Prompt: What are the most comprehensive and effective steps to build a detailed social media marketing plan and strategy that aligns with a business’s goals and objectives, reaches its target audience, and drives engagement, leads, and conversions? Please provide a step-by-step guide with specific examples and analysis of the best practices, tools, and metrics to use for each stage of the process, including:

1. Defining the target audience, buyer personas, and social media channels that resonate with them
2. Conducting a social media audit, competitive analysis, and SWOT analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
3. Setting SMART goals, KPIs, and benchmarks for each stage of the customer journey, from awareness to conversion and retention
4. Creating a content strategy that reflects the brand voice, messaging, and value proposition, and resonates with the target audience’s needs, pain points, and aspirations
5. Developing a content calendar and distribution plan that optimizes the frequency, format, and timing of the content across the selected social media channels, while balancing between promotional and educational content
6. Selecting the right social media management tools, analytics tools, and automation tools to streamline the workflow, track the performance, and improve the engagement and conversion rates
7. Monitoring and measuring the key metrics, such as reach, engagement, clicks, conversions, cost per acquisition, customer lifetime value, and return on investment, and using the insights to refine and optimize the social media strategy.”

Please provide detailed insights and analysis for each step, with real-world examples and best practices that can help businesses create a successful social media marketing plan.