Week # 14

Considering the variables from recent lectures, decide which tools from the semester you would implement in your online marketing strategy.

How much time do you think your business should spend on social media marketing and why?

In your blog, please explain why you chose the tools you did, and how you might use them to use and test a strategy over the next six months.

Plot out a rough draft plan of the next month of content across the sites you’ve chosen, and how you hope they might grow or sustain your business. Be as detailed as possible, including daily or weekly time requirements to meet the goals.

Well, I have a new client that has contracted me to manage his social media monthly in addition to designing his website and logo. I suppose it's time to get serious.

I will be creating a Facebook page and connecting it to a twitter page, just like we have done in class this semester. The goal is to promote my client on Yelp as soon as we can. First, we need happy clients to approach. We also talked about posting images on Pinterest. I'm going to set him up with Google+ for blogging and quite possibly will be the one writing on the blog. It will depend I suppose, on his budget.

From what I have learned for this class I feel like the blogging is going to be important for his SEO. I will have to become familiar with writing news letters. 

The other platform I plan to set my client up with is Google Maps. When people search for businesses, Google Maps comes up on top so I think it will be important to incorporate a profile there as well.

Plot out a rough draft plan of the next month of content across the sites you’ve chosen

Ok I'm not entirely sure I understand completely so, hopefully I can do this correctly.

Facebook

30 posts planned and placed into the scheduler. I think based on the posts I created for class (7 posts took about an hour and a half to create), I'm estimating 30 posts to take about 5 hours to put together. I have to gather all the content from the client. I will search for images to coincide with the content (maybe it's time to enroll in Photo Bucket or something similar).

I hope to see 30 followers by the first week. I will search out different people and will "like" their page to get my client connected with a network right away. Having 30 followers will allow me to track what is going on though Google analyitics. I plan to be efficient with Google analyitics by the end of summer.

Check posts 9:00 am and 6:00pm 7 days a week. My client actually will need to be the one checking the posts. I plan to prompt him initially, by making sure if questions arise or comments come in, they will receive some type response. Hopefully he will be on it!
 

Twitter

30 posts on twitter to coincide with Facebook. This may have to come from the client. He should probably post on Twitter every time he goes out on a new job. And then, tweet again about how the success of the job was. Something I will have to discuss with him.

Pinterest 

Become more familiar with this platform and hopefully posts some before and after images of my clients work. I'm still a little unsure about this platform but plan to become familiar over the summer.

Yelp
Ask each new customer for a good testimonial. I will suggest that my client offer an incentive. He installs water heaters so I'm not sure what it would be. (Planning for 10 new reviews for the first month)

Google+

2 news letters over 30 days. The client should write this, but if he chooses to pay me to write it, he will need to give me the topic and any pertinent information and then I will research it, write it, and have him approve what I have written before I post it. Thankfully, my husband is a fantastic editor. I wouldn't feel comfortable without his assistance in checking my work! I probably should have had him check my school blogs! Na, that would have been like cheating I think.

Merchant Claim

Claim all the merchant verifications in the organic listings for my new client. When I did this for my day spa, my url came to the top of all the organic listings within 30 days! It was awesome! I added photos and content to some of them, and updated as often as I could. I found that it really help with SEO.

Constant Contact 
I plan to have my client sign up for this program in order to stay in touch with his clients. He can send birthday and holiday emails. The emails in between would be referral incentives. I believe this is an inexpensive way to stay in touch. Some of these emails can be structured around Facebook or twitter posts.

Non Profit
My client and I have discussed setting him up with a non-profit charity to be involved in. He is greatly interested in the "Foster Care System" as am I. Possibly the Polanski Center. Having this outreach will not only benefit the children but will allow us to have more to talk about on social media and Constant Contact sending out invitations for events.

Six Month Plan 
1. Over six months I would continue the same strategy. If my client becomes increasingly busy, he will need to hire someone within his company structure that knows his business, in order to manage all the posts coming in. We discussed that issue and he is in agreement to that strategy. At that point he can either have that person take over the posting or continue to pay me to do it ( I may be over it by then! We'll see. Not sure this is where I want my business to go but thought the extra income right now couldn't hurt!)

2. If the client is in agreement I would like to implement some paid strategies through Facebook. The amount of ad hits would depend on the clients monthly budget of course.  

3. I would like to see 25, 5 star reviews on Yelp by the end of our first 6 months. 

4. By the end of 6 months, I would hope to have built the email base to at least 250 clients and have less than 10 opt outs. It seems reasonable because I managed to do that with my day spa without Facebook and Twitter. It did take a little longer (24 months or so) but again we didn't have social media. I had to do it through trade shows ($1800 a pop) and street fairs ($350 a pop). 

I am so thankful to have had this course. The money I am going to save by using social media is in the 10's of 1000's of dollars! Over a 7 year period in my prior business I spent well over $30,000 on ways to reach people. Wow! I'm excited to see how this all unfolds!