Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 A great social media coach is like a great football coach. Both use their years of experience to execute plays to win games vs. doing single things to generate great statistics (i.e., vanity metrics). They both need know how to use players and resources in the appropriate roles to generate measurable results. Most of all, great coaches guide people to execute plays, since the coach cannot do all of the work! When it comes to using a social media coach at a large organization, a small business or even a sole-proprietorship, it’s important to have a relationship provide focus to use the right strategy and tools to win the game. You cannot win every game, but you can win the season! And a social media coach can help you to win your season … I mean reach your business goal. Have you ever considered working with a social media coach or even a consultant? If so, then your coach should be guiding you with these 10 ‘game day’ plays. 10 Game Day Plays With Which Your Social Media Coach Should Be Helping You Determine your business objective and social media’s role in attaining that goal. Like a successful football coach, you need to articulate what you are trying to achieve and what you want your players to do to help you reach that goal. Once you understand these two things, then you can support it with measurable social media activity and programs. Calculate your return on marketing investment (ROMI) to understand if you are ‘winning’ with social media. As a football coach, are you interested in how many touchdowns you get or how many points score to win games. Your social media coach should explain that every social media activity can be monetized and tracked to show a return on investment. You just need to understand your goal, whether it’s the audience message reach, engagement with your content, a conversion-related activity like a visit to a web page, so you calculate your return on marketing investment. Do not focus on social media follower counts. Having more people in the stands is not always mean you are winning (although a football team’s owner might think otherwise) More followers is a result of great content and a relevant value proposition, which should be your key focus. Increased follower counts only count if you can drive increased awareness, engagement and conversion of interest in your content and value proposition. Expand your social media focus beyond Facebook. If every football coach taught their quarterbacks to learn just one play, then the team would be in trouble. Social media coaches need to challenge you to become the master of the key channels with which your customers connect. You cannot boil the ocean by activating and using all of the social media channels at once. For example, if you are an enterprise software company it’s likely that your key social channels will be Twitter, blogging, and LinkedIn, so become an expert at them first and then move on to Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and others when it makes sense. Work on the mix of plays that will help you win the game. Listen to the story that your social media performance data is telling. Money ball works for football and social media coached. Immediately after establishing your goals you need to understand what your performance data is telling you about your current performance. The gap between your goals and current activity identifies what you have to solve for and how to measure your improvement along the way. By establishing your measurement plans early in your planning, you can understand how to adjust your game plan along the way. Audit and optimize all of your online customer touch points. Putting yourself in front of the right people at the right time on the right social media channel will help you build your solid relationships and become a part of the buying process earlier and winning the sale. Audit and optimize all offline customer touch points. Television, newspapers, points of purchase, doormats, etc. should be considered to touch and inform customers on how to engage with you on their social media channels. For instance, if a football’s announcement screen shows fans where they can follow you on social media, then you should do the same with your customer touch points. Enable your employees to spread the word about your business and promotions with social media. Like the raging fans who that wear a football team’s logo apparel, your biggest business evangelists are your employees. Both groups can be leveraged to spread the work who should be used to help you amplify your social business – spreading the word and providing customer service. Have a ‘social’ conversation with your customer base. You can’t have a conversation unless someone starts it. So cast your company’s message web far and wide and then listen and respond. Listen to what you customers are saying on social media to understand your opportunities. You can’t create relevant content, messaging, or promotion, even if it’s about your business, unless you listen first to what others are saying. Your coach should be teaching you about tools to monitor conversations to understand what customers are saying about your company so you can plan your strategic approach. Have you worked with a coach who has shared additional advice? If so, please share below. Or, contact me directly at MarketingThink.com or on Twitter @GerryMoran. There is no such thing as a social media guru, social media ninja or Millennial that can turnaround sales because they ‘know’ social media. When working with an advertising agency, marketing consultant or social media coach, make sure that they are experienced in direct marketing, digital marketing, measurement and communication to ensure you are able to leverage your social media to connect with the right person at the right time on the right channel with the right message to help you win and reach your business goals! Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article originally appeared on MarketingThink by Gerry Moran and has been republished with permission.Find out how to syndicate your content with B2C Author: Connor Brooke Connor is a Scottish financial expert, specialising in wealth management and equity investing. Based in Glasgow, Connor writes full-time for a wide selection of financial websites, whilst also providing startup consulting to small businesses. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Finance, and a Master’s degree in Investment Fund Management, Connor has … View full profile ›More by this author:ACH Crypto Price Prediction 2022 – Is it a Buy?Lucky Block Partners with Dillian Whyte ahead of Heavyweight Showdown with Tyson FuryNFT Pixel Art – The Best NFT Collections for 2022