Social media strategy, planning, and publishing | Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Certificate

This paragraph discusses the importance of developing a clear social media strategy to focus efforts effectively. It outlines the first two pillars of social media marketing: strategy and planning, and publishing. The need to define goals, identify the target audience, choose appropriate social media platforms, build a brand identity, and select content types and formats are emphasized. Additionally, the paragraph highlights the significance of planning and publishing social media posts, including determining post frequency and timing, using a social media calendar, and employing social media management tools.

The paragraph emphasizes the importance of setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals for social media campaigns. It explains how goals hold accountability, guide budgeting, and help measure success. The paragraph also discusses common social media marketing goals such as brand awareness, reputation management, sales lead generation, community engagement, web traffic increase, and gaining customer and competitor insights. It stresses the need for goals to align with the company's overall marketing objectives and provides an example of how to make a goal SMART.

This section focuses on identifying the target audience, a group most likely to purchase the company's products. It explains how understanding the target audience guides marketing decisions, content sharing, budget and time allocation. The paragraph outlines methods for identifying the target audience, such as analyzing demographic information of current customers, considering language, interests, and needs. It also suggests using social listening tools to track brand mentions and understand audience engagement on social media.

The paragraph discusses strategies for selecting the appropriate social media platforms for the campaign. It highlights the importance of choosing platforms that help reach the target audience and align with the campaign's goals. The section provides insights into how different platforms are used, the type of content they are known for, and their appeal to different demographics. It also considers the company's product and services, brand identity, and the platforms used by competitors.

This paragraph delves into the details of planning and publishing social media content. It covers the different types of content, such as entertaining, educational, inspirational, conversational, and promotional, and their purposes. The paragraph also discusses various content formats like videos, images, written posts, stories, and live videos. It emphasizes the importance of matching the content format with the content bucket and provides an overview of how to manage the timing and frequency of social media posts, considering platform characteristics, audience activity, and optimal posting times.

The final paragraph discusses the use of a social media calendar to organize, schedule, and publish posts. It explains how a calendar can save time, maintain consistency, avoid coverage gaps, and ensure that all content assets are correctly attached. The paragraph outlines the benefits of a social media calendar, such as planning around cultural and national events, avoiding mistakes, and reviewing posts for errors before they go live. It also provides guidance on building a social media calendar, including identifying platforms, reviewing past content, deciding on the data to track, creating a content library, and establishing a workflow and review process.