At Gem PR & Media we often talk about how important it is to set goals and measure success, whether that’s a political campaign, marketing plan or public relations strategy.
Engaging in a social media campaign without having a clear strategy is a waste of time and money. You may have great content on your platforms, but without an objective and lack of measurement how do you gauge what is a success and what is not? The time you take developing goals, creating a strategy and measuring the value of your activity will truly pay off for you and your business.
In order to develop goals, a strategy and measure activity you must first conduct an audit.
To begin with, decide what your objectives are. Do you want to improve SEO? Do you want to increase traffic to your website? Do you want to engage a greater number of past, present and potential clients online? You may find it’s actually a combination of these things.
Next, and this is something people often forget to include when developing their social media strategy, identify your competitors. If your competitors appear to be achieving the goals you have set for yourself check out what they are doing to make this happen and make sure you are doing it better. We can also learn a lot from what people do wrong so that we do not make the same mistakes ourselves.
In the same way that you keep a close eye on your competition make sure you have a clear idea of your own strengths and weaknesses so you can combat these early on.
Don’t think of an audit as a static thing. Continue to evaluate your activity and identify whether it is meeting your objectives. This will give you an opportunity to go back and correct what has failed or build upon what has proved a success.
Make sure you know all of the social media platforms you are on and accounts you have – you don’t want a rogue Instagram account out there that an ex-employee set up that you no longer have access to. Have your passwords saved somewhere secure and make sure you’re not the only one who has access – what if you get hit by a bus?
Measurement is key. I go on and on about it all the time, but that’s because it’s vital to the success of a campaign. Make sure you’re up to speed with the analytics each platform offers you and if you require a more in-depth look at your activity there are plenty of third-party platforms, which offer great insight. We use Sprout Social at Gem PR & Media.
Don’t just rely on analytics, speak to your staff, customers and those that are engaging with you online. Are your posts engaging? Do they contain calls to action? Are your users acting on your posts? Are you asking new clients where they found out about you? Or what prompted them to use your service or product? It’s really important to gain feedback from clients – you need to know what is and isn’t working.
Make sure you communicate with your team; relay positive and negative feedback and allow them to contribute to your audit so that they can take ownership of the strategy to follow.
Don’t think of an audit as a chore; instead look at as the beginning of a great strategy, which leads to opportunities for you and your staff, happy customers and increased profits.
