www.socialmediaexaminer.com/report
HubSpot (www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics) also offers a range of B2B market research tools, with additional webinars at https://library.hubspot.com/webinar.
As always, the key is ensuring that your customers are using the type of social media you’re considering. Use the search feature and group options on major social-networking sites to test your list of existing customers. Chances are good that if a large number of your existing customers are using that service, it will be a good source for future customers as well.
In addition to participating in general market research, you might want to try SimilarSites (www.similarsites.com), which not only assists with research on social media alternatives that reach your target market, but also helps you find companies that compete with yours.
Conducting Other Types of Market Research Online
The amount of research available online can be paralyzing. A well-crafted search yields most, if not all, of the social marketing research you need. You aren’t writing an academic paper; you’re running a business with limited time and resources. Set aside a week or two for research, and then start laying out your approach.
Despite these statements, you might want to touch on two other research points:
The most influential sites, posters, or pages on your preferred social media: You can learn from them.
Understanding what motivates people to use certain types of social media: Make the content you provide meet their expectations and desires.
Identifying influencers
Whether you have a B2B or B2C company, you gain valuable insight by reviewing the comments of influencers (companies or individuals driving the conversation in your industry sector). For example, to see the most popular posters on Instagram, we checked out the HypeAuditor tool at https://influencermarketinghub.com/top-instagram-influencers as shown in Figure 3-4.
FIGURE 3-4: HypeAuditor ranks the most influential Instagram users.
You may be surprised to find that the most frequent posters aren’t necessarily the ones with the most followers, and vice versa.
For additional tools to identify influencers on various social media channels, check out the lists at Izea (https://izea.com/2020/02/21/top-10-influencers) or Influencer Marketing Hub (https://influencermarketinghub.com/free-influencer-marketing-tools). These sites can help you identify people you might want to follow for research purposes. You can find more information about tools for identifying influencers for each of the major services in their respective minibooks. We discuss influencer marketing more in Book 7 and Book 8.
Understanding why people use social media services
The expectation that people gravitate toward different types of social media to meet different needs seems reasonable. The challenge, of course, is to match what people seek with particular social sites.
A review of successful social media models may spark creative ideas for your own campaign.
Setting Up Your Social Media Marketing Plan
You can dive into social media marketing headfirst and see what happens. Or you can take the time to research, plan, execute, and evaluate your approach. The Social Media Marketing Plan, shown in Figure 3-5, is for people taking the latter approach. (You can download the form at www.dummies.com/go/socialmediamarketingaio5e.)
Courtesy of Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing: www.watermelonweb.com
FIGURE 3-5: Build a social media marketing plan for your company.
Depending on your marketing plan’s complexity and the availability of support, think in terms of a timeline of 3 to 12 months to complete the following steps. Estimate spending half your time in the planning phase, one-quarter in execution, and one-quarter in evaluation and modification. To set up your own custom social media marketing plan, follow these steps:
1 Do market research and online observation.
2 Draft marketing goals, objectives, and your marketing plan using the form in Figure 3-5.
3 Get your marketing ducks in a row with in-house preparation:Hiring, outsourcing, or selecting in-house staffTrainingTeam-buildingWriting a social media policy document
4 Complete preparatory development tasks:Designing advertising creativesContent overview (an outline of which marketing messages you want to send out when)Measurement plan and metric implementationSocial media tool selection and dashboard developmentSocial Media Activity Calendar setup (see Book 1, Chapter 4)Programming and content modifications to existing website(s), as needed
5 Create accounts and a pilot social media program.
6 Evaluate the pilot program, debug it, and modify it, as needed.
7 Launch and promote your social media campaign one service at a time.
8 Measure and modify social media in a process of constant feedback and reiteration.