Archive for the ‘Social Marketing’ Category

Social Media Marketing Plan Template – For (Word, PDF)

For one to get the most out of using social media in his or her business, it is important to develop a social media marketing plan that enables one to understand the goals and objectives of the business and most importantly to measure his or her success. Social media has been in existence for quite some times now meaning that information can easily be found. Some of these information are complete while the rest require one to do more research and cobble together so as to come up with a complete strategy.

Here are some sample templates to help you.

Objective determination objectives of the social media marketing plan are the goals that inform ones strategy for what platforms to be on, some of the things that he or she should post and the kind of metrics to track and this is a determination of ones investment returns. Some of the main goals include; increasing the awareness of the brand, driving sales, lead generation and creation of a community around the brand.

Making a platform decision there are three considerations that have to be made here. These are; the amount of tie that one can devote to a social network per week, the availability of the resources to come up with a designation capturing the users attention and lastly is the appearance of a target demographic.

Profile optimization some of the things that need to be optimized here include the headers together with the profile images, provision of a complete information about the company, the search engine optimization, inning of the best content among others. It is important to note that the appearance of website is a responsibility of the owner.

Getting the right tone the best way to do this is to keep in mind the target audience. Mid-management professionals for example require a professional tone in the same way, an audience of you people require one to post contents that are behind the scenes and that have a casual voice

Coming up with a calendar a social media content calendar gives a social marketing plan an outline of the kind of content that is being pushed and on which platform. Having this calendar makes social media posting a little bit simple as there is an outline of what to do and when.

The above steps provide a road map to having a successful social media marketing plan. Above all, one ought to remember to be social, to have consistency while posting and to make a great investment in the field of visuals. Above all, one should involve testing and measurements in his or her work so as to have an evaluation of progress.

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Social Media Marketing Plan Template - For (Word, PDF)

Social Marketing Theory

Social marketing theory is a collection of theories that focus on how socially valuable information can be promoted. This theory has been used by social and welfare organizations to help promote or discourage various behaviors. The theory is administrative in nature in such that it seeks to outline a framework that can be used to design, implement and evaluate information campaigns. The target audience is identified based on their information need. Once this is done information is packaged and distributed in a manner that will be easily accessible to the intended audience.

cacaroot/dollar photo club

The theory is an attempt to clearly understand how societal and psychological factors work to successfully manipulate them in order to increase how effective mass media information campaigns are. The theory focuses on helping identify the various social and psychological barriers that hinder the flow of information through the mass media and offers ideas and ways to overcome these barriers. These strategies range from being indigenous to the use of saturation advertising.

Features of Social Marketing Theory

1. Creating Audience Awareness

When there is a need to promote any new idea, person or behavior, the first step is to create awareness that such a new concept or individual exists. Awareness is created by using all available channels at ones disposal like news media and even new media like the internet. One of the easiest ways to create awareness is having a saturation television campaign. But the drawback is thats a costly affair. The benefit of using newer media on the other hand is that a wider range of audience can be reached out to. The use of internet helps reach younger audience who may not read newspapers or depend on television for information.

2. Targeting the Right Audience

When disseminating messages, it is important to first identify the audience that requires the message and then finding the most efficient means of reaching them with the message. This helps cut costs and ensures higher levels of audience penetration. For example, if the message is intended for old people, using the internet to spread information would be a waste of time as most elderly people do not use computers. A more effective way would be to use radio and television to get the message across.

3. Reinforce the Message

When people receive a new message once, they tend to forget it easily. Its therefore necessary to reinforce the message by repeatedly ensuring that individuals are exposed to the message from different channels. Promoting the media in various mass media, going door to door, holding group discussions, having debates on television are ways in which messages can be reinforced. People can eventually change themselves as agents when they start spreading the message that they have received from others.

4. Cultivate Images or Impressions

When the audience is not interested in the person, product or service being promoted, they will not seek out any information about them. In such a scenario, image advertising is used. Here recognizable and easily understandable images are shown and the new product or service is shown in relation to that image. This helps create a favorable setting for promoting the new product. For example, watching an old couple reminisce about their college days and romance while sipping a hot cup of coffee is a tactic where a familiar event is used to attach happy emotions to a new coffee product, thus developing its image.

5. Stimulate Interest

To make audience seek information, it is necessary to grab their attention and stimulate interest. Once this is done, information should be made easily accessible to the general public. Dramatic events or unexpected actions help capture the interest of the audience. A politician photographed cleaning a beach helps drive home the point that he cares for the environment. A dish washing product that claims one bottle will clean a thousand plates could organize an event where a thousand or more plates are washed in real using a single bottle. This event could be promoted as breaking the Guinness Book of World Record and immediately causes people to become interested in the product. Similar ideas could be used to further social welfare schemes and products.

