Creating Flowcharts for Digital and Social Media Marketing Campaigns
Why use Flowcharts?
Visually depicting a marketing campaign is not only beneficial for your team/agency to understand the scope of your responsibilities, but it is incredibly helpful to the client’s understanding of what is to come.
Having a clear representation of your social media strategy in a language everyone involved can understand helps to maintain clarity during the campaign.
How to Draft Your Flowchart: Why use them to begin with?
Refer to the saying ‘If this, then that’. Start at square one and draw out the plan (I find this easier to do on paper and then transpose into a digital format). The moment your asset or ad goes live is the entrance of your flow chart, and the completion of the goal of your campaign is your exit point for the individual traveling through the chart.
This chart building process is also helpful during its creation as you are strategically thinking through the process and what the actions will look like. Additionally, it brings to light any challenges or holes in your plan that you may have missed conceptually.
Programs to Make a Flowchart Using Photoshop or Another Creative Platform
No flow chart specific software is necessary, these visual flowcharts can be built using the shape tool found on powerpoint/word, and text. You can choose the design based off of space restrictions (i.e. Powerpoint vs letter proposal) and/or by branding guidelines for color and overall feel.
The charts shown here were built using rectangles, lines, arrows, and text-and a lot of copy and pasting in Adobe Photoshop. The plus side of using the Adobe platform is the ability to save your work as a Photoshop File (PSD) to use as a template for future creations.
You’ll notice the AmpliPhi flowcharts include arrows to help guide the viewer along the correct path when recycling through a step. You won’t nail the layout on the first try (or if you do I am EXTREMELY envious). You’ll often find the chart will get too cramped, or you’ll discover a new step or branch to include.
Completed Media Flowchart Examples
Sharing Assets on Social Media Flowchart
The example below represents our internal company plan for asset marketing. The importance of assets are often overlooked, simply because they are often placed online and then never touched again. This chart depicts the process as well as the underlying reason among the steps and the track it takes.
ECommerce LinkedIn Ad Flowchart
The example below was built for a client to better understand how audience data is collected from a potential sales driven LinkedIn ad for their virtual conference being hosted on AmpliPhi's Online Conferencing Solution, Conference In A Cloud.
Due to the number of audiences being created from the user's various actions, we added a Chart Key to break down the "Matched Audiences" (subsets of users defined by chosen parameters) which in this case are separated by URL, each representing a different stage reached in the sales funnel.
Here we see the actions taken by the social media platform behind the scenes (i.e audience building, user experience) that further prove value to the client regarding the campaign.
More Flowchart Examples:
Facebook Video Ad
This chart depicts a Facebook Ad and the resulting actions taken once it is cast out into world wide web. Notice that the ‘behind the scenes’ steps are marked, the steps that facebook does for us, that ourselves and the client can not physically see in real time (i.e custom audience building).
Meet the Author
lauren miles
Lauren is a Client Success Manager at AmpliPhi Social Media Strategies. She has continually proven to be a valuable asset to our team with her ability to develop, create and implement client training materials and her consistent growth and knowledge with strategic planning and website development.
Lauren graduated with honors from the University of Florida earning a BA in Economics and a minor in Retail Leadership. Lauren is based in Fort Myers, FL, as our only remote team member.
Start a conversation.
How has your business utilized flowcharts? If this is a new concept to you, ask us questions in the comments below!
Mapping out potential behaviour like this allows you to see where the flaws are in your plans. I think writing things down (notes, brainstorm, flowchart) with a pen really helps to stay organised and creative – so much easier doing the above things on paper!
Thanks so much, Paul! We appreciate your insightful comment. Hope all is well in the UK!