One of the more interesting things I’ve done this year is branch out into social media audits and social media marketing plans. Previously I had already been doing SEO audits and AdWords audits, but I’ve had companies approach me more this year to do either entire digital marketing plans, or social media marketing plans, or just a Facebook or LinkedIn plan. This is a collaborative service where I create a 40-80 page document for clients. Every audit I do is custom, fit to the client’s goals, resources and situation
Audits share a few things in common:
- We start with a one-hour info and goal “download” phone call. We cover the goals of the audit or plan, and I ask questions about metrics, desired or proven or disproven tactics, concerns, assets, budget, resources (including the people who will execute the plan), timeline, audience and potential partnerships.
- I create a custom highly-visual strategy and tactics document, usually at least 40 pages. But these are powerpoint-based pages and the ultimate document is a PDF, so it’s not like you’re reading War and Peace. A recent Facebook strategy document was 72 pages.
- We phone again to go over the document and deal with any questions or concerns before they take it and execute.
Part of a search and social media marketing plan.
I’ve found these audits to be a fun and mutually valuable experience. The range of audits has included:
- A Facebook marketing plan for a company in the health sector. The parameters included zero advertising budget and leveraging an existing email base and huge archive of email newsletter content. Organic social media strategies combined with their existing strengths were the key to their success.
- An SEO & Social Media plan for a company in the financial sector. This one included an analysis of the effect of the Penguin Google update on their business and how to move forward with SEO strategies as well as social media for both marketing and SEO purposes.
- A Search & Social marketing plan for an international B2B linguistics company. Included generating headline, copy, and image ideas for AdWords, Facebook ads and LinkedIn ads.
- A search and social marketing plan for one of the largest international real estate companies. Many onpage SEO best practices needed to be implemented programmatically. Also, I discovered LinkedIn was widely used in some of their main target countries and added tactics they could use there. Also, since much of their real estate is the highest-end type, I included tactics for reaching luxury buyers via Facebook. Also included resources for further training at their request.
As you can see, custom work is required for most companies. I enjoy doing these because my understanding of business and marketing strategies constantly evolves and improves with each new project.