If you've ever taken a business course, it's likely you encountered the infamous "4 P's of Marketing." The 4 P's, product, price, place, and promotion, break marketing into categories.

These categories are all-inclusive and typically used to define a marketing plan. They can be used to guide holistic social media plans as well. Here's how you can use the 4 P's.

Product:

In social media, your product is content. The quality of the content will affect your overall marketing goals. Treating content like a product means that a brand should work toward standardization. Ensure content is build around consistent themes, style, consistency, and quality. Customers should know what to expect with your content and why it is worth consuming.

Questions to consider when building content for social media:

• What is the purpose of the content (inform, entertain, explore, etc.)?
• Can content be adapted to serve different networks uniquely?
• Which type of content resonates best with my audience?

Price:

Price (in social media) is the cost of accessing and consuming data around your social media efforts. There are numerous items to consider when you are pricing out all of the tools that can make sense out of your data.

When calculating price, here are some questions to consider:

• Which tool will help me meet my social media goals?
• What kind of return can this tool provide me?

Place:

Place is all about getting the product to the customer through the best channel for the target audience. The best content in the world will never sell if consumers don't know where or if they can get it. In social media, place is all about network selection. Do you know where your customers are?

When considering place, consider the following questions:

• Where is my target audience online?
• How much time does my target audience spend consuming content?
• Can I effectively repurpose (share, adapt, etc) content on other networks?

Promotion:

Promotion is more than ads in the social media landscape. Promotion is about everything that can be done to spread awareness of your content, including -- but not limited to -- ads. For example, two out of three of your friends like a post you publish on Facebook. That post's affinity Edgerank spikes for the third friend, and as a result, that post will show up in their feed. Through engagement, that "product" has been introduced to a wider audience.

When planning promotion activity, here are some questions to consider:

• How do ads fit into my content promotion strategy?
• Can a sweepstakes or contest help build awareness?
• What kind of call-to-action should I use?