Do You Have a Facebook Plan?

Let's be honest, before getting started with anything you need a plan - and with Facebook it's no different.

Too often, I've seen businesses pointlessly posting on their Page with no clear purpose or direction.

Businesses will too often approach their activity on their Facebook page in a self-promotional, unfulfilling, and incoherent way.

This results in the following: a difficulty in gaining any traction with fans. And those fans they may have will grow to be uninterested (ignoring them) and not engage at all.

Do you have a Facebook Plan in place? If not, here's my approach -- it’s an overview what I tell clients. These are aspects that I feel make a content strategy on Facebook that will help you get noticed through the noise. First, some things to consider before you start:

Target Audience

This is where you'll start - by defining your audience. Not the goals or objectives of your Page, but who your audience is - don't focus on how many leads or conversions you'll get. If that's your starting point - you will fail!

Consider what makes up your perfect customer. Trying asking yourself these questions:

• Are they male or female?
• What is their age?
• Where do they live?
• Are they single or married?
• Do they have any children?
• What level of education do they have?
• What is their income?
• What interest do they have?
• What are their dislikes?

Document what your customer looks like. This will help you understand the consumer’s point of view.

This, my followers, is your target audience -- and your 'Perfect Customer' Let this be the core of your motivation.

Set Your Goals

Ok, so now you can set some goals. I suggest leaving it for second on your list because your target audience should have a role in what you do here. Starting out with goals usually sets you off in the wrong direction, generally overly focused on the money and metrics.

I can't stress enough that you shouldn't only think about numbers! Try and envision how you'd like your Page to look a year from now. What will customers think of your page? How many Fans do you think there will be? What sort of items will drive engagement in your community?

Take a look at what your competitors are doing and see who is doing it best. Take note of what they're doing right. Is there anything you can determine that they are doing wrong? What you can improve upon or do differently?

Now consider what you want to realize using Facebook. What is the end goal? Awareness? Improved customer service? Building a loyal fan base?

This is where you can begin thinking about metrics, but you must consider the environment which will get you there. Will you be looking to sell product? If so, how much? How often? Are you trying to generate leads? How will you do this? How many per week? Per month? Are you using it to drive traffic to your website or blog?

Be realistic. Make revenue your final goal. Begin with where you'd like to be a year from now and work backwards.

Establish Your Voice

First Rule: Lose the PR and marketing voice. In my opinion it doesn’t work!

You need to be as human as possible. So what does that mean? Glad you asked! This depends upon who your 'perfect customer' is. What interests university or college students won’t likely get noticed by a more mature audience. Note, I'm not just talking about the type of content you're sharing, but how you share it, and the language you use.

How will the content you share represent your business? Try writing out a one-pager, introducing your business to your Fans -- it's something that you won't share or publish, but will get you thinking about how to articulate your messaging.

Resource Audit

What do you have at your disposal? A professional photographer? A graphic designer? Maybe a videographer? Or a programmer? What partnerships do you have that can help contribute?

These are some of the most important considerations when putting together a content strategy. Compile a list of things you have available and from that list create a few sub-lists of content ideas you'll be able to create -- all of which, of course, will resonate with your perfect customers.

Compile Assets

Now compile a list of all assets that can be used as inspiration for content. This should include anything that already exists like blogs or articles from your site, articles by others, photos, videos, products, and or promotions.

Please don’t think about this from a marketing and sales angle, but rather in terms of providing value for your community. What will your perfect customer like?

Once you've compiled this list, break it down into categories (we'll get back to these).

Determine The Value You'll Bring

Similar to Assets, but slightly different. When you brainstormed about assets, I asked you to put together a list of types of different content. Now with value, you'll need to come up with unique ways to make your Page interesting or stand out from the typical business page.

Remember that your typical Fan will have a News Feed that is inundated with status updates from hundreds of friends and Pages. You need to break through this noise and stand out!

Will you offer promotions? Discounts? Run sweepstakes or contests? Or maybe you'll share your knowledge and teach your community of Fans?

You Bet Your Bottom Dollar - make a list of the various things that you can do and spilt them into categories. DO NOT neglect this step! If you find it difficult coming up with value, you will not create a Page worth following.

Form Your Team

How many of you will be managing social media? Will you do it alone or will you have a team of five? How will you all work together? Who will have what role? Who will oversee the process and/or have final say on things?

This is very important, as you want things to be consistent and in the same voice. I'll be honest, sometimes it really is better to have one person write the updates, but have a team that helps with creating your content.

Time

Will there be just a single person who will manage your Page who only has one hour a day? Your content strategy will be very different if you have three people and nine hours per day.

It's critical to be honest with yourself from the start. Do not lie to yourself about how much time you can put into Facebook.

Pick Themes

Find some themes that you can match with your Resources, Assets and Value. These will be the themes of your content. Determine your number of themes in relation to the number of days you can manage.

Make A Calendar

Now you can give a different theme for each day of the week. Once again, assign projects based on the size of your team and time. Then start fitting in assets and value as you plot out ideas for individual days several weeks or even a couple of months ahead.

Remember, this is your initial guide, but it should be fluid.

Implement

Pretty simple wasn't it? Now you're ready to put all that hard work into action.

For the first while, try and be as structured as possible. Make sure everyone knows their roles and complete their tasks. Make it clear who is to be managing/monitoring Facebook and at what times? Who will be responding to Fans? At what time will each piece of new content be written and posted?

Over time you can be less structured. But establishing a solid routine is essential starting out.

Boom - there you go! I hope my method will help you think through your existing or new Facebook plan.

And if you've already done this, how did it go? I'd love to hear about it!