Sometimes senior managers are skeptical about social media. Their vast experience with other marketing platforms hinders them giving social media marketing a try.
I often am tasked with convincing senior managers and the best way to do that is by showing solid business results. Works every time! But you need to start building on a solid foundation.
Here are 10 goals for social media marketing to get started on the right path to getting results that matter (in no particular order…). This list is composed from my experience from 10+ years as a social media manager plus some insights gained during my own personal social media activities during that time.
Create a social media strategy
Do you have a social media strategy aligned to your business goals?
Learn how to craft an effective social media strategy. The strategy can contain pointers about the maturity path. Consequently you can devise metrics that can define how successful you are compared to your own path or benchmarked with competitors.
Competitive intelligence
Are you tracking what your competitors post about or what your customers are saying and doing with your competitors? There are techniques available to dig deeper and discover your competitor tactics.
Create a crisis plan
Many years ago crisis situations found a new home in social media. With the right cocktail of elements, a crisis can run wild in social media in a matter of hours. The Fyre festival fiasco from April 2017 certainly had the right mix. I saw this happening from a long way off and was lucky not to be one of the 100s experiencing it first hand.
You might be unlucky and be the social media manager who has to manage a crisis. I have been there and have the T-Shirt. Nice to know that there are some preventative measures. I recently heard from an expert at Dell how they use social listening to avoid a crisis. So it is possible in some circumstances! Furthermore, learn how to listen better (and maybe even prevent a crisis)
Learn what customers think of you
A helicopter view on what customers think about your brand is valuable. In social media terms, it can be measured in many ways. The most used words is often used. However, what about measuring the most used action words, most talked about product or service, etc?
Uncover important trends
First movers taking advantage of what is trending with their target audience will gain a valuable lead on their competitors. Social listening is a valuable tool to discover social media trends. It can be used to learn about where in the world the trend is starting, the demographics of the audience and the platforms, hashtags, etc.
Chart your thought leadership
Do you consider yourself to be a thought leader? Social media can be an enabler for success. The key is to use content marketing in a focused way towards your target group. Therefore, post about actionable advice that your target group can use. In addition post about what is coming up in your industry and invite discussion. Plan for the future as you get more successful; webinars, blogs, Tweet chats going live in LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram etc.
Customer acquisition
“Today, you can add a lead gen form to LinkedIn sponsored content campaigns. These forms have shown to increase both lead volume and quality, making it easier for marketers like you to prove the ROI of your LinkedIn marketing campaigns” – LinkedIn
Add to the bottom line with social commerce
What is social commerce? Social commerce enables shoppers to use social networks to make eCommerce transactions. The number of networks entering this area is growing and they are enabling fresh new ways for the shopping experience to happen. Instagram shopping via Reels is a good example.
Launch social media paid promotion campaigns
How many social media paid promotion campaigns have you done so far? If the answer to that question is zero you are missing out on a huge opportunity. You can get started for very little cost using a credit card. There is a vast array of options to target or re-target based on customer behavior, interests, or job role etc. Here is some information to get started with Facebook social media advertising.
Discover valuable influencers
There are many specialist social media programs for influencer discovery. I learnt how to identify and then interact with influencers many years before these programs came onto the market. I started doing community management in forums in 2003.
I am convinced that any good community manager working full time for at least three months should be able to list the top three influencers without even having to think about it or use a program to find them. Furthermore, they should be able to list the time of day, day of week they are most active, the type of content they share and on what platforms.
In conclusion – 10 goals for social media marketing
The above ten suggestions are not exhaustive. It might not be a good idea to attempt to start all ten due to a lack of resources or budget or due to a constrained business scope. To help you get started, here is a link to a post about “5 Guidelines for Using Social Media Effectively”. I view the list of five guidelines as a foundation. A solid base that can be used to enable you to achieve any of the above 10 social media activities.
Have fun!
5 thoughts on “10 goals for social media marketing”