As we quickly approach the end of Summer and the beginning of Q3, it is a good time to take a step back and look at your strategies. What is working? What isn’t? How can you improve your strategy to reach your EOY goals? While you should be constantly evaluating your marketing efforts in every area you manage, I want to specifically talk about social media.

Social media is somewhat of beast to tame. It is different than most other marketing initiatives because it can’t be completely controlled. That is exactly why you need to evaluate your social media efforts regularly to see whether your customers are resonating and engaging with your content and brand. Here are a few things to do when reviewing your social media efforts over the past few months:

1. Revisit your goals

It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day, repetitive tasks on social media. I keep a checklist of my social media goals on my desktop so I see them everyday. This is a great way to keep the key objective in the front of your mind and keep yourself accountable. Some examples of goals might be:

Primary goals:
- Engage existing followers with interesting and relevant content
- Increase Facebook followers by an average of 15 people/month
- Build brand awareness in my industry
Secondary goals
- Generate soft leads
- Drive more traffic to website

2. Assess your branding on each platform

Is your Facebook cover photo still relevant for your brand, or is it time to change it up? Make sure your profile pictures, cover photos, and other social assets are updated to fit your messaging at this point in the year. Make sure all your branding is consistent across platforms to keep a uniform look and message for your brand.

3. Evaluate engagement

I’m sure you all know this, but the more engagement on your social accounts, the better it is for your brand. I recommend going through your posts from the previous months and look at the analytics of each platform. What types of posts are receiving the most engagement? Is it the videos you’re posting, the photos, branded blog posts, or perhaps some other type of content? It is important to see what is resonating with your audiences as this is what you will want to focus on for the coming months.

Another piece of data you will want to check on each platform’s specific analytics (i.e. Twitter analytics, Facebook insights, etc), is the demographic information of your visitors. Who exactly is engaging with your content? Perhaps the most engaged visitors are not who you thought they were. Using this information can help you more accurately target content to potential customers and existing loyal customers who LOVE your content!

Sales Reporting

4. Make sure you are using the best tools for your goals

As your business evolves and grows, you may need to switch up how you approach your strategy. The tools you use depend on how often you post, engage with your followers, use paid advertising, or have multiple people managing your accounts. I would definitely look at a few of these popular platforms for your social media scheduling and analytics.

Buffer – good for scheduling (not great for engagement)

Buffer is a great tool for simpler social media strategies. It is great for scheduling as you can predefine your schedule and set your posts accordingly. Another great feature is its Google Chrome extension, which allows you to share content across the web to your Buffer account.

Hootsuite – good for more a more serious, full time social media coordinator

Hootsuite is useful for a full time social media manager. This platform allows you to manage and track everything you need right from within the system. You can stream and track hashtags, target your competitors, and much more straight from within the dashboard. It’s usability is extremely easy as you can respond and engage from Hootsuite, rather than having to log in to your individual networks

Integrated tool

While third party social media software are great, you get to a point when your social engagement should correspond directly with your marketing and sales (it should always but when you get to a turning point, you will want to make sure that your social connections match up with your CRM contacts). What is that point? Well, it is different for each company. However, when you realize that you are gaining potential leads from social, or are consistently engaging with your leads and clients, you want to track those interactions in your CRM.

GreenRope’s business software connects your CRM contacts with your social contacts, enabling sales people and marketers to engage directly with hot leads and create automation around social conversations. **We are currently revamping our social tool and creating a very extensive and high level integration.** We are integrating with a great social tool called Soci, which has extensive scheduling and analytics capabilities. Stay tuned to learn more about the timeline for building it out because once we get it up and running, you will ditch whatever tool you are currently using!

5. Reevaluate your influencers

Often times, your influencers from last year may no longer be influencers. It is important to check your lists and see who is still relevant. Are they still posting/publishing? Do they still get the engagement they had before? In such a fast changing business environment, many people come and go. Make sure that the people you are targeting as influencers are still actually influencers.

Definitely take some time to go through your social media and keep in mind the points I have outlined above. It is important to check things out and make sure you are being as efficient and effective as possible in every aspect of your marketing. Good luck!

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Social Media Check Up: What's Working & What's Not

1. Revisit your goals

2. Assess your branding on each platform

3. Evaluate engagement

4. Make sure you are using the best tools for your goals

Buffer – good for scheduling (not great for engagement)

Hootsuite – good for more a more serious, full time social media coordinator

Integrated tool

5. Reevaluate your influencers