You may already be using your own personal social media profiles, but if you are a business owner, designing a marketing plan for social media might still be a challenge. Use the three tips below to help you craft a plan that is effective.

Give Customers a Voice

One of the best things you can do is to give your customers the feeling that they are important. By giving them a voice and promoting them through reposts and forwarding, you can create a customer base who is deeply interested in what your company is doing on social media.

For example, you might have a competition where you allow people to create a commercial for your products and then repost and share that commercial. You may encourage people to take pictures of themselves using your product and share that with your social media followers as well.

Monitor the Competition

Part of any strategic marketing plan should be to monitor the activities of competitors in your field. One of the great things about social media is that your competitors' actions are public so that you can check out what they are doing on a daily basis.

While looking at their social media profiles, it's a good idea to get an idea of what is working for them and what isn't. Are people responding well to their posts? Are they using techniques you are not? The answers to these questions can help you design a strategy that takes advantage of the differences between you and the competition, while at the same time allowing you to use similar techniques that may be working for them.

Interact with Your Customers

It is not enough to plan all of these things; you also need to be able to interact in real time with the customers you have. This makes your entire plan more dynamic because there is a real-time component to your marketing plan. Some ways to interact with your customers on social media include:

• Answering questions
• Thanking them for their purchase or comment
• Providing advice for posted problems
• Choosing random commenters for special discounts or gifts

Customers may be more willing to interact with you when the know that you will be chiming in and responding to them. This offers you a chance to build a relationship with your customers and to get a better idea of how you might serve them in the future. As a result, you may ultimately see higher profits.

With these ideas, you should be able to design a social media marketing campaign that will be effective. For more help, talk to a strategy activation consultant at a company like XPlane who can help you put your plan into action.