A lot of companies that get involved in social media marketing become obsessed with having a plan and doing it right. That plan is supposed to contain all the strategies and actions that will bring about the desired results. A good portion of the plan is tied in with a financial forecast that a business owner or company uses to communicate their planned results.
The entire planning process is setup to encompass every little step along the way to a measurable outcome. The planning phase becomes the holy grail for many organizations and the actual effectiveness of the plan, once put into place, is measured by the results that are produced.
Unfortunately the entire planning process requires that there is some measure of prediction going on, or forecasting. If the environment in which you’re operating is a but chaotic or subject to frequent change then you spend more time planning and forecasting than you do putting any solid plan to action. The result is a lot of wasted time. When things change frequently, all you can do is stop and plan for more change.
Our market today – business, technology, economical – everything is in a constant state of flux. It doesn’t matter how hard the media says things are returning to normal, it’s more like wishful thinking – trying to convince people and speak stability into existence. Organizations are ignoring this state of fluctuation and they continue to plan. They refuse to accept the inevitable that instead of adapting plans to change, they themselves must change.
But what to do without a plan?
Everything. It’s not about having a plan or not when it comes to social media marketing. It’s more about planning for the right things at the right point in time. Business should stop thinking about what they’ve been doing and starting doing things that match the behavior of their customers and the market in real time.
It’s easy to do when you consider that the foundation of plans are spurred on by beliefs which in turn tend to be reflected by data. Rather than forecasting or basing information on the past, planning is now a real time function. Adapted as things occur rather than on what may come. To work in any other format while marketing within social media is a complete waste of time because your plans will never be in line with what people are doing, or buy cialis online what they want in the moment.
