Are you chasing social media metrics?
When you are marketing your business via social media it is very easy to get caught up in all the metrics. How many followers do I have, how many likes did my posts get, how many comments, shares, re-tweets etc.
I do understand, and yes these things are important. It is important to note however that they are not the be all and end all.
It all comes down to your WHY – Your reason for being on social media in the first place. The answer to this will be different for everyone but it is so important to know this so that you are tracking the right metrics.
If your why doesn’t include adding value for your community then I think it’s time to re-evaluate your reasons.
Now when I talk about adding value I mean posting things that add value to the lives of your community. Every time you go to publish a status update, on any platform, think ‘Does this add value to my audience’? If it doesn’t re-think posting it.
Now that’s not to say every post has to be a hugely valuable informative article but it does need to have some value for your audience.
The value you add could be by:
- Educating
- Entertaining
- Inspiring
- Including
When thinking about each point relate it back to your Avatar. If you don’t have an Avatar read “Who are you talking to?”.
Just because you find something funny, would your Avatar?
Just because it inspires you, would it inspire your Avatar?
There are a lot of different types of inspiring posts and quotes you can use but don’t go posting quotes designed for entrepreneurs if your Avatar isn’t an entrepreneur. The same goes for business orientated posts. I see a lot of business owners posting about being in business, that’s fine if you run a page targeted at business owners, but if you sell clothes it’s probably not relevant to the majority of your audience.
I guess what I’m trying to say is next time you go to post that funny pic just to get a lot of likes take a second to think about if it will relate to your audience, will they find it funny? Will it add value for them?
Also just because no one comments on your posts doesn’t mean they didn’t get value from it – frustrating I know! Every day I post educational tips about social media to my Facebook page. The only time I ever really get comments is when someone has a question. However lately when I have been out and about and run into someone who follows my page they have said to me “Thanks for posting that tip I didn’t know that and it really helped”. At the end of the day that’s why I post my tips to Facebook, to add value to my community and to help them market their own businesses with social media. Someone finding value in a post is far more important than them commenting on it.
I also strongly recommend you stay away from posting promotional posts to your Facebook page. Save promotional talk for your Facebook ads and not your page.
Now to get over the metric chasing it is important to know what matters. If you’re looking after social media on behalf of a company then I’m sure you’re thinking ‘that’s all great Karyn but I need to report my metrics to my boss and they’re not going to be happy with we added value but got no likes’.
That’s where you’re social media strategy really comes into play. You need to know what your why is for each platform. Why is it that you’re on the platform and what is the action you want people to take?
If you’re on Facebook to drive traffic to your website then you should be tracking how many clicks to website you are getting and how many conversions that traffic is resulting in. It really doesn’t matter how many likes your page has as you will most likely be focusing on Facebook Ads.
Break down each platform and decide your goals and then see which metrics are actually important and which ones are just superficial.
At the end of the day if you provide awesome value to your community the results will take care of themselves.
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