This is a guest post by Deborah Sweeney, the CEO of MyCorporation.com.

It’s fairly likely that you kicked off 2017 with a slew of social media resolutions for your brand, each one bigger and better than the next. But, what if I told you to scrap those resolutions for quarterly goals and reexaminations instead?

Even with resolutions, it’s still too easy to put social on autopilot throughout the year — and this isn’t smart. Getting lax on trends or ignoring changing algorithms doesn’t bode well for return on investment for your business. If you’re worried that this may sound a bit like your business, here are my tips for shaking things up while keeping your social ROI in check all year long.

Social-Media-ROI

1) Reexamine the social platforms where your brand has a presence.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn — chances are high that your business has a presence on several of these platforms. But, is your audience really there or did you create these accounts because everyone else was doing it?

In an article on Social Media Examiner, Debra Eckerling recommends spending the most time on sites where your audience spends their time. Make it your mission to spend more time on the sites they frequent and less where they’re not active. And vice versa, if you spend less time on the sites that your audience is actually on, make it a point to establish accounts there.

Of course, this will always vary business to business — some companies naturally have