Creating a Weekly Facebook Marketing Action Plan

Everywhere you look, you read articles advising you to use Facebook as a marketing tool for your business. However, while it seems simple enough to setup a Fan Page and start promoting yourself, there are so many tools, so many people to approach and the results are so different from a standard marketing campaign that it can be hard to understand exactly what works and what doesn’t.

That’s why you need a weekly marketing plan to help you tackle your Facebook Page and get the most out of the time spent developing it. Here are a few things you should include in that marketing plan.

• Content Submission Plan – Like a good blog, your Facebook Page needs to provide valuable content to your Fans to be successful. The content types can vary, but links to blog posts, videos, questions for your Fans and responses to common concerns are all successful ways to utilize this space.
• Questions to Ask – Ask questions frequently. Sit down and brainstorm questions you can ask on a weekly basis. Ask them either in the Facebook Q&A feature or directly on your Wall.
• Actionable Tasks – List actionable tasks you can undertake to promote your business. Anything that improves the layout of your Facebook Page fits this category. Adding a link to your blog, creating a custom landing page, setting up admin accounts for your employees or partners. These are all good tasks to perform each week.
• Tangible Goals – Every action plan should include tangible goals. Use Facebook Insights to see how many people interact with your Fan Page and how many new fans you gain and set goals you can strive for each week. Often just having tangible numbers to work towards will make it easier to perform the marketing tasks needed to make your Page a success.
• Followup Procedures for Next Week – Each week, make note of how your Page performs and things you can do next week to either build on success or counter failures. Weekly followup lists will make the actions you perform this week that much more successful in the future.

Facebook is an innately social tool and a very different animal from traditional marketing avenues. To be successful on Facebook, you must have a clear plan in place, otherwise you’ll waste more energy than is worthwhile for a single portal.