The Value of Your Social Media Plan
I’m often asked by clients and business owners, “How often should I post on Twitter or update my Facebook page?” Is once a day enough? Seems like a logical question. My reply is always the same. What are you trying accomplish? They often stumble out a response and say something like make more money or get additional exposure. Good responses but they don’t give enough information to define and measure a valuable social media campaign.
Measureable Goals
In order to measure your social media success you have to start out with defined goals. At some point you will have to look back and ask yourself what was the ROI (Return on Investment) for this time and effort. Perhaps you do want more sales, registrations or some other conversion to be you’re goal. Take the time to clarify it. How many more sales do you want? How many new registrations do we need from this effort? Clearly defined goals will give you the insight needed to determine if this effort is worth while compared to your other marketing incentives.
Business Intelligence
People are talking about your brand, product or industry all the time. They tell you everyday what they think, what they like and what they don’t like. Be sure to set aside time to listen and respond. Your responses need to be timely and move quickly if what you hear is negative. I’ve seen some companies do this extremely well, TuneCore is one of them. TuneCore is a top notch Digital Music Distribution company. They police their brand everyday, it’s amazing. Whenever my Google Alerts tell me TuneCore was mentioned somewhere on the web, 99% of the time the people at TuneCore have already been there. They have either personally thanked the person for their comment or if the mention is negative they ask the person to contact them directly so they can make it right. People appreciate being listened to, but don’t know if they’ve been heard unless it’s proven to them through a reply. Get credit for your listening efforts by posting comments.
Because Social Media enables you to listen as well as speak, it offers the opportunity to generate true business intelligence. The real value of social media comes from connecting and understanding your customers so you can uncover new business opportunities. By talking with your customers where they hangout you are more likely to get honest feedback and will get a better understanding of how they really feel. The next step is to set an actionable goal to create one new product or service per year based on what you’ve learned by listening.
In order to get the full value of your social media plan you have to define specific measurable goals but, don’t forget the most valuable part….listen to your customers and apply business intelligence to what you hear. Your customers are telling you what they want. Are you listening?
The JAR Group specializes in social media management and can help you build a measurable campaign that adds value to your business. Contact us today.
