What do you expect from your social networking efforts? Are you trying to increase brand awareness? Improve customer relations? Generate sales? Serve customers? Attract prospects? Get leads? All of the above?
Expecting social media to do everything is one of the reasons people think that their strategy is failing. Social media can do it all, but you must pick one for your objective. While secondary benefits may happen, focusing on one increases the chances of success. Each of the objectives listed requires different tactics from the others. Choosing one and doing it well generates a return on investment that can be used to expand your reach. Choosing all dilutes your efforts and reduces your effectiveness.
If you haven't created your strategic plan, start with your objective and build from there. You can adapt as needed along the way. Beginning with a clearly defined objective and specific measuring guidelines allows you to recognize your success or fail quickly. Either way, you can move to the next level or objective without being overly invested in the process. In other words, you can increase your chances of success while minimizing your risk.
If you have a strategic plan in place that is trying to cover all of the bases, look to your community for guidance. Are they moving from your social media activity into the buying cycle? Focus on sales or leads as appropriate. Are they chatting about your business with their friends? Encourage them to continue by emphasizing brand awareness. Do they ask product related questions? Customer service is your sweet spot. If they are doing it all, you may need to expand your social media marketing and customer care team to insure that it continues
Social media decisions are easier when objectives and expectations are aligned.
Before you tweet a message, write a blog post, or chime in on the latest drama, run it past this litmus test:
- Does it move us closer to the objective? If so, how?
- What is the next step we want our community members to take? Is it clearly defined?
- What is the best case scenario?
- What is the worst case scenario?
If your activity moves you toward the objective, has a clearly defined next step, and minimal risk, do it. If not, don't. It's that easy.
There's an added bonus to clearly defined objectives. Everyone in your organization can be on your marketing team. The danger in using people outside the marketing circle to expand your reach is that they may send the wrong message. The risk is significantly reduced when they know what is expected and how to deliver.
To read Part One: Click here