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How To Know That Your SMM Strategy Works?

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By CustomCat - August 13, 2019- in Go-Getter Blog

Digital marketing is incredibly complex. It has many facets that demand creative and diverse approaches, and SMM is not an exception to this rule. Social media is in continual change. The practices and tricks that worked a few years ago are no longer relevant, due to how often platforms reform their user experience.
As SMM strategies change, measuring their impact can often be quite a tricky task. In this article, we’ll look into the metrics you need to take into account when you’re trying to establish the success of your campaigns and how to know that your SMM strategy actually works. Let’s dive right in, shall we?
Flat lay method of laptop, phone, cactus and coffee, with a white background.

Before you measure

It’s important to underline that before you actually measure the success of your campaigns, you need to start off with reasonable goals. That doesn’t go in the measuring process per se, but it allows you to isolate the metrics that you’re most interested in. Also, it’s also safe to say that any marketing campaign should start with this step.
A social media management strategy can provide your business with a wide array of benefits, so it’s a good idea to create a detailed list of things you’re trying to get from your social media presence in general. Whether it’s greater audience engagement, customer loyalty, a prolonged on-page presence, whatever it is, take your time to write your goals in a detailed manner.
However, it’s vital to stress whatever you’re aiming for needs to have SMART goals. Here are the basic principles you need to take into account:

  • Specific – establish the platforms you’re planning to work with and what metrics you want to optimize or improve
  • Measurable – your metrics must be quantifiable
  • Actionable – it’s essential that the goals you have are achievable
  • Relevant – the goals you have will benefit your business and is not just a vanity metric
  • Time-bound – you need to have a clear understanding of the timeframe you’re going to achieve

Areas of interest

Now that you’ve ensured that your goals are SMART, it’s time to look into the actual metrics. We can isolate three general classes of metrics which can be measured differently. Here are a few of them:

  • How many people engage with your content
  • The overall reach your campaigns have
  • The number of leads you’ve converted

Engagement rates

This category comprises a long list of fairly straightforward KPI’s like likes, shares, comments, follows, brand mentions, and so forth. Similarly, there are various platform-specific KPI’s that can be included here like retweets, ratings, profile visits, and others. All these metrics are indicators of certain types of engagement.
So, if you’re running your social media campaigns on Facebook, you could, for instance, set your goals in the following manner:
Engagement to achieve in 30 days:

  • 800 post likes
  • 300 comments
  • 150 shares
  • 500 page likes

Once the 30 days are over, you can get a better understanding of what types of content your audience reacted to positively and optimize your content strategy accordingly.
There is a broad spectrum of variables when it comes to optimizing your social media content. Most commonly, it has to do with the tone and the voice of your posts and articles. There are now many services and tools like Grammarly, Trust My Paper, Studicus, Grab My Essay, and Hemingway that can assist you with improving and maintaining your brand voice.

Reach and impressions

Measuring your social media campaign reach isn’t exactly as straightforward as measuring engagement. There are two terms that are often being used interchangeably in the marketing world, and it’s essential to address the difference between them right here, right now. We’re talking about “reach” and “impressions.”
When marketing specialists refer to “reach,” they’re talking about the number of unique users that have seen a particular post. Whereas impressions don’t focus as much on the number of actual users but the number of times a particular post appeared in somebody’s feed, whether it’s once, twice, or ten times.
“Knowing the distinction between the two is imperative since it will allow you to measure the one that is more relevant to your business, industry, and niche.” — Maria Gonzalez, Marketing Specialist at Best Essay service.

Let’s talk about leads

Once you invest the right amount of time and money into reaching large numbers of people and engaging them, it’s essential to close the loop by turning them into loyal customers.
While you may have built a following due to the great content you’re putting out on social media, if you’re not converting your following into your clientele then there might be something off with your calls-to-action and brand image. They simply may not be appealing to your target audience or customer persona.

What’s next?

So you’ve gathered your first batch of data. You have established clear, relevant, and actionable goals. You have the right framework to continually grow your understanding of what your following likes most. More importantly, you have an environment that will allow you to quantify your findings and understand if your SMM efforts actually work.
All that’s left is to focus on measuring and reporting your data. To get a proper understanding of whether your social media management strategy works, you’ll have to answer two fundamental questions:

  • How did your campaigns perform compared to your expectations?
  • Are your results comparable to your competitors’ performance?

So once you’ve established a measuring routine, it’s important to have a well-structured and regular approach towards quantifying your KPI’s. Here are a few recommendations that will allow gathering a better understanding of whether your SMM strategy works:

  • Write reports in a detailed and approachable manner that would allow marketing professionals, stakeholders, and other essential parties to gather an immediate and contextual understanding of your reports.
  • Invest in visualizing your findings. This can also considerably help with getting an in-depth and more holistic understanding of your SMM performance.

Conclusion

Creating a successful SMM strategy is a complex and highly demanding task. However, being able to successfully measure it and understand whether your strategy actually works is even harder. We hope you found this article useful. We wish you good luck in your digital marketing efforts!
Author: Angela Baker

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