With the first half of 2015 in the books, it’s a good time to take a hard look at how your social media plans are performing and make the necessary changes to finish the year strong.
SocialCentiv, whose marketing software tool helps businesses find new customers on Twitter, has outlined steps that companies can take to assess and improve their social media strategies.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest are revolutionary tools for reaching and interacting with the buying public, but they’re only as effective as the person who wields them. Here are some tips for your social media audit:
1. Review your goals. Social media for social media’s sake isn’t helpful. It’s important to know your end goals, who you want to reach and what you want them to do. The answers will vary with every business. While the end game may be the same in all cases—getting people to buy the company’s products or services—the particular audience segment a firm wants to reach will be unique, as will the best role that social media channel can play in turning prospects into customers.
The owner of a local pizzeria may want her eatery’s Twitter followers to go to its website and order slices online. A management consultant, on the other hand, may want to increase his stature as a thought leader in achieving corporate turnarounds. These two businesses’ respective goals require totally different strategies in order to become reality.
2. Check out customer comments. Quick searches should give you a good idea of how people are rating the quality of your products and services. You may be surprised—and dismayed—not only by what’s said, but who’s saying it.
Even at small companies,well-meaning but misguided employees sometimes set up profiles for their employers without even bothering to tell the boss. This can create a host of issues, from confusing customers to leaking trade secrets. We recommend putting together a very clear social media policy for all employees to sign.
Similarly, it’s important to monitor what people are saying about your business or social media. Customers take to platforms like Twitter to provide feedback that, while sometimes harsh, also can be important for corporate leaders to hear. Tools like Mention, HootSuite, Talkwalker and Social Mention all can help with your efforts.
3. Evaluate the brand position on social media. To ensure brand consistency, accuracy and effectiveness, you need to check that everything from product information, profile pictures and headers contain consistent, updated logos, images and color schemes.
Other elements of the analysis include determining how many posts include images, which tend to increase engagement—such as generating more retweets on Twitter, what your competitors are up to on social media and evaluating how your engage with others on social media.
Metrics also are important to collect. This effort can be simple, such as using the page insights that Facebook provides, or something more sophisticated, such as through third-party technology, notably Followerwork’s data-crunching and graphing service for brands that use Twitter.
There are lots of resources out there. You wouldn’t design and print a brochure by yourself, so treat your social media efforts the same way.
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Bernard Perrine is the co-founder and CEO of SocialCentiv. For more information go to www.socialcentiv.com.
Pub. Note: Send your 600-700 word submissions for the Social Media Forum to larrycoffman@frontier.com.