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The 10 Steps in Developing a Strategic Social Media Plan for
Your Business
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Quantif ying an ROI f rom social media is only possible af ter you’ve developed a strategic plan that
will make measurement both clear and easy. When it comes to social media “80% of marketers
begin with tactics instead of goals” – eMarketer Report. Here’s how to build a strategic social
media plan t o ensure that you don’t waste t ime or money on tactics that might work.
Why do you need t o measure social media ROI?
It will never be possible to measure all aspects of social media ROI. However, this is not a good enough
reason not to measure social media ROI. Currently, only 20% of marketers actively measure ROI -
eMarketer Report
Image: conf luencedigital.com
While it’s important to balance ROI with metrics that show more incremental value, if a business is to
increase profitability, customers, and to grow, then ROI remains the critical metric and the single best
measure of success over the longer term.
Start by listening
Many companies view social media as “build it and they will come”. They create channels on Facebook,
Twitter and YouTube and start broadcasting their message, expecting a mass of new fans and interaction.
It doesn’t happen!
Participation on social media f irst requires you to do research, observe and listen. Conversations are
already taking place about your products, brand, competitors etc. Using a combination of both social and
traditional tools, discover, listen, learn, and engage directly with customers. Allow this intelligence and
insight to dictate your engagement strategies.
Develop a st rategic social media plan
Af ter you’ve taken time to discover how customers would like you to engage on social media, you now
need to develop a social media strategy that will generate meaningf ul and real returns f or the business.
The 10 steps in developing a strategic social media are:
1. Align with the business
2. Discover opportunities
3. Def ine goals

Speak to and get buy-in f rom senior management
Next, start to def ine a separate strategic plan f or each department.
Identify KPIs (key performance indicat ors)
With every goal, you will need to also identif y an associated metric/s to measure the success of social
media at solving that problem.
Choose a metric that’s indicative of that goal’s progress and is easy to measure. Social media evolves
rapidly so your tactics may have to change later. Theref ore traditional business metrics such as:
Conversions
Customers
Cost
Timings
Satisf action levels
are f ar more ef f ective at measuring social media ROI and they will be resilient to any tactical changes.
Assign values to KPIs
Work with each department to analyse and assign a monetary value to improvements across the
selected metrics.
Some metrics will be easily available, i.e. sales
For others, the specif ic department may have to do some work, i.e. customer satisf action
surveys
Seeking improvements in one area of the business will potentially impact positively on another,
i.e. an improvement in customer satisf action will have a positive ef f ect on sales.
This is more proof if needed f or departments to work more closely together using social media
tools to drive improvement across the company, i.e. sales and customer service
Decide on channels
Investigate the suitability of each social media channel to serve the specif ic goals. Don’t assume that all
social media channels are created equal, they’re not. Some will be more suitable depending on the
particular goal, i.e. Twitter is better at managing customer service goals than Facebook.
Det ermine tactics
Once you have decided on the most suitable social media channel/s, you will need to determine those
tactics that best serve that goal. You will be looking f or examples of tactics that are proven to work.

f ollowers on Twitter by 200%. This results in 1500 visits and an increase of 1% in the conversion
of this traf f ic. Now every 100 visits (f rom Twitter) equates to $150 in sales. The overall ROI is
$1750 less the cost of the tactics. So the ROI of engagement increase is $1250 less the cost of
that tactic.
Thanks f or reading our 10 steps in developing a strategic social media plan f or business.
How would you go about developing a social media strategy? What would you add?
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Contact us
If you would like to talk f urther about how social media
can benef it your business or if you would like The
Ahain Group to help you along this path please f eel
f ree to contact us.
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Address: Unit 206 | NSC Campus | Mahon | Cork | Ireland
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