How to Define Goals for Your Social Media Strategy

Are you struggling with your company’s social media accounts? Do you keep posting, but not gaining any followers?

If so, you’re not alone. In fact, many business owners don’t know the first thing about social media marketing and influencer marketing. This should come as no surprise since most business owners are experts in their own fields, not in social media branding.

If you’re new to online marketing, you may not even know where to begin. Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? Google analytics? What are the best social media platforms for your brand to achieve your business goals? And how do you reach your target audience?

We’ve put together a brief guide on how to build your social media brand. Here are some of the most important decisions you’ll need to make, and how to measure your success.

Decide why you’re on social media

To begin with, you’ll need to decide why your business is pushing for a social media marketing strategy in the first place. Likes and retweets can be fun, and give you a warm fuzzy feeling, but they’re not going to make you any money.

There are many ways to earn money on social media. You can use your accounts to drive traffic to your website or to increase brand awareness. You can even use it to announce new products to your existing customers and even make money through your click-through rate.

Social media can also be useful for less obvious reasons. You can use social media to provide customer support or just to listen to what people are saying about your brand and achieve your goal-setting strategies. For example, if you run a burger shop called Jim’s Burgers, you can keep an eye out for #JimsBurgers on Twitter. This is a great way to hear exactly what people are saying about you.

Decide on your target audience

Before you post anything on different media platforms, ask yourself who your potential customers are. Before you make any other decisions, you’ll need to have this figured out otherwise your social media efforts will never reach achieve your objectives. What you share, when you share it and what platform you use for brand awareness is going to depend on who you’re trying to reach.

For example, let’s say you manufacture custom bicycle helmets. Who is your target audience in media marketing?

It’s not going to be a single mom who’s buying a helmet for her six-year-old. She’s going to buy the Wal Mart special. Here, a campaign hitting all social media channels would be wasted. Your target audience is avid cyclists, people who ride every day and are willing to spend extra money for a helmet they like.

Decide what you’re going to share

Now that you know your target audience, you’re ready to start posting. For the rest of this article, we’ll continue with our bicycle helmet example, just so we’re consistent.

One trap that many companies fall into is only posting ads. This is great if you already have a large, established audience. It’s also a good way to drive brand awareness or reach out to the press, but it’s not going to grow your customer base.

For cyclists, why not post articles about the Tour de France or other major cycling events? People aren’t going to share ads, but they’ll share fun articles about things they care about. Their friends, in turn, may follow your page to see more of what you’re sharing. Of course, this will also include some ads.

Decide when you’re going to share it

When you share something is almost as important as what you’re sharing. Simply put, if your audience isn’t online when you’re sharing, you’re doing the online equivalent of screaming into the void.

Our cycling company, for example, will want to keep an eye on cycling events on ESPN2, as well as major events like the Olympics and the Tour de France. Like most sports fans, cyclists are liable to get online before and after these events to share their thoughts.

If you post a cycling article just as the Tour de France ends, it’s liable to be on top of your customers’ feed when they log in.

The end result? You’ve basically placed a targeted ad, without paying a dime for it.

Learn from your competitors

In the olden days, it was extremely difficult to determine whether your competitors’ marketing strategies were working for them. Even if they ran a successful campaign, it could take a team of experts to slice and dice focus group data to determine just why they succeeded.

Now, you can do all this for free, just by following your competitors on social media. Watch which of their posts get the most traction and copy any strategies that work.

Conversely, you can also see where they fall flat. If they suddenly get a flurry of angry tweets directed at them, find out why. Then (obviously) don’t do whatever they did.

Focus on metrics that matter

Like we said before, likes and retweets make you feel good, but they don’t pay the bills. Instead of focusing on these meaningless metrics, treat social media like any other kind of advertising.

Specifically, tie your metrics to the reason you’re on social media to begin with. If you’re trying to drive traffic to your website, for example, see if you had any spikes in traffic after posting. If you did, your strategy is working. If you didn’t, then it doesn’t matter how many people clicked the thumbs-up button.

By keeping your eye on the ball and not getting distracted by social media bells and whistles, you’ll be setting your business up for success.

Get a professional team

Of course, you probably have more important things to do with your time. And hiring someone to run your social media campaign in-house can be challenging if you don’t know what to ask them during the interview.

If you want to launch a social media campaign, but running one isn’t in your wheelhouse, consider hiring a professional marketing firm. These companies specialize in social media campaigns to build your online brand. They’ll manage your social media, optimize your site for search engines and much more.

If all of this sounds too daunting, there are businesses that specialize in social media marketing optimization like our agency Above The Fold.  If you’re interested in what our team has to offer, contact us today to receive a free consultation.