Social Media - Do you need a Strategy?

Yes!

According to emarketer.com 52% of marketers are acting without a game plan. What are the impacts to this that I have observed?

I have heard Marketers and Clients say....

1. "Let's sign up for all the Social Media Applications so we can increase optimization."

• The issue with this is while you may have solved one issue (partially) you have created another if you are not updating your social media sites in a way that supports your brand.
• In addition, optimization is also maximized by how often you update your social media applications.

2. "Don't worry about the business plan, our focus is the marketing plan."

• The issue with this is your marketing plan needs to be 100% tied back to your business plan. If I were asked to create a marketing plan to sell 1000 widgets in one state, I would create a marketing plan to support this as I would if asked to create a marketing plan to sell 4000 widgets in four states...the bottom line is the plans would look very different.
• Know your business goals and build your marketing plan to support them

3. "Let's just focus on the Social Media Strategy."

• A quality marketing plan is integrated and all marketing components are evaluated and tactics are designed to work together and complement one another to reach revenue goals.
• The old saying..."No Man is an Island" also stands true in that Social Media is not an island....integrate with your overall business and marketing strategy...see image at beginning of post.

Be smart in your approach and create the social media strategy (road map) and integrate within your overall business and marketing plans.