As social media platforms constantly change their algorithms, brands are forced to become social media experts. Creating exciting content takes time, so it’s understandable that companies want to see a return on these efforts. If your social media isn’t helping you reach your goals, there are a number of ways to get back on track. Here are some potential problems with how you’re managing your social media account and some ways to get your social media account back on track.
Potential Problem: You Don’t Have Measurable Goals
If your goals aren’t measurable, how do you determine if you are meeting your goals? Making sure you can track your engagement on social media, or your website, is part of this challenge. If you are tracking users who engage with your social media content, are you able to track whether or not those same users become customers? Your user journey can start with social media, but always connect the dots to the desired end result.
It’s not only critical to have measurable goals, but it’s also important to select a KPI that accurately measures your goal or correlates with your goals. It’s a common misstep for companies to measure metrics that do not clearly correlate with their goals. If you want more customers but you are tracking your ‘likes’, your goals might not be properly aligned.
Problem: You Haven’t Developed a Specific Brand Voice
In order to stand out from your competition, your style must be consistent and unique. This includes both the aesthetics of your social media content and the writing. Defining your brand’s voice will not only increase the effectiveness of your social media campaigns, but it should also make creating the content a bit easier. Fix your branding by developing brand colors, fonts, and styles. This is especially important with Instagram or Pinterest, since the grid format of the dashboards will make inconsistencies in style look chaotic.
Problem: You Haven’t Clearly Defined the Target of Your Social Media Campaigns
Getting to know your audience can help you reach your goals. You need to identify key demographics about your customers, such as age, location, income bracket, and other qualities. With a clear target in mind, you need to ensure that you are on the right social media platforms to appeal to that target and producing content that will engage them. Focus on the quality of followers over the quantity of followers to ensure that you have an audience that is interested in what your company has to offer. Posting random memes about puppies may get you followers and likes, but it will not help you reach potential clients.
Solving Your Social Media Problems
- Fix it by researching: Review your existing data to identify the characteristics of your existing customer base. If you don’t have the right data, ask your current audience questions, survey your current customer base (possibly with incentives), check out the competition and the conversations their relevant followers are having.
- Fix it by offering solutions: Use the information you discover from canvassing your audience to create posts that address their pain points. Add value to your target audience by providing raising potential solutions to the problems they are having.
- Fix it by monitoring engagement: Engaging with your community is essential for your social media efforts and online growth. If nobody is liking or commenting on your posts, they likely aren’t effective. Conduct research to determine which of your posts have generated the most interest and reach. Also, check to make sure that your content isn’t overly salesy and that it provides value to your potential clients. Try going one step beyond identifying your followers and find the influencers who welcome your content.
- Fix it by working with a marketing strategist: Creating a new direction for your social media campaigns can be a challenge! A marketing expert can assist you with developing your brand persona and making sure the voice is consistent across all of your platforms.
Conclusion
Going through the motions of posting content on social media isn’t enough these days. Whether or not your social media content is engaging, or creative, is subjective to your community. If you aren’t posting regularly, or if you don’t have the capacity, delegate creating a content calendar to your marketing VA. Measure your results and make sure that they support your marketing strategy. You don’t want to miss out on the marketing benefits of social media.