Social Media Marketing Planning

"Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets planning."
       ~Thomas Alva Edison

It is a daunting thing that we have all faced at one time or another, planning.  Whether it has been planning for an event, time management around a project or assignment or planning for our futures, we have all done it and some of us, myself included in this number, have even procrastinated.  As the saying goes, with age comes wisdom, with failures comes lessons and should we learn from these lessons we can avoid the old adage that history is doomed to repeat itself.  

The Benefits of Planning

Some of the benefits of planning are as follows:

1. Setting Objectives & Goals.
1. Where do you want to be in a year
2. Where do you want to be in five years
   
2. Planning for the unexpected
1. Seasonal business
2. Regression
   
3. Planning on how to grow and market your business
1. Expansion
2. Creating brand awareness
   
4. Knowing who your clientele is
1. Who is your local competition
2. Who is your global competition
   
5. Knowing what your product is, and how it will serve your customers
1. Is there a product your customers would better be served by you selling
   
6. Knowing your competition and how you will compete
1. What is your competitors brand
2. What is great about your competitions product
   
   
   Semester Marketing Plan Format
    
   In the consideration of the Semester Marketing Plan being for an online class, and the formats being requested, that of a word document and a slideshow presentation, I would think that it would be more captivating to create a visual presentation that needed no narrator, no interpreter to  convey any message or information between the audience and the words.  I believe that something could be made, a video perhaps, that could incorporate the same information in a new and interesting way that would both captivate and inform our audience.  It may also be interesting to not only create a social media plan, but perhaps see it implemented in part, maybe this plan could start mid semester, with different goals and portions of the plan being implemented as the semester progresses, leaving the written portion of the plan as an outline and a journal kept of what the success and opportunities of the plan are.
   
   I do believe that using your students for feedback on this assignment is a good idea, and it is one that will allow the semester project to further develop and change as need be.