Social Media Marketing Gameplan – Track & Optimize

Social Media Marketing Gameplan

Many people think that having a social media strategy just means posting content and sharing links. That’s certainly part of it, but there is so much more. Not only all of the things that we went over in analyzing, developing and implementing your plan, but also in maintaining it.

All marketing is ongoing. If you think you are done or it is on cruise control, you are no longer marketing. You are just slowly being lapped by your competitors. To know what direction to steer the ship after you’ve gotten it started, you need to continue the plan, keep your eyes ahead and constantly be monitoring your progress.

Figuring out what is working and what is not and adjusting accordingly is arguably the most important part of the entire process.

Tracking, Metrics, Insights, Analytics & Other Tools

It should go without saying at this point that if you have a website, you should be monitoring its stats. There is no good reason at this point that you don’t have Google Analytics on your site to track your traffic. While you’re at it, most of the sites you are using or are going to be using offer some form of stats/metrics/analytics for you to gauge your campaign success with.

Here are a few tools you will want to get familiar with:

  • Google Analytics – One of Google’s most impressive services, Analytics allows you to track website visits in every conceivable measurable way, including conversions and sales, content, mobile, advertising, and social analytics. In fact, Google Analytics is so in depth that you may never actually experience all of its power without being a metrics analyst. My advice is to have the code installed on your site immediately if you don’t already have it, then learn small pieces as you go. As you get more comfortable, we’ll get into more advanced uses. Google Analytics is a beast, but not one you should be intimidated by. You should be anxious to get to know it inside and out. And soon.
  • Google AdWordsIf When you run Google AdWords campaigns, you will also have access to all of the statistics in that department. Now, running an AdWords campaign is a full time job to many, so again, don’t tread lightly here. Read up, research and dig into your stats when you get access to them. Another thing that AdWords includes is the Google Keyword Planner (formerly Keyword Tool). This tool allows you to build, maintain, search and otherwise research your keywords and plan your advertising, SEO, and other important aspects of your site. On an overall level, this is a very important tool, even if it isn’t straight up social media marketing. It all ties together in the master plan.
  • Google Webmaster Tools – Again, if you have a website, you should have a Google Webmaster Tools account set up. This doesn’t necessarily track stats, but it will track your site’s overall competency level. From finding broken links to your sitemap, your Webmaster Tools will often be the first to tell you when there is a technical issue on your site. Get registered, create a sitemap and pay attention to what these tools tell you.
  • Facebook Insights – As administrator of a Facebook page, you have access to their metrics tool, called Facebook Insights. This allows you to track the success of your Facebook page and quickly see certain stats. The Insights page gives you access to your Likes, Reach, how individual posts do, and engagement. These stats can be downloaded as a spreadsheet to allow for further, deep analysis also. Being able to see what kind of posts are being most responded to or reaching the most people can be an integral part of building or expanding a social media campaign.
  • Facebook Ad Campaign Manager – Part of Facebook’s tools also include a Campaign Manager for any ads you run, allowing you to analyze the success of your advertising campaigns. After you set your budgets and create your ads, this is where you will see just what is going on with your campaigns. Probably not as insightful (imagine that!) as Insights, but a strong management tool that you should get familiar with anyway.
  • Twitter Analytics – This is a tougher one. There are many sites out there that offer some kind of Twitter analytics, but none that seem as simple as what Facebook or Google offer. For me, I prefer to monitor my Twitter accounts on third-party apps like Tweetdeck, Followerwonk and Hootsuite. These (and more) sites offer a variety of tools to see who is following you, your interactions, and a handful of demographics to help you better determine how to proceed on Twitter. If you advertise with Twitter, you also have access to insights through Twitter themselves.
  • SEO Tools – I’m not going to get into detail here, since this is an article all of its own. Heck, it’s a business of its own. But checking your rankings and keeping tabs on where you are on the search engine results page (SERP) is not to be ignored. These days, there are extensions you can simply add to your browser that will give you SERP rank info, Alexa rankings, backlink info and much, much more. Get yourself one of these extensions at a minimum. At most, get very familiar with SEOMoz and maybe even lurk a few forums to learn what you are looking for when optimizing. SEO can be a very complicated field, but like many things online, doing something is better than nothing. Google “current SEO trends” to see what is in and what is out to know what you should be doing. Don’t waste your time stacking up keywords to rank higher when it isn’t going to do anything but hurt you. Pay attention to current trends to make sure your site is on the right track. When you have the time and/or money, invest some real time into true optimization. If you don’t have a LOT of time to learn it, invest in your company by getting a pro to consult with you or handle your SEO.

