Is there a direct link between social media and your business objectives, and setting your brand values? Or is social media just a brand building platform, and somewhere businesses can interact with their customers?
Aligning your social media goals to your business objectives can be easier than it looks – and by setting clear goals you can really get the most value out of all your social media channels.
Here’s a quick overview of how you can stack up your social results against your business goals:
Brand awareness = reach
Brand awareness is an important measure for many companies. It has been traditionally measured with customer surveys, which can be costly and time consuming.
Using social media, you can measure brand awareness through the reach of your social posts, meaning how many people have scrolled past your post in their newsfeed.
Some reporting allows you to further break this down by age, gender and country, to give you a clear idea of the key demographics and the reach of your brand awareness.
Thought leadership = consumption
Thought leadership is a key pillar in many business’s marketing objectives, as it helps establish your brand’s presence and capability, if executed correctly.
To measure this through your platforms, consumption of content can be measured through link clicks, photo views, time spent on page and video plays.
Word of mouth = amplification and engagement
Everyone recognises the power of word of mouth, which is becoming increasingly more popular with the rise of influencers on Instagram and TikTok. According to Sprout Social, social media users overwhelmingly trust other users or friends as their “preferred” form of influencer, most likely to buy from them based on a product recommendation (37%) versus celebrities (7%).
Word of mouth can in reality be tricky to track, but the beauty of social media is almost everything is trackable and measureable. Measuring the amount of shares, retweets and tagged comments you receive on a post can give a clear indication of your brand’s word of mouth on social, and which posts may be performing better than others.
Leads and sales = conversion
Many people do not see social media as the ideal outlet for generating leads through to sales, and that’s often true. But with the right content and the right spend, you are able to nurture your leads through the sales funnel.
Facebook, for example, gives you the ability to create advertisements and boosted posts with clear actions such as “Learn more” or “Sign up here”, where you can link to a page on your website. You can track the success of these posts through conversions and actions – how many times the link was clicked and whether it resulted in a page like.
Finally, measurement is KEY!
The key to all goals, whether they are social media or business defined, is to make sure they are easily measureable. Set clear KPI’s for each of your goals that are realistic and attainable, and then celebrate your success when you reach them!
If you need help setting up your social strategy, or getting started with the right content to really get the best value out of social to achieve your business goals, get in touch with us at [email protected]
Alex Williams