No doubt the demands to build and main­tain a prof­itable online social and dig­i­tal plat­form to estab­lish and grow your busi­ness is over­whelm­ing. The demand for con­tent in the form of visu­als, video, audio, and the list goes on is grow­ing out of con­trol. Plus, try­ing to keep up with the rate of inno­va­tion hap­pen­ing on the top social net­works is a job in itself. The only guar­an­tee we have in the dig­i­tal and social land­scape of today is chang­ing!

Mar­keters and busi­ness own­ers are expe­ri­enc­ing incred­i­ble pres­sure to find ways to break through the noise online to inspire and attract their ide­al cus­tomers. Paid adver­tis­ing costs are increas­ing. Influ­encer mar­ket­ing can be high­ly ben­e­fi­cial but requires knowl­edge and invest­ment. Bot­tom line, the com­pe­ti­tion is get­ting fierce in many ways.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, even many savvy mar­keters have been burned by agen­cies and con­sul­tants push­ing one sin­gu­lar plat­form or tech­nol­o­gy. This can cause an over-focus on a plat­form that may not even sup­port your busi­ness and mar­ket­ing goals. Even worse, is that it may not even be where your audi­ence is hang­ing out online.

Mar­keters are chal­lenged with keep­ing com­mu­ni­ties engaged to ensure they are ser­vic­ing their cus­tomers when, where and how they want to com­mu­ni­cate.

Social net­works such as Face­book, Insta­gram, LinkedIn, Twit­ter, Snapchat and more are inno­vat­ing faster than most busi­ness­es can even keep up.

Years ago busi­ness­es had more con­trol over how they com­mu­ni­cat­ed with their prospects and cus­tomers. They could choose direct mail, email, phone or a one to many such as tele­vi­sion and radio.

Today times are chang­ing. Social net­works such as Face­book has sub­stan­tial con­trol over how brands com­mu­ni­cate with their cus­tomers and audi­ence. For exam­ple, when Face­book launch­es a new Mes­sen­ger fea­ture, a brand’s clients are want­i­ng to com­mu­ni­cate with them using the new fea­ture before the brand hard­ly knows what the fea­ture is.

This leaves us with the ques­tion… how do you keep up? How do you achieve real results online? The answer is that you must plan your work and work your plan.

Failing to plan your integrated social media and digital marketing strategy is planning to fail!

Social media can­not live in a silo. It’s not a band-aid for a busi­ness with prob­lems. It needs to be inte­grat­ed with oth­er dig­i­tal and mar­ket­ing pro­grams. Most impor­tant­ly it needs to be based on and aligned to busi­ness goals where it can make the great­est impact.

Did you know it takes 6–7 brand touches for someone to remember your brand?

Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is every­thing. Every brand touch mat­ters. Cre­at­ing a mem­o­rable, seam­less and delight­ful expe­ri­ence for your audi­ence, cus­tomers and online com­mu­ni­ties across every social net­work and dig­i­tal plat­form you own is not easy. How­ev­er, it’s def­i­nite­ly worth the invest­ment and is one of the top ways you can stand out from the crowd and be sure that it is your brand and your busi­ness that your dream cus­tomers remem­ber.

If you are ready to start lever­ag­ing social and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing to help grow your busi­ness you need an inte­grat­ed plan with goals, objec­tives, and met­rics for suc­cess. There is no way around it. If you want to suc­ceed in busi­ness today you need to plan your work and work your plan.