirky hashtag.
Difference between self-promotion and brand services/ambassadors
While I can use these strategies to promote myself, but if I do so for some other brands or
services, then I will be a brand advocate. I can do so by uploading pictures of other popular
pages or retweet other stuff to promote other products and services on my personal accounts.
Week 5
Social media planning
Social media has become important for businesses to promote products and services. However, it
is equally effective for small startups or individuals like me who are looking for a perfect
platform to display my paintings. Though I have pursued paintings as a hobby for years, I feel
it’s high time that I take up the support of social media sites to display my work. While sites like
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are amazing for marketing my art, social media is meant to be
‘social’. Since social media interests’ people for various reasons, but most of the people look for
fun. So I would like to follow the 80/20 rule wherein 80% would be entertainment and 20%
promotion of my art. I will present my paintings on an Instagram page in a manner that pulls the
interest of the followers.

A business no longer needs a web page as social media presence is enough. Debate.
While I agree that social media is a good platform to promote businesses, I feel the official web
pages still have its relevance in long term. It is quite easy to open official accounts on social
media sites, but require technical skills to create and manage an official website. Businesses have
to abide by the policies of the social media platform for marketing unlike their own website. For
instance, there is risk of your social media account being suspended due to some computer
algorithm and you lose all your followers on the social media page (Bacal, 2017). However,
there is no such risk for website. Social media platforms merely give you information about the
likes, dislikes, comments etc. However, the confusion lingers as if the figures are relevant
enough for companies to change marketing strategies. Social media platforms decide what is
seen on your official account pages. For instance the random ads could be annoying, and distract
the users from engaging with the company. But with your website, you are the one deciding what
all has to be posted. You have the decision making power to protect the image of your company
through content, images, videos etc. It helps in maintaining the reputation with the business
clients and provides detailed information about the products and services.
References
Bacal, R. (2017). Twenty Reasons Why Social Media Is Not Enough For Small Business.
Retrieved from http://customerthink.com/twenty-reasons-why-social-media-is-not-enough-for-
small-business/.
Cohen, H. (2015). Super Simple Social Media Strategy: Get Big Results. Retrieved
fromhttp://heidicohen.com/social-media-marketing-cycle/

Bekoglu, F. B., & Onaylı, C. (2016). Strategic Approach in Social Media Marketing and a Study
on Successful Facebook Cases. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 12(7).