The first word Goal is bandied about to the point where we have become desensitized to the word, switching off mentally the second someone mentions it. BUT, you need to pay attention here because if you don’t have a goal for your Social Media campaign, then you will find it difficult to measure the effectiveness of the campaign and very difficult to report on.
Typical broad goals can be:
- Brand Awareness
- Reputation Management
- Improved Search Engine Rankings
- Increased Relevant visitor traffic
- Improve sales for a product or service
Smaller campaigns can be run where the goals are more specific, targeting specific groups within your market.
Once you have your goals in mind you can start thinking about a strategy. Ultimately you probably won’t have a 5-year plan when it comes to Social Media but if you can have a monthly strategy to work with, I like the 3-month strat personally, you will find that you are able to focus on the task at hand and not feel too overwhelmed with all the interaction which needs to be done.
A strategy will include tasks like:
- 16 blog posts a month with specific topics
- 120 Tweets a month
- Interaction on 10 industry related blogs per month
- Forum participation
By specifying which tasks need to be done makes reporting and fine-tuning your strategy much easier. For example, if 16 blog posts a month is too time consuming and you decide that you will try 12 blog posts the next month, and then compare the analytics on traffic to and interaction on the blog – you will be able to see if cutting back is a viable option or not. You will find that some platforms work for you and some don’t so you cut back on the ones which don’t, creating more time for you to focus on the platforms which do work. You will only know this if you have a set strategy which is in line with the goals you would like to achieve.
This all may sound rather overwhelming but if you take it a step at a time you will find that your social media interaction becomes more focused and easier to manage.