6. Induce Desired Result

Once information has reached the intended audience, efforts should be taken to ensure that the desired decision is arrived at. A campaign against smoking needs to ensure that people stop smoking. A new product being introduced should result in actual sales or usage.

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Social Marketing Theory

Social Media Marketing Course and Certification (FREE)

1. Introduction

In order to be able to follow the content of this e-book, you will first learn about marketing and social media which will help you get deeper understanding of how these two are connected.

2. Social Media Marketing

This chapter is focused on explaining what social media marketing is, as well as which types of social media websites are available to the online marketers. Mobile social media is also the focus of this chapter.

3. The Most Important Social Media Websites

You can start promoting through social media as soon as you know which websites would be perfect for your business. This section highlights the most important websites and particular features each website provides for online promotion and exposure.

4. Blogging

Blogging is a type of social media marketing, which is why the entire chapter of this e-book is devoted to explaining what blogging is and which platforms you can use for blogging. You will also find out about recommendations related to improving your blogging activity.

5. Social Media Engagement

In this chapter you will learn about the term of social media engagement, why it is important to work on increasing engagement, and how to increase social media engagement.

6. Social Media and Target Audience

Target audience is the group of people you are trying to reach, and here you will learn about how to define your target audience, how to use social media to learn more information about your target audience and how to target the people you are trying to reach through social media.

7. Sharing Content on Social Media

Sharing content on social media includes sharing different types of content, such as photos, graphics, videos, and links. You will learn some important things to have in mind when sharing content in order to make sure you get the most out of it.

8. Social Bookmarking Websites

This chapter introduces the topic of social bookmarking websites and how those can help with promoting your content and reaching more people. Recommendations on the most popular social bookmarking websites you can use are also part of this section.

9. Approach to Social Media

Defining your approach is important part of successful social media marketing, which is why this chapter contains some of the best tips to help you refine your approach and learn how to be more successful on social media.

10. Dos and Donts of Social Media

This chapter features recommendations on what to do and what not to do on social media, and how those actions reflect on your business and popularity of your social media accounts.

11. Social Media Strategy

Detailed guide on how to create and implement your own social media strategy is going to help you boost the performance of your social media accounts.

12. Tips on Using Social Media in Marketing

This chapter contains some of the tips on how to optimize your social media accounts and how to evaluate the performance of social media accounts.

13. Using Social Media for Promotion

There are two types of promotion available on social media, paid advertising and free promotion. Learn about both of these and which one you should use for your business.

14. How to Promote Using Social Media

Here you will learn how you can use social media for promotions and how different approaches can be used to develop social media promotion strategy.

15. Social Media ROI

ROI helps you compare your investment and the results, which is perfect for evaluating the achievement of your goals, providing insight into efficiency of social media activity.

16. Using Social Media for Branding

In this chapter you will learn what branding is, how social media is connected with branding and how being active on social media can help you with branding.

17. Using Social Media for Establishing Relationship

Social networks are based on user interaction, which is why establishing relationships via social networks is very important in order to be successful in social media marketing.

18. Social Media and SEO

Both social media and SEO are part of internet marketing, and in this chapter you will learn how those two are connected.

19. Tools for Managing Social Media

This chapter includes recommendations on which tools to use to plan, manage and monitor the activity of your social media accounts.

20. Social Analytics

Monitoring the performance of social accounts is very important, which is why you need to learn what social analytics is and how to use those metrics to increase your performance.

21. Automation and Social Media

In this chapter you will find out how automation is used in social media marketing, as well as some benefits and disadvantages of automation you should be aware of.

22. Social Media and Other Types of Marketing

This is where you will find out more about other types of internet marketing and how they are connected to social media marketing.

23. Social Media Marketing Glossary

The glossary contains all of the most important terms related to social media marketing which will help you understand the content of this e-book and it can always be used as a reference.

24. Sample Questions

Contains list of questions and their answers for exercise.

25. Conclusion: The Importance of Social Media in Marketing

The book ends with explaining the importance of social media in modern business, and how social networks have become part of internet marketing.

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Social Media Marketing Course and Certification (FREE)

7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2017

Every year, I make predictions about what the coming years potential developments in the world of social media marketing. And every year, I have to think back and chuckle at all the people who claimed social marketing was just a fadas little as a few years ago.

Its clear now that social media marketing is here to stay, and its massive staying power is attributable to one key characteristicthe fact that social media keeps evolving. It responds to new tech like mobile devices, constantly exceeds users expectations, and competes within itself to bring us more and better features.

So what does 2017 have in store for us social media marketers?

1. Snaps Evolution Will Result in Interesting New Opportunities.

First up, Id like to mention the enormous evolution Snapchatnow called Snaphas undergone, and where it may be headed in the future. Already, Snap has transformed user expectations and major trends in the social marketing world. Its helped bring back a more moment-focused view of communication, leading to more in-the-moment and live content, its facilitated more mobile-centric app developments, and its introduced vertical videos into the mainstream. But now, its looking to develop products outside its main means of exchanging messages, introducing real-world glasses to help users capture first-person visual information. Expect big things from this recently-renamed company in 2017, and huge marketing opportunities to go along with them.

2. Twitter Fatigue Will Worsen.

Twitter isnt doing so hot. People have been predicting the death of Twitter for the past few years, but Im not here to say whether or not Twitters going to survive another year (it probably will). Instead, Id like to point out one potential factor for the apps decline, what I call Twitter fatigue. Twitter built itself on fast, bite-sized updates, but this leads to a barrage of both incoming and outgoing tweets. This was novel and exciting at first, but now users are starting to crave something differentbigger, more detailed, more interesting pieces of content that roll out slower, like once per day. You can see this trend taking hold already in platforms like Instagram.

3. Users Will Crave More Vicarious Experiences.

People are also starting to demand social media as a conduit for more vicarious experiences. Its no longer enough to post your sentiments about an event; you have to show your users what its like to be there. You can do this with things like live video, 360 images and video, and even just more real-time posting. The idea is to make your users feel like theyre a genuine part of the experience, as its unfolding.

4. New Areas of Communication Will Emerge.

Historically, social media existed as a way for individual people to communicate online. When brands caught on, it also became a way for brands to speak to and advertise to consumers. But now, social media is evolving in new communicative areas. Some platforms are offering means of customer service, increasing the significance and interactivity of exchanges between brands and consumers. Others, like Facebook, are delving into more professional communication. Expect to see more diversity here as more brands catch onto the potential.

5. An Ad Renaissance Will Occur.

Organic visibility has been declining for a while now, as platforms try catering to individual users over companies and organizations. But the secondary benefit for social platforms is that it forces more companies to dabble in paid advertising. Increased competition and pressure to become (or remain) profitable have also forced social platforms to come up with more ingenious and creative advertising options for businesses. The combination of these factors may lead to a new resurgence in social media advertising in 2017.

6. Inspiration and Imagination Will Become Fashionable.

Practical posts get a lot of consumer attention. Emotionally charged posts have a greater likelihood of circulating virally. But inspirational and imaginative posts are starting to make their appearances as even stronger candidates for social media success. These are often artistic in nature, giving users something pretty as opposed to something pragmatic or reactive. It also forces a separation from any kind of company positioning or low-key advertising, giving users something truly valuable. In 2017, it will be valuable to forgo some pretense here, and just post beautiful images or sentiments.

7. Brands Will Choose Social Platforms According to Survival of the Fittest.

Every year, new social media platforms emerge to try and disrupt the status quo or find their place among the heavy-hitters of the social media world. But obviously, entrepreneurs and marketers cant jump on every single platform that comes along. Instead, in 2017, well see more of a trend toward refinement; rather than spending equal effort on five different platforms, more businesses will find one platform that works especially well for them, and narrow their focus on it. As a result, we may see greater stratification between the major platforms of our era.

These are some of the most important trends I forecast for social media in 2017. Its going to remain a strong branch for any content or SEO strategy, and is a must-have for any business attempting to market themselves on a frugal budget.

You dont have to incorporate all these trends into your strategy for the coming year, but theres a good chance youll stand to benefit from at least dabbling and experimenting with them.

Then again, predictions in this field are tenuous at bestso well just have to wait and see what comes.

Want to get started with your own social media strategy? Grab my eBook, The Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing.

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7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2017

Social Marketing: Influencing Behaviors for Good – Nancy R …

Nancy R. Lee, MBA, is president of Social Marketing Services, Inc., in Seattle, Washington, a strategic advisor for social marketing campaigns at C+C in Seattle, and teaching associate at the University of Washington , where she teaches social marketing in the MPA program. With more than 30 years of practical marketing experience in the public and private sectors, Ms. Lee has held numerous corporate marketing positions, including vice president and director of marketing for Washington States second-largest bank and director of marketing for the regions Childrens Hospital and Medical Center.

Ms. Lee has consulted with more than 100 nonprofit organizations and has participated in the development of more than 200 social marketing campaign strategies for public sector agencies. Clients in the public sector include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Washington State Department of Health, Office of Crime Victims Advocacy, county Health and Transportation Departments, Department of Ecology, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Washington Traffic Safety Commission, City of Seattle, and Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Campaigns developed for these clients targeted issues listed below:

Health: teen pregnancy prevention, HIV/AIDS prevention, nutrition education, sexual assault, diabetes prevention, adult physical activity, tobacco control, arthritis diagnosis and treatment, immunizations, dental hygiene, senior wellness, and eating disorder awareness

Safety: drowning prevention, senior fall prevention, underage drinking and driving, youth suicide prevention, binge drinking, pedestrian safety, and safe gun storage

Environment: natural gardening, preservation of fish and wildlife habitats, recycling, trip reduction, water quality, and water and power conservation

She has conducted social marketing workshops around the world (Uganda, Jordan, South Africa, Ghana, Ireland, Australia, Singapore, Canada, Indonesia, India, Venezuela, Haiti) for more than 4,000 public sector employees involved in developing behavior change campaigns in the areas of health, safety, the environment, and financial well-being. She has been a keynote speaker on social marketing at conferences for improved water quality, energy conservation, family planning, nutrition, recycling, teen pregnancy prevention, influencing financial behaviors, wildfire prevention, and tobacco control.

Ms. Lee has coauthored ten other books with Philip Kotler: Social Marketing: Improving the Quality of Life (2002); Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing the Most Good for Your Company and Your Cause (2005); Marketing in the Public Sector: A Roadmap for Improved Performance (2006); Social Marketing: Influencing Behaviors for Good (2008 and 2011); Social Marketing: Changing Behaviors for Good (2016): GOOD WORKS! Marketing and Corporate Initiatives That Build A Better World . . . And The Bottom Line (2012); Up and Out of Poverty: The Social Marketing Solution (2009); Social Marketing in Public Health (2010); and Social Marketing to Protect the Environment (2011). More recently, she authored a book Policymaking for Citizen Behavior Change: A Social Marketing Approach (2017). She has also contributed articles to the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Social Marketing Quarterly, Journal of Social Marketing, and The Public Manager. (See more on Nancy Lee at http://www.socialmarketingservice.com)

Philip Kotler is the S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the J. L. Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Kellogg was twice voted Best Business School in Business Weeks survey of U.S. business schools. It is also rated Best Business School for the Teaching of Marketing. Professor Kotler has significantly contributed to Kelloggs success through his many years of research and teaching there.

He received his masters degree at the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. degree at MIT, both in economics. He did postdoctoral work in mathematics at Harvard University and in behavioral science at the University of Chicago.

Professor Kotler is the author of Marketing Management, the most widely used marketing book in graduate business schools worldwide; Principles of Marketing; Marketing Models; Strategic Marketing for Non-Profit Organizations; The New Competition; High Visibility; Social Marketing; Marketing Places; Marketing for Congregations; Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism; The Marketing of Nations; Marketing 3.0,; Good Works, Market Your Way to Growth, Winning Global Markets, Kotler on Marketing, Confronting Capitalism, and Democracy in Decline. He has published over 150 articles in leading journals, several of which have received best-article awards.

Professor Kotler was the first recipient of the Distinguished Marketing Educator Award (1985) given by the American Marketing Association (AMA). The European Association of Marketing Consultants and Sales Trainers awarded him their prize for Marketing Excellence. He was chosen as the Leader in Marketing Thought by the Academic Members of the AMA in a 1975 survey. He also received the 1978 Paul Converse Award of the AMA, honoring his original contribution to marketing. In 1995, Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI) named him Marketer of the Year. In 2012 he received the William L. Wilkie Marketing for a Better World: Award of the American Marketing Association Foundation (AMAF). In 2014, he was inducted into the AMA Marketing Hall of Fame. He was the first chosen Legend in Marketing and his work was published and reviewed in nine volumes.

Professor Kotler has consulted for such companies as IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Honeywell, Bank of America, Merck, and others in the areas of marketing strategy and planning, marketing organization, and international marketing.

He has been chairman of the College of Marketing of the Institute of Management Sciences, director of the American Marketing Association, trustee of the Marketing Science Institute, director of the MAC Group, former member of the Yankelovich Advisory Board, and a member of the Copernicus Advisory Board. He is was a member of the Board of Governors of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a member of the advisory board of the Drucker Foundation. He has received honorary doctoral degrees from Stockholm University, University of Zurich, Athens University of Economics and Business, DePaul University, the Cracow School of Business and Economics, Groupe H.E.C. in Paris, the University of Economics and Business Administration in Vienna, the Catholic University of Santo Domingo, and the Budapest School of Economic Science and Public Administration, and several other universities.

He has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and South America, advising and lecturing to many companies and organizations. This experience expands the scope and depth of his programs, enhancing them with an accurate global perspective.

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Social Marketing: Influencing Behaviors for Good - Nancy R ...