Is My Social Media Working?

Marketing team lays out papers and images on page to evaluate if social media is working

Is my social media working?

That’s an important question to ask.

Even more important is knowing how to arrive at the answer.

Whether you manage social media internally or contract it out to an agency, there have to be measurements in place so that you know the day-to-day efforts are paying off.

And that’s the key to answering the question –

What are your goals?

Measuring Social Medialike_teal

One of the most important services Move Digital offers is a Marketing Strategy. You can’t know what’s working until you know what, who and how.

  • What are your business goals (there can be more than one)?
  • Who is your target customer (can also be more than one, but shouldn’t be more than two or three)?
  • How will you achieve these goals?

Nothing can be measured unless you have goals in place.

Set Goals

Most questions can be answered through a good marketing strategy. Delving into who your audience is and discovering how to best speak to them is part of a good strategy.

Set and stick to goals that are realistic, challenging, and achievable.

Goal examples:

  • Corporate branding
  • Product sales
  • Recruiting
  • Awareness
  • Fundraising
  • Community involvement

Set Measurementstablet_teal

Create measurements that make sense and can be determined through your available metrics.

Measurement examples:

  • 20% increase in product sales this quarter
  • 10% increase in website traffic
  • 30% increase in email signups Q3

There are some tricky spots to measure… situations where you might not have hard targets.

An example might be rolling out a new corporate branding campaign. How do you know it was successful?

That can be measured in several ways. Did you promote a micro-site to drive web traffic that is set up for analytics? Did you have eyeballs on your messages on social media (reach and engagement)? Did you have a call to action during the roll-out, and what were the results of that CTA?

No matter what the goal, it must have measurements tied to it to gauge success.

NOTE:

Beware the lure of vanity metrics! That would be along the lines of “grow my followers to 5,000 by the end of the year”. While that is a metric, what is its purpose? Is it a feel-good achievement, or does it actually tie back to a goal?

Record Results

Even if you don’t have to report your results to someone officially, you should set timelines for recording them. Writing down results will hold you accountable and give you concrete ideas of what’s working and what’s not working.

Record your results monthly and quarterly, and you’ll always be aware of how effective your efforts are in achieving your goals.

Is It Working?

It can take time, but if you set goals and measure them, you’ll know if your social media is working.

Move Digital has seen it work too many times not to answer YES.

Amy Jones

Amy has been a busy marketing professional in Huntsville for over 20 years. She has an amazingly diverse background in marketing, advertising, special events and public relations from tech manufacturing to shopping center management to non-profit arts. A talented public speaker, Amy can deliver insightful instruction while also getting giggles out of her audience. As an Account Manager with Move Digital Group, Amy loves helping clients tell their story. Naturally creative, she blends creativity and analytics to produce results. During her non-screen time, Amy likes to read fan-fiction, pretend to write her own novel, and spend quality time eating tacos.