We all love those sparkly stones that are called Diamonds. The reasons we love them is not only they are shiny and sparkly and a sign of richness, but they also are a symbol of Perfection.

So how do we relate diamonds to our Social Media Marketing Plan?

Quality of diamonds are measured by the 4Cs: Clarity, Cut, Colour and Carat.

So what are the 4Cs of an effective Social Media Plan?

1.Clarity: Before we embark on our Social Media journey it is very important to ask ourselves as to what we plan to achieve with our social media activities. Or is our social media plan supporting our core business and marketing goals? I have seen a lot of businesses simply start their social media journey without having a clear reason or a clear direction as to how they want their social media marketing plan to meet their business objectives.

Furthermore, it very important to have a deep understanding of how each social media site works and what are the various features available to us to help us market our business effectively on these sites. That will further help us to understand and identify which of the social media sites are best suited to our Social Media goals.

2.Color: There are thousands of businesses who are regularly posting on Social Media sites. We need to conceptualize, design and implement innovative posts that can attract and draw the attention of the user to our post, which may lead to the user to share our posts which will help us in “viral marketing” of our posts and increase our brand visibility on these sites.

It simply won’t help if you just churn out posts which just keeps talking about your brands and products, you should try to connect with the social media users by designing posts that

a.      Relate them to them.

b.      Are about the recent topics that they are talking about.

c.      Teach them.

d.      get them emotionally involved with the post.

3.Carat: This refers to the size of the diamond. We will interpret it as consistency of posts. A lot of businesses get very excited once they start their social media journey and post as regularly as possible. They either get carried away by posting inconsequential and boring content and/or after the initial excitement, they stop posting or post only sporadically.

Social media audience likes consistency. They want businesses to “talk” to them regularly and they most probably will “disengage” with you if you don’t.

4.Cut:

a. Cut out the flab – A lot of businesses in their excitement open accounts on a lot of social media sites and then find it difficult to maintain and post on them regularly. Though there are social media management tools to help you, it is important that you start with two or three social media sites that you feel are best suited for your business and once you are comfortable with these, then you can then move on to use other social media sites to promote your business.

b.Cut to the chase- Well I did mention that users do not want to see plain and dry marketing posts and want to see more “colorful” posts. But do not forget you are running a business and you do want to promote the products and services that your company offers. Between those “colorful” posts you need to add posts that directly showcase your products or services and related information.

Social media is a huge and an important platform to market yourself, but an effective use of it is very important so that your business gets the right kind and the right amount of exposure on these platforms.

Do not forget:

1.      Your competitors are already using social media

2.      Start today, post consistently and you will reap the rewards sooner than later.

3.      Loss of time and money to post and advertise on these sites is almost negligible compared to other marketing channels.