So you’ve finally decided to give in to what social media marketing has to offer for your business or concern. To take the steps to forge a path, as you’ve decided to launch a plan of attack by making the force which is social media marketing work for you.
You’ve decided to follow the process and are now expecting positive results, that social networking will prove to be an effective marketing movement for your organization, which will drive brand awareness to the forefront, resulting in increased revenue.
You’re also wondering how you can properly track your social media’s return on investment (ROI). How you as the director of this initiative can tailor your social media marketing efforts and success to your advantage.
Too often, social media as a digital marketing strategy remains more of an afterthought. “Oh yeah, and what about social media.” Instead, you should be focusing, creating, and then managing an optimal social media experience for yourself and your customers.
Social media as a result usually goes on the back burner, becomes secondary and usually assigned to someone who isn’t qualified or experienced enough with the proper knowledge to actively pursue an effective social media plan properly.
So how are you able to track and ensure a positive social media marketing ROI with the complexities and array by not concentrating on its full potential. If it’s not executed properly, it will fail. So listed are actionable solvents to your social media marketing dilemma.
Social Media Needs Complete Adoption
Everyone, including the financial executives of the company needs to begin thinking about social media by looking at the bigger picture when attempting to reap its rewards. What’s needed is complete adoption.
So if the ownership and the CEO appreciates its value, a portion of the marketing budget should be dedicated to social media, then the first barrier is crossed. Once it’s realized how social media can be beneficial to all areas of the organization, then the reigns should be handed off to the proper people who knows how it works.
Preparing The Proper Team
So if you’re responsible for digital marketing, you most likely have a peer team at your disposal. What you then need to do is review all of your resources and then define appropriate roles.
The key when developing a social media marketing plan is ensuring that you have all the proper buy-ins from the right resources, that it’s an effective workable plan with the proper investment outlay of time and money.
Also, the plan needs those who have all the proper skills, the knowledge and the expertise to do it properly and well. So make sure that you find a qualified dedicated team before you launch.
Having A Content Plan In Place
Once your social media marketing team is assembled, begin by brainstorming and then writing out a content plan for the week, every week. Know that the success of this plan is measured by the quality of the content along with its related engagement, targeted growth, and brand sentiment.
When developing your content plan, organize how it will be created and then published, and how well it fits into the culture of your business along with the products and services that you offer.
Think how the content will be able to engage with your audience based on the type of content that they prefer, and where exactly in social media that they’ll digest this information the best.
Tracking The Success Of Your Social Media Efforts
Like all of your other marketing initiatives, tracking the results is of paramount importance. It’s generally not enough to just measure the success metrics in social media itself, such as counting how many likes, followers or fans, connects, etc. that you generate.
You also need to concisely track each team members contribution and effectiveness of your social media marketing program, and they should be monitored on a frequent basis.
If social media marketing isn’t your core business, then you’ll need to monitor as often as possible. This especially if you’re investing a lot of your time and budget into these programs. It may at times even be advisable to hire a social media consultant to make sure that you’re aligned properly.
Tracking Your Social Media Marketing ROI
The question that’s always raised when it comes to social media marketing is how to effectively measure ROI from all of the related efforts. How to constantly measure the success ratio when it comes to your social media initiatives.
During the initial social media marketing set-up phase, what you need to do is make sure that all of your tracking and analytics are properly in place to measure the precise traffic which is coming in from the various social channels.
You’ll also want to make ensure that all of your social media monitoring tools such as Hootsuite, for instance, along with others are set up properly so you can track the various groups of traffic driving keywords, this similar to how you would a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign.
The Ever Changing Digital Marketing Landscape
The role of digital marketing is now a lot more complex than ever, and it’s becoming more so because of the ever changing and finicky nature of social media, which isn’t going away anytime soon.
So it becomes extremely critical for those who are responsible for digital marketing, to actively plan ahead while always properly monitoring the results.
This includes all of the ongoing campaigns as well as the programs which are based on the time and effort that’s dedicated towards your entire social media marketing plan.