How to Align Your Social Media Efforts and Business Goals

Social media marketing is an excellent way to connect with your audience, build relationships and bring exposure to your business. But if you’re not tracking your results to determine how successful your campaigns are, it’s difficult to achieve your end goals. Measuring ROI validates that your marketing efforts are working. If the numbers aren’t stacking up, you can make the necessary changes to achieve the desired result.
Let’s dive into a few of the ways that you can align your social media efforts with your business goals.
Start by determining your marketing goals.
The first step is to define the marketing goals of your campaigns. This way, you know what to track.
Success for your campaigns may mean revenue, clicks or the number of contest entries. When you know what you are looking for, you can determine the best way to track and measure these numbers.
Also, it’s important to be specific about what actions visitors should be taking to meet your goals. For example, conversion goals might include PDF downloads, newsletter signups, contact forms, etc.
Identify which channels you should be using.
The next step is to identify the channels that you should be using. Think of your audience first and which channels they are most likely to be on.
Aside from the obvious social channels, it’s also possible that some campaigns are a better fit for certain channels. For instance, a visual campaign that asks followers to post a picture of themselves with a branded hashtag could do very well on Instagram, while a contest could see better engagement on Facebook using a third-party app.
Other factors to take into consideration when determining which channel to use are how much your audience is willing to spend, the size of your audience and how long they spend on the channel.
Track and report your campaigns.
Lastly, it’s important to track your campaigns and adjust them for the absolute best performance.
Everything should be tracked, from the type of campaign you launched, the activities completed, the cost of the ads, etc. There are a variety of tools you can use to track and report your campaigns. Google Analytics is one of the best out there as it’s comprehensive, user-friendly and free.
Once you’re done tracking your campaigns, it’s time to report the results. Reporting is a crucial step because it allows you to see the progress that your campaigns are making. Plus, anyone can view the reports at anytime to get a better understanding of how effective your campaigns are.
Marketing should be intentional. In order to get the most from social media marketing, align your efforts with your business goals. If you would like to learn tips for doing this more efficiently, give WSI Net Advantage a quick shout at 510-687-9737 or fill out our contact form and we’ll get back to you shortly!