Marketplace

Tracking Protocols for Social Media

Just like you want to monitor the data you generate in email marketing, on your website, and elsewhere, you also want to track everything you do on social media to ensure that you’re not wasting your time. There is no point sharing things without a goal in mind and some idea of what you want to happen based on your knowledge of the industry and your audience.

Set Your Goals

When you set your goals, always use SMART goal setting practices so that every goal you set is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. This simply means that you need to have enough information in your goal that it is easy to track, plus of course, it should be a goal that is possible to meet; otherwise, there is no point in it.

Some potential goals to set are:

• Reach – Reach 10,000 new viewers within a four-week campaign period.
• Engagement – Receive 1000 likes and 100 comments during the four-week campaign period.
• Following – Get 1000 more followers within the four-week campaign period.
• Traffic – Earn 1000 click-throughs during the four-week campaign period.
• Leads and Prospects – Earn 1000 leads during the four-week campaign period.
• Revenue – Convert 50% of the clicks to paying customers during the four-week campaign period.

Goal setting is one of the most important parts of the process. Take the time to brainstorm the type of goals you want to reach so that you can create a campaign that will succeed. Consider thinking about it this way: If you do this task, you expect these results, because of the research you’ve done.

Figure Out Your Priorities

When you start brainstorming your goals, you may begin to go nuts with how many goals you have before you. It may seem like too much work and be overwhelming. Take a deep breath and prioritize your goals and ideas based on your overall business goals. Then just put the things you want to accomplish in a logical order. For example, you may want to work on traffic earning most at first.

Test Your Ideas

Until you have someone to help you or you’re used to doing this, try only one thing at a time. Develop your goal and set up the steps required to reach the goal successfully. Then test one thing at a time. For example, if you want to test your ability to generate traffic using social media to your site, you might want to share content from your website with blurbs and CTAs on different social media platforms. Tweak each headline to figure out what works best for your audience.

Study the Data

As you study the data that you’re generating, learn from the data to figure out if your assumptions worked or if they were wrong. What actions did you take to create the success or failure you’ve experienced? What else can you learn from the test that generated the data?

Act on The Data

When you receive the results of your test, you’ll want to act on the data. If you’ve figured out that the headline you created was very clickable and generated enough views and clicks to accomplish what you wanted, then you’ll want to put this on steroids by turning it into a PPC campaign. If it is not generating enough of what you wanted, then you will need to tweak it and do the test again.

Repeat

Do this process for each goal that you set. Set it up from A to Z and then let it run for at least a week then check the data. Use the data generated to guide your choices and decisions going forward, trying one new thing at a time so that the data doesn’t get corrupted.

Following this protocol to do more testing and tracking of your social media is really a no-brainer. Obviously, you’ll have to adjust this for your own niche and the goals that you want to set, but this can get you started down the right path.

Thanks for reading.