Set your goals
First step - like any marketing effort - is setting a specific goal. What are you trying to accomplish by monitoring your social media presence? Do you want to find conversations that could help drive traffic to your website? Increase your (or your company’s) thought leadership? Generate leads? Sales? Buzz? By selecting one or two specific goals, you will be able to target your efforts and streamline your process to specifically reach those goals.
Find your tools
Using a social media management tool such as Hootsuite can save additional time and effort. It allows you to connect all of your social media account in one place and monitor them all at the same time. You’ll want to select one that allows for multiple network integrations (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc.) and has features such as scheduling and keyword search so that you can manage all of your profiles from one place, rather than logging in and out of multiple accounts. Also, why not try setting up some RSS feeds so that relevant blog articles, news items and alerts are delivered straight to your emails.
What should you monitor?
- Comments
- Likes, Posts, Recommendations and Retweets – all mean your content is being shared and reaching more people.
Make it a habit
Take time each day to check what is being said about you online, just as you would check your email or text messages. If you know you’re going to be busy for most of the day, ensure you have enough scheduled throughout the day to keep your channels fresh and engaging, and have a peek when you get 5 minutes for any responses. In the world of social media, any response that isn't immediate is too late.
A morning routine might look like something like this….
- 3 minutes: Check for Twitter chatter about your company and its competitors.
- 2 minutes: Scan Google News and Blogs Alerts for important articles.
- 2 minutes: Log in to Facebook and scan your wall for comments.
Measure your success
As you progress with your social media marketing, you will want to keep a track of all the great stuff you are doing! Twitter and Facebook have their own analytics which can give you a deeper insight into your content, activity and how your customers are reacting to it. Reflect on the goal you set at the beginning of your marketing. Use other great marketing analytics tools like Google Analytics, and some private company’s offer fantastic tools that will help you to track your lead generation, website traffic and SEO rankings. Whatever you do, make sure you monitor your results so that you can track trends and see where your marketing is strongest.
