Social Media Marketing Planning

This week we are discussing strategic planning with social media, how it compares to typical marketing planning, and what strategies have some of our favorite brands used with social media.

Both marketing planning and social media marketing planning use situation analysis to address internal factors that effect their plan such as what has the company used to set themselves apart from other brands and created added value to their brand, external factors such as who are their competitors, and SWOT analysis which looks at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The difference in these two types of planning happens in how the plan is executed, social media planning addresses how the different zones of social media (community, publishing, entertainment, and commerce) can be used to execute the marketing plan. Traditional marketing planning focuses more on target market, product, pricing, promotion, and supply chain strategies, which concentrates more on the product itself using traditional forms of marketing vehicles and not how each vehicle can be used differently to target a specific type of consumer.

I think my strengths would be found in step 1, conducting situational analysis and identifying key opportunities, and step 2, stating objectives. I enjoy creating the foundation of a plan to help me keep everything organized and focused, so conducting situational and SWOT analysis would be something I would be comfortable performing. The same goes with stating objectives; setting up a focus on what the organization is expecting to accomplish with the plan allows me to draw inspiration from that objective. My weaknesses would be in step 3, gather insight into target audience, and step 5, create an experience strategy encompassing selected zones. I have a hard time imagining who would be the target market outside of the obvious targets, so being able to identify more abstract targets would be challenging for me. I don’t have much experience participating or developing experience activities in social media marketing such as tweeting, submitting pictures for competitions, and sharing promotional information. I plan to strengthen my weaknesses in these areas by becoming more informed about these steps and maybe even perform them for clients we will be working with throughout the semester.

One of my favorite brands is Free People, they use their website to sell clothing, shoes, and accessories, as well as provide links to their blogs and social media websites, which creates a uniformed platform across social community, social publishing, and social commerce. Their focus is on apparel, music, natural living, exercise, travel, and art; so it’s not just an apparel brand it’s also a lifestyle brand. This type of natural, positive, alternative lifestyle resonates with their target market because their customers are young, open minded, creative individuals who support living a green lifestyle that focuses on bettering themselves naturally, making a difference in global environmental issues, and contributing to a more artistic culture.

Another brand I like is Roxy, who partnered with Diane von Furstenberg to create a collection of bathing suits, surfing gear, and accessories. This collaboration combines a high-end fashion designer and a world-wide surfing brand; for those who don’t know a lot about the surfing world, there is a lot of style and fashion that goes into what a surfer wears in and out of the water, how they surf, and what their board looks like. Just like in fashion all these factors are an outward expression of the person inside, so a surfers style is unique to each individual. DVFlovesRoxy was promoted through the Roxy and Nordstrom websites, the Nordstrom catalog/app, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and email. The campaign utilized many different social media tools to allow users to share the promotion, gain access to exclusive prizes, and purchase the merchandise. By allowing users to share the promotion of this collection on so many different social media websites, they broadened the target range making it possible for a limited time promotion to reach more people.

When it comes to a company or brand not being a good social media user I couldn’t pin point any brand or company in particular, but I would say that having inconsistent posts would be the biggest mistake that smaller companies make in marketing their company. In our technologically driven society people have a drive to share and connect with like minded people, so by not giving customers the opportunity to promote a brand or company they believe in, those companies are passing up a great avenue for brand awareness and promotion. 

Thanks for visiting my blog and I hope this sparks some inspirational thought, as so many of the brands I follow do for me!