The secret to business success is small improvements on a regular basis

It’s as simple as that

So that doesn’t mean if you want to improve your social media you need to spend an extra 20 hours a week on Social Media

You can achieve huge gains on Social Media simply by making small changes and improvements. And these small changes and improvements often take you the same time or less time than the dabbling that hasn’t worked for all these years

You have to be Smart, Strategic and focused to make social media work and we’ll look at the 4 KPI’s of Social Media Marketing

Organic Reach
Anyone can pay for reach

It’s what people have done since the age of “media” from the local newspaper to the modern online version of the newspapers which call themselves “Media Partners”

It’s what people do when they go for paid social media with poor quality content

If you pay for exposure in any form – it’s advertising, not marketing

In this blog at the start of 2019 I want you to read and re-read this important message – Organic Reach is still possible on Social Media!

You’ve probably been told countless times that organic reach is dead and the only way to reach people now is paid social

That is 100% a lie

Organic Reach is harder because of the noise aka the sheer number of people and businesses using social media, but it is not dead

In the last month alone our updates on Facebook and Twitter reached over 1 million screens – and that is 1 million screens organically

Our clients, who in the main are local businesses with a defined geographical area, reach between 5 and 6 figure numbers every single month organically

Action Point: Look at your Facebook & Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics – set that organic reach benchmark high and aim for it every month. It’s an indication that people are truly understanding your content

Follower Growth
“Growing Not Dying” it’s one of the motto’s of the businesses we’ve worked with The Window Company

To be stagnant is to go backwards

One of the most common issues for small businesses is they’ll set up their social media profiles, grow to a certain level and then the audience size doesn’t grow

There needs to be a constant topping up of your numbers as over time people will drop off from your audience. It might not be something you’ve done – they might simply leave social media, leave the area, have a digital detox, a purge of everything that isn’t a close friend, a change of habits and so on

You need to be gaining more followers than the followers you lose

Push buttons

Try something new

Remember your social media can go as stale as bread

Action Point: Look at your Facebook & Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics – look on what date there were huge growth spurts and analyse your content to see if you can tough again on similar themes

Engagement
Let’s look a traditional media for a while

The local newspaper rings you up and boasts they have 50,000 readers, so you spend a few hundred pound on an advert and there are no phone calls, emails and the web traffic didn’t go up

To all intents and purposes there was no engagement on that advert

With social media you get to see all of this in the stats and you need to monitor which content drives the highest level of engagement. And by engagement you’re going to have different objectives for different posts be that likes, comments, shares, clicks or phone calls / emails

If you can’t answer what people are going to do when you post – then you shouldn’t be posting it

Be creative, set the objective and measure the results of engagement

Action Point: Look at your last 10 posts on social media – try and answer what you expected people to do when you posted it

Sales
I’ve included this as the final KPI as it’s the one that most businesses are aiming for

Here is the reality

* You should be expecting sales from Social Media if you put your customers 1st

* You need to be patient – social media will not drive sales without great marketing and hard work

And importantly you need to treat social media as part of your overall social media strategy

Does your website give a good impression if you’re driving traffic to it from Social Media?

Do you follow up on leads from social media?

Do your online reviews put people at ease buying from you?

Do your pushy sales staff repel people from the business even though your social media is great?

Your social media will only work if your business works

Action Point: Track every sale your business gets and where it came from – and look at the whole sales process as well as social media

NEED HELP WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA?
Chat to us about Social Media Marketing for YOUR organisation , so we can better understand YOU and what will grow your organisation

We can only find out what is unique to your business by chatting with you

Look at our Social Media Training and Social Media Management services

Or

Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk

Alex

Alex McCann is owner of Altrincham HQ – a social media management and training company based in Altrincham, Cheshire that has worked with 100s of local business developing their social media strategy. Alex has 500+ LinkedIn testimonials and is Ranked Number 1 for Social Media Marketing in the UK via independent customer reviews on Freeindex.