As we come to the close of the year 2012, it is probably the best time to reflect on the outcome of your social media strategies for this year and think of how to make 2013 a successful year. Social media still impacts search results and so you have to work on improving the effectiveness of your social marketing activities. In order to help you increase your effectiveness, we suggest that you consider some of the following things in your corporate social media plans.
Chances are high that you would want to re-define your social media goals or sharpen your objectives in the new year (if you didn’t achieve the expected results in 2012). To do this, you should reflect on your service, promotion activities, and the categories of products you sell. Regardless of the situation, your social media marketing objectives should seek to promote genuine customer engagement.
If you want to define your social media goals better, then you have to start right from your business goals and target market. By now, you already know that social media marketing is the key communications component to engaging your audience. Therefore, you have to figure out how to improve customer service, brand or product promotion, customer education along with updates, and lead generation. All these are meant to get your brand or business noticed and to create value for customers.
Sadly, marketers just talk in general terms focusing on increasing fan base and not engagement or conversion which is the key to enhanced sales. Well, this is a means to an end, not an end itself since it does not generate targeted results. For instance, if you are selling a solution, then your goal may be to promote customer engagement and lead generation. To achieve this, you will need to educate your audience about how your solution or service will help solve their problems and move beyond that to acquire new
customers by providing giveaways.
Once you determine your social media goals, you have to bring your team on board. Start working on creating value to customers by aligning your activities towards more customer engagement and conversion.