Get familiar with these tools and make them a part of your daily routine. Perhaps you create a folder in your bookmarks that is all stats and you just check it every day. Make sure things look normal and when you have time, dig a little deeper in each one.

Measuring Success

When we came up with our strategy, part of the development process was to define success. You should have certain goals that you are working towards. Maybe they are web traffic based, maybe they are all about social media followers. Either way, you have something to measure your success upon. If you are seeing positive results, reinforce that with investing more towards what is working. If something is lacking, attack it.

Some sites struggle to gain traction in certain regards. You might have traffic but no conversions. Work on optimizing conversions by analyzing your traffic flow. Create multiple landing pages on your site and focus your marketing at them. If you notice one ad is converting far more traffic than another, you have learned what kind of ad you should be running and what kind of landing page you are sending people to. Repeat this process over and over and over and you will turn your site into a well-oiled machine.

The same goes for gaining followers. I have seen great success from Facebook ad campaigns with small budgets and I have seen success with posting on LinkedIn Groups pages for gaining likes. Depending on what niche your site is in, there are a variety of ways to try to gain traction and get more followers. Experiment with different techniques, but as always, keep checking the analytics to see what is working and what is not. As the song says, “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.”

Keep a constant list of your goals. As you approach or reach one goal, set another. You should always have a short term goal you are working towards, and all of your short term goals should be working towards the long term goals.

Step Back and Look

When you work on a site everyday, it is easy to lose focus of the big picture. Every now and then, you need to step back and look at the entire brand from a distance. Look at all of your social media profiles together. Do they all speak in the same tone? Does your brand have a uniform voice? They don’t need to be identical, but you also probably don’t want to have any lone, wild wolves out there spreading a different message or using the wrong tone. Take a look as a whole and see what the picture looks like.

One thing to look for as you review the sites is your line of engagement. This is the line you need to walk carefully in social media. Can you look at your Facebook page and see how you could be annoying your fans? Can you look at your Twitter page and see where someone might unfollow you? Look objectively at your sites on occasion and you just might find something that is impossible to see on a day-to-day basis. Embrace the regular, mini-self-audit.

Lastly, make sure when you look objectively that you can put yourself in the user’s place. Are your links easy to share? Is your content easy to find? Is your site user friendly? Never stop auditing your site and looking for what is wrong. If you only look for what is right, you are leaving everyone else to figure out what is wrong. To keep improving, you have to be critical before others have a chance to be.

Conclusion

Well, after over 6,000 words, the Impero Media Social Media Marketing Gameplan is as complete as I’m willing to call it. Realistically, it is always a work in progress, but the basics that I originally outlined on paper are now here on your screen. Every site is different and I can’t promise that this exact plan is for everyone. I can say that having no plan is not an option. Take this plan and make it your own. Build on it. Pick certain parts that you like and add your own.

Social media marketing is not a science. It is an evolving form of business marketing and it changes every year, every month and on some level, every day. If you are new to digital marketing, I feel confident that reading this entire gameplan will help you. If that is the case, I’d love to hear from you! If it isn’t the case, I’d still love to hear from you. Tell me what worked for you or what didn’t work. The whole idea of this final part was to track and optimize the process. I’m no different. What doesn’t work off of this gameplan will get adjusted as things that work better become apparent.

I’m working on a full-format PDF version of this gameplan if anyone is interested. If you don’t see a link in the footer to it, send me a message and I’ll be sure to get you a free copy once I get it finished.

Best of luck in your social media marketing endeavors. I hope this gameplan comes in handy for you and your business.


The Impero Media Social Media Marketing Gameplan