Social media is so quick and easy to get off the ground that it’s tempting to bypass the planning and just dive in. But be careful, because this can be a formula for disaster! Without proper planning, social media can end up being a waste of valuable time and resources for your business and your team. It’s crucial to set goals and know how to measure success before you begin.
In our last post, we discussed knowing who’s in charge of your campaign. This is an important first step. You want to make sure to have your social media team members in place when you start the actual planning so that everyone can be on the same page. Now, the strategy can begin. Here are some questions to answer with your team that will shape your brand’s social media campaign.
The What:
The first question of your planning needs to be: What do we want to accomplish with our social media campaign? You have lots of options here. Is this campaign aiming to generate awareness, convert interactions directly into sales, provide information to your audience, or maybe even a combination of these?
Once you’ve determined the goal, make sure to communicate it to your whole team.
The Who:
Having the “What” in places makes the next round of planning a lot easier. In order to achieve the goal of your campaign, you will want to know some key information about your social media audience. This will help you reach the most people as efficiently as possible. Answering the following questions will get you started on the right foot:
- Who is your audience?
- What is their demographic? How about their psychographic?
- Which social networks does your audience visit most? Do they live on Pinterest, or do they spend their spare time on Twitter?
- What topics is your audience interested in?
- Who are they talking to now? What other brands and influencers do they engage with?
The How:
When you have taken the time to understand your social audience, you can begin to implement your social media campaign. Create a plan, develop a calendar for posts and milestones, and pick platforms based on which ones your audience engage with most. Measuring key metrics will allow you to see how your campaign is performing.
Each platform has different metrics to measure, such as likes and comments on Facebook, or retweets and favorites on Twitter. Your goals will depend on the type of campaign you are running. For an awareness or informational campaign, engagement and interactions for each of the platforms will be key. If you are running a conversation campaign, you’ll instead be looking for links back to your website. Here is a list of some of the tools you can use to measure your campaign:
- Google Analytics
- Facebook Measurement Insights
- Pinterst for Business
- Tumblr
- YouTube
Now that you have a plan in place, consistency is key. Post regularly and measure the response often to make sure you are on track. This will also let you know when to break out the champagne to celebrate reaching your social media goals!
