Imagine this. You’re running a business and decide to put some of your budget toward social media marketing. You’ve finally hired someone to setup your social accounts (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and manage possible engagement. All of this effort and you still don’t know if you have a full grip on the effectiveness of social media marketing!
Don’t worry. By setting goals for your company within the social space, you will prevent feelings of frustration and instead, reach objectives and create brand awareness that will eventually lead to sales. But how?
- Start from the bottom. Set up obtainable social media goals and reflect the main business goals within them.
- Do your research. Ask the following questions before moving forward:
- Who is your demographic & where do they congregate?
- What are your current resources/budget?
- How much time can you give to this task?
- What are your competitors doing within the space?
- What are your strengths?
- What are the potential issues/problems with this execution?
- Be honest & realistic with your digital/social media goals.
- Increase overall brand awareness
- Increase website traffic and sales
- Increase SEO for your company
- Provide information for your fans
- Decrease various marketing spending
- Be patient. Social media is an ongoing effort with ROI being difficult to measure and most engagement results being hard to pinpoint. A lot of time, effort and money often go into the most successful social media campaigns in the market. Although it will sometimes feel like a crawl, your social push will eventually yield results over time!
- Always keep learning. Although you may have already created a Twitter or Facebook account, there are other “big picture” social strategies that could greatly effect your total success. Be willing to learn the details to keep evolving with the current platforms at hand – or hire someone who is knowledgable and can do it for you!
- Understand that social media is not the answer. Putting your brand on various social media platforms does not replace all of your marketing efforts. Instead, social media should be seen as a large piece of the larger picture.
Overall, social media should be seen as a strategy, not a tactic. No matter what industry you work in, such strategies will differ -- although most companies will need one relating to social to stay relevant. Having said this, it remains true that social media requires a full effort from all parties involved in order to successfully integrate your company goals. So go ahead -- take a deep breath, dive in head first & have fun!
xx Samantha