Social Media Must Be Used Properly to See ROI

Social media marketing is now a proven component of an online marketing campaign. After all, social media is where the people are. Think about how many times you check your social accounts every day. It’s necessary for brands that want to remain top of mind to have a presence on social media sites. While that visibility is important, it’s often not enough to convince the higher ups that social media is worth investing in. All they want to see are the hard numbers- the amount of sales and leads that are tied to social media. They want to know what the ROI is. This is fair, but all too often we see business leaders that want to see a social ROI, that are approaching social in the completely wrong ways! Like any other marketing initiative you need to be strategic with your social media marketing activities and set goals along the way. Taking a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” approach is never going to work.

Here are 4 ways to approach social media marketing correctly, which will improve the ROI of social efforts:

Target a relevant audience
Yes, everybody uses social media in some capacity or another, but your target audience in social media shouldn’t be “everybody”. Sometimes the higher ups become so consumed with the number of followers that they have in social media, but really it’s the quality of the followers and the rate at which they actually engage with your brand in social media that is more important. 100 engaged followers is better than 1,000 unengaged followers. It’s important to stay true to your brand and conduct activities that will attract the right audience.

Use the proper platforms
The number of social networks that exist continues to grow. It’s doubtful that your brand will need to have a presence across all of them. You need to put your efforts where your target audience members are most receptive to your messaging. For example, Facebook may be the most popular social network but people typically check in to catch up with friends and family. On the other hand, people check LinkedIn when they have business on their mind. For a B2B, it makes the most sense to focus your efforts there and join relevant Groups to improve exposure.

Invest in content
A social media campaign is fueled by the content that you are sharing. In order to have great social media posts that generate exposure and traffic back to your website, you need to be sharing great content. Content is what will keep your followers interested and engaged. In order to see a return on your investment, there must be a significant investment in the first place. Don’t be cheap when it comes to content. Hire great writers that can speak to your target audience’s needs.

Interact with followers
Social media shouldn’t be used as an advertising (one way) platform. Be sure to spend some time responding to questions and comments that followers have. There are usually some great insights that come out of these conversations.