What are the goals of social media marketing?

Everyone utilises social media. It’s impossible to avoid it. It’s our primary place to stay connected to friends, family, colleagues, news, and, most notably to digital marketers, companies and brands. Without having social media marketing goals, it’s hard to know exactly how well your social media strategy is performing as well as where you need to iterate in order to continue moving forwards.

Brand Awareness

The term ‘brand awareness’ is all about your brand becoming important to potential buyers. This means that you need to post content regularly which answers the questions that your customers are asking. That content should include links to:

• Blog posts,
• Infographics,
• Statistics, and
• Relevant articles.

However, you must not forget to show the world who your brand is by posting photos of employees, the office as well as company events. You can also post humorous, relevant memes which support your brand. This will all help to build a connection with customers.

What are the social media marketing analytics to track?

• Increased Engagement
• Increase Followers
• Likes
• Retweets

Example of a SMART Goal:

• Gain 1 000 Twitter followers by month-end
• Enhance Digital Public Relations

By following the mentions of your company, it is possible for you to find out what customers are saying about your brand as well as to respond to complaints in a timely manner.

When companies engage as well as respond to customer service requests via social media, those customers ultimately spend 20 to 40% more with the business. Responding quickly as well as solving problems allows you the opportunity to stay ahead of large-scale complaints and create brand loyalty.

Improve Relationships, Mentions, Ratings and Reviews

An instance of goal that fulfils the S.M.A.R.T. criteria are:

• Get 10 five-star reviews on Google in three months.

Build a community of advocates

Brand loyalty has forever been one of the most important factors in long-term growth. In the past, companies relied on word-of-mouth. Now, social media offers an entirely new platform where brand loyalty can be shared with thousands of people in real-time.

For instance, as the number of photos of food, on social media, increases restaurants are offering promotions and discounts for those who post pictures of their food on their preferred social media platforms. This provides the restaurant with exposure and the customer feels connected.

Research and Development

By engaging with customers constantly, your company can stay up-to-date with the problems that they’re facing and then develop solutions. Just as important is to follow your competitors on social media in order to see:

• The manner in which they engage their customers
• If they’re fielding any complaints, and
• If they’re offering any promotions or new products.

Analytics to track:

• Competition
• Increased Engagement
• Insights into Customer Problems

Example of a SMART Goal:

• Engage 10 customers a month on a number of different social media channels, about problems, for three months.

Driving Sales and Leads

If you are not leveraging social media in order to acquire leads as well as generate sales, you’re not making proper use of social media. This is what most organisation strive for first however fail to realise that, without time spent on the first four goals, it’s not likely that sales will grow.

Social media provides the perfect opportunity to:

• Interact with prospective customers, both on a personal level and an organisational level,
• Gauge their pain points, and
• Understand their fundamental corporate culture.

This understanding allows for a warm call when you first engage as opposed to a cold call.

Aspects to track:

• Increased web traffic click-through rate
• Call To Actions Landing Pages

Example of a SMART Goal:

• Average 5% Click Through Rate on Tweets by end of the year.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you want to learn more about how to navigate social media successfully, please follow this link.