It is amazing how fast a year can fly by. I’m sure that many of you out there are like me and can’t believe that the end of the year is coming up so quickly. In these intense times, it seems like information and life flies by at the speed of light and keeping on top of things is a daily challenge.
I have always liked the end of the year though. Not only because I have a deep love of Christmas (my favorite holiday), but also because it is a time of reflection: both personally and professionally. Well, I’m not Doctor Phil, so no deep personal reflection tips here. What I want to talk about is social media reflection: a look back at your own personal approach.
As an experienced, and weathered, marketer – planning and analyzation is the name of the game when it comes to creating the perfect equation for future success. So every year, around this time, I try to schedule time out from my busy schedule to look back at the various marketing activities that our company did – in order to figure out what we need to plan for and execute in the coming year.
While I full marketing audit can take a bit of time, I want to give you some tips (or rather questions to ask yourself) to help you evaluate your social media performance and to identify what your plan of action should be for the coming year. I want to present just the question, and leave the interpretation up to you.
#1. What Was My Growth in Social Media? Did I Even Measure It?
#2. What Site Showed the Most Promise?
#3. Where Did Most of My Web-Hits Come From?
#4. Where Did Most of My Sales Come From?
#5. What Site Gave Me The Most Amount of Engagement?
#6. How Many Hours Did I Spend in Total Each Day? Per Site?
#7. How Many Contests/Promotions Did I Run?
#8. Did I Receive Any Feedback?
#9. Are The Groups/Pages/People I Am Connected With….Connected to My Target Market?
#10. How Do I Feel About the Effectiveness of My Social Media Activity
Ok….lots of questions. But the honest answers to these questions will help you not only identify where you should spend your time, but also where you should focus your attention. Perhaps you are spending lots of time with no real results. Perhaps you should look for outside help or outsource the activity to an expert. Maybe you are spending 3 hours a day on Facebook, but LinkedIn is giving you the biggest returns. Then perhaps more time on LinkedIn would create more returns.
You get the idea. My point here is this is the perfect time to look back and get a grasp on how you handled this year in social media. Why? Because it is time to get your marketing plan together for next year, and your social media activity is a must to be added. After performing an audit….and honest audit….of your performance, you should be able to identify how you should progress moving forward, in addition to seeing how you can incorporate the entire marketing plan into your social media assault.
Sorry to say this, but get planning!
