How a promotional Plan can guide and control your social media flow.

Content is important what, when, why how and who

Maurice Watts

Last Update 4 months ago

How a promotional Plan can guide and control your social media flow.



As a marketer, these days, I often get asked about how clients should use social media. They want to know what platforms work best and they want to know what sort of things they should post on social media as if there was some magic single answer.


The reality is that before you do any social media marketing (and, by that, we don't actually mean ‘marketing’, we mean ‘promotions’) where we get messages out to a target audience, (marketing is way more complex than that but let's just stick with promotions for the moment.)


The first thing you need to know to do it well is:-

“Who are your target audience?”

Hopefully, you have a good grasp of what you're selling, but you'd be very surprised how often people who know that don't know precisely who is most likely to buy it or have a need for it. 

For business to consumer businesses (B2C), things like socio economic categorisation lifestyle circumstances family income housing status, and so on, other kind of factors that allow you to segregate audiences into those who might be interested and those who won't.


In the business to business (B2B) space, knowing organisation, organisation type, number of staff, annual turnover, sic code activity area, and of course, job title, are equally vital.


Once you've worked out who your target audience are; you then need to find out.

· Where do they hang out

· What media platforms do they use

· Where do they go to get news and opinions

· Who they value as influencers.


That is who and where you send it to!

“What do I send them?”

That depends on what it is that you want to do.

You might want to build up reputation as the go to person or Maven for some niche, skill set, or knowledge set, which is your specialisation. This is known as pull marketing and works by stimulating your target audience to engage with you. They come to you for your expertise or knowledge. (If Knowledge is your stock in trade you might want to watch “Knowledge is power”)


Equally you might simply want to get a message out there to promote or sell something. Now you are treating your audience as a simple broadcast advertising audience who at best have agreed to look at your stuff. Note that they have no real engagement with you all skin in the game, so your proposition has to be extremely relevant to them and their needs right now and demonstrate very clearly to them in their terms what's in it for them to take any further action.


“What is Spam?”

Some will of course regard this as simple spam. The reality is that the only difference between information and spam is relevance to the person receiving it. The more closely targeted your content and medium is to the target audience, the higher is your chance of response. And the smaller the chance of getting reported for spamming.


So, what do we do?

We decide what we want to say to our target audience, which tells them.


“What’s in it for me?”

In their terms and styles in such a way that they are stimulated to action.

We then create a series of pieces of content to send them, categorised by platform.


(The language and messaging may well change slightly from platform to platform to meet the general platform audience style for example we would talk to LinkedIn and TikTok audiences slightly differently)


By platform I mean the social media that are effectively broadcast media e.g.

· LinkedIn,

· Facebook,

· TikTok,

· X,

· Instagram,

· Telegram,

· Pinterest,

· and many others

(You will, however, be using those where your target audience, most hang out!).


But, using Web Apps, like Maltix, you can also send them directly to your tribes and subscribers via:

· Email

· SMS

· Push notifications.

· RSS feeds

· Newsfeeds

· Newsletters

It therefore stands to reason that if your posts on social media can recruit followers to your tribes and subscribers you can send them more engaging, relevant, and useful content, thus building loyalty over time.

When we have, perhaps, a month’s-worth, of content, which might be anything from 4 to 31 articles, we then store that in our knowledge base.


Then we go to the engine, method, or automation that we are using (at Maltix it's built into the WebApp) and specify:

· Which article goes onto

· Which platform

· On what dates and

· At what times.

And, after setting it up, so that it retrieves the right content for each posting hit the go button and wait for it to do its thing.

You may want to set up more than one month's worth but that will reduce your ability to respond and track changes in the marketplace.


This is what you need to do, but if you can't do it or you need more guidance then please contact Melville Marketing or Maltix for help and advice.


If you want more Marketing help or to engage a specialist Marketing Mentor, go to Melville Marketing

© Melville Marketing June 2024


https://maltix.tawk.help/article/knowledge-and-power

https://maltix.tawk.help/article/knowledge-bases-down-the-years

https://youtu.be/HXubm03PKwI

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