Social media has become a necessary element in the success of any business. Although it is easy to join and participate, businesses must really think about what they're hoping to accomplish before jumping onto any particular platform.
Set Goals That Make Sense For Your Business
In general, when starting any new marketing initiative, it's a good idea (read: imperative) that you set a high-level goal for the campaign. This will make it easier to set the messaging correctly for your audience and allow you to easily identify where the campaign should sit inside of your marketing funnel.
Are you using social media as a top-of-funnel strategy to attract new customers? Or maybe you're an eCommerce clothing store and you're using Instagram Shopping as a new way to bring in revenue. It's ok to have multiple goals for the campaign but having a single overarching objective will help keep things in perspective.
Structure & Consistency
Structure matters when it comes to social media marketing, just like anything else. For instance, you can take the time to develop a great strategy but if you're posting is inconsistent you're not likely to find much success. There are many other components that need to be considered, such as audience engagement and existing social media analytics tools that monitor which posts get the most views, likes, or retweets.
Measure Your Success: Social Media Analytics Tools
By measuring your social media performance, you can better understand how engaged your audience is and see where any possible shortcomings might be. A few of the most popular social analytics tools include:
Facebook Insights
Twitter Amplify
Instagram Business Tools
There are several other resources available as well depending on the platform you're using. For example, on Facebook you can use the Audience Insights tool to view demographic data such as age and location.
KPI's
Reach is a measure of how far your content has gone. This can help measure the total number of people who have seen your post. How far are users' feeds from your material?
Clicks is the amount of times your material or account has been clicked. It's critical to understand what motivates people to inquire about your content or purchase it.
Engagement is the amount of interaction your audience has with you is measured through their total number of social interactions divided by the total number of impressions. This reveals how well your audience views you and how interested they are in interacting with you.
Hashtags help get your content in front of new users. How are the hashtags you're using on your posts helping accomplish this? What are the most effective hashtags for your brand? Which hashtags were most closely linked to your business? Having these answers might assist you in prioritizing future content.
Iterate & Create
This is one of the best parts about working in social media because you're using a fluid platform that's easy to be creative and iterative on. What working effectively?What's not? As you gain more insights it will become easier to decide what to change and how to improve your efforts.
Earlier this year, Facebook announced that they're tweaking their algorithm in order to improve interaction rates. This implies company accounts will be less prioritized than before.
This has direct implications for social media marketers who need help getting their audiences to notice their posts and will change the approach needed in order to get a "boost" from a Facebook post, which could be helpful when trying to increase organic reach for a company account.
3 Things To Know & Use To Your Advantage
Know what your audience is interested in and give them more of it!
Know where your audience is going online so you can follow up with them. If they're on Instagram then put effort into building an account that generates results.
If you're new to social marketing, it may feel overwhelming so remember not everyone has this figured out all at once! You can always learn how to improve by doing what's working for others.
We Can Help You Design A Winning Social Media Strategy!
At BEPHORE Digital Marketing, our approach to social media marketing is a simple one – lead with proven social media strategies that follow that platform's algorithmic guidelines, and let the data help guide iteration. As your brand ambassador, we flawlessly match your brand tone and represent your company just as you would. Learn more about our social media marketing agency.