As stated in “The Social Media Planning Process (Part 1)”, I typically like to map out a Social Media Marketing Plan that shows how social media will be utilized to build a brand online. The first part of the process is creating and updating social networks profiles, and the second part measures the effectiveness of your Social Media Marketing Campaign by monitoring your Social Media Marketing Analytics by some specific metrics. Namely:
- The number of web hits to your company website and/or blog.
- The number of emails collected on your company website and/or blog for your email marketing campaign.
- The number of Facebook Fans, Twitter Followers, LinkedIn Connections, and YouTube Subscribers acquired.
- The number of people that attend special events advertised through your social media networks.
- The number of referrals from social media fans, followers, connections, and subscribers.
- The number of new units sold/leads generated.
- The number of units sold/new leads generated from existing customers.
The final component of the Social Media Marketing Plan is monitoring the long-term effectiveness of your company’s social media marketing strategy, as it is key for identifying new customer markets, gaining additional customer feedback, as well as assessing what social media marketing avenues are working best. In this stage, assessing marketing effectiveness occurs by utilizing a collection of online market surveys and/or customer feedback questionnaires, and thoroughly monitoring the analytics of your company’s website, blog, and social media networks, and periodically analyzing the information received for emerging trends and industry shifts.
Social media initiatives can be time consuming, but if done right there can be a great payoff.
So, with that in mind: Where are you in your social media planning process?
Kindra Cotton, Small Business Survival Specialist