There was a time when you could choose to work with a platform simply because it has the largest scale of your target audience, and you would probably have based your selection on the platform\u2019s unique proposition to leverage its strengths.<\/p>\n
These are important considerations in the planning process, but as social continues to expand and evolve, new layers and adaptations are being added to the planning process.<\/p>\n
Four key changes in social that affect the way we plan<\/strong><\/p>\n The onus is on us as marketers to understand a brand\u2019s challenges and dictate the strategy for AI, setting the right parameters and continually adapting.<\/p>\n Whilst platforms are taking steps towards these goals, the solutions and progress are currently inconsistent.<\/p>\n Planning without much consideration for the changes in the evolving landscape means having a more limited view and missing out on a range of opportunities that may be more appropriate and effective for your media campaign.<\/p>\n Take a broader perspective and lay the foundation for high performance.<\/strong><\/p>\n Taking the following steps into account can enable more holistic social planning:<\/p>\n Determine the right experiences<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s important to then take a step back, review the current user journey, and consider how to make improvements.<\/p>\n From a social perspective, this means thinking beyond the channel level and considering the experiences that the user needs to be exposed to along their journey.<\/p>\n Below are some of the experiences in a social environment:<\/p>\n These experiences will require certain infrastructure to enable a complete and seamless user journey, like the right partnerships for influencer activity or having \u2018social shops\u2019 in operation if there is a commerce layer.<\/p>\n This approach ensures these key considerations are introduced early enough to start collaborating with relevant parties. By thinking about how to best connect with the audience, the campaign gets a head start.<\/p>\n Review the related solutions for the audience<\/strong><\/p>\n At this stage, there is still freedom to review the various platforms that can most effectively provide these experiences. Mapping the solution for each of these social experiences will help to identify where they can be most effective.<\/p>\n Consider the audiences to be targeted and how the solutions can be leveraged specifically for those audiences. This will spark tactical ideas, creative executions and possible innovation opportunities, which may also need collaboration with other parties.<\/p>\n Quantify the opportunity<\/strong><\/p>\n Now we can assess how effective the solution would be at delivering the outcome. Calculations may be carried out for each individual solution or based on a group of solutions that will leverage algorithmic optimizations within a platform.<\/p>\n Delivering the best efficiency is key, but it also needs to be scalable and will therefore need to incorporate the audience sizing data into the planning process.<\/p>\n Note that the highest audience size is not necessarily the most effective. Planning priority will be given to the most efficient solutions that can deliver scale. However, the next set of considerations may affect your weighting.<\/p>\n Choose the social platform<\/strong><\/p>\n With a better understanding of what can drive performance, we can start to narrow things down and choose options based on a number of additional factors:<\/p>\n There may be short-term compromises to consider in the media plan, but testing will generate data and insight that provide significant value in the long term.<\/p>\n Budget distribution<\/strong><\/p>\n Finally, the social media plan is complete, built from a broader perspective and making decisions based on data. Choosing an agency partner to aid with the various planning considerations and budget distributions in your media plan is a challenge, so be sure to enquire about their AI capabilities in planning and attribution.<\/p>\n Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n Social marketing has increased in complexity and social media planning has had to adapt to this.<\/p>\n A more strategic approach that considers the user journey and experience sets the campaign up for success and provides the freedom to plan in a holistic way, allowing you to work with a wider range of relevant opportunities, whilst also adding more precision in planning.<\/p>\n"}]},"yoast_head":"\n\n
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