With the growing popularity of social media, many businesses feel they need to integrate it into their marketing mix, but most aren't sure where to start or how to develop a plan.

Developing a Social Media Plan to Support Substance Abuse Prevention Efforts

It wasn’t so long ago that the idea of creating a website for your prevention program or organization was new and exciting, with so much to learn and do to make it happen. Today, static websites no longer make the grade. With the advent of social media, such as Facebook and YouTube, people increasingly expect opportunities Buy Instagram Followers to comment, share, discuss, and collaborate during their visits to cyberspace. "Social media is the dominant form and growing nature of online interaction (Katz, 2009)," providing innumerable ways to promote, enhance, and extend your prevention efforts. What do you hope to achieve by using social media? Try to think broadly about this, considering both short- and long-term goals. For example, you may want to start out by creating a Facebook page to inform community members about your organization and recruit program participants. Or consider adding a blog component to your organizational website to share updates about current prevention activities. But beyond that, the possibilities are endless! The world of social media offers you the capacity for ongoing communication, collaboration, and even social change. As your understanding of and comfort using social media deepen, consider its potential to influence—not just connect with—community members. For example, you might engage local youth in helping to shape the online conversation about drug use and prevention in your community. Or you might use social media to raise awareness about and gather signatures petitioning for a much-needed policy change to support prevention efforts.

Developing a Successful Social Media Strategy

Research which social media sites your ideal customers are spending the majority of their time on and concentrate your efforts there. Spend an hour on the social media site and search for the topics your ideal customers are searching and make notes of what kind of information comes up and who is following it. Consumers are using social media sites daily to search for information, recommendations, reviews and answers to their questions. With an overload of information on the standard search engines, more people are turning to social media sites and trusting the information provided on them (by their friends and family) than ever before. Professionally brand your Buy Instagram Followers social media sites. If Photoshop, graphic design and marketing are not your forte, I recommend having a professional marketer help you create photos, a logo and set up your profiles for you social media sites. You are going to want to make a great first impression so having your logo, message, photos and profile set up to attract your ideal customers are crucial. Here are some items to consider when setting up your sites.

Define what you want to accomplish

You can’t know the impact of your social media marketing efforts without a baseline goal. The more specific you are, the better you can gain a sense for whether your social media plan is working as is, or if it’s time to course correct. Social media allows for this flexibility, but you have to measure what’s working and what’s not against an objective and realistic threshold to establish such a conclusion. You can post Buy Instagram Likes to nearly any social media channel in a matter of seconds, but effective social media marketing demands more than activity. For social media efforts to result in tangible business outcomes, posts should be driven by what they’re intended to accomplish. For example, if the goal is to boost sales of a particular item to relieve excess inventory, the ideal social media strategy might be to reach a number of potential new customers with a “flash sale” or promotion that includes paid media. To cultivate customer loyalty on the other hand, your social media strategy should be geared toward relationship-building posts and “VIP only” promotions for your existing audience.

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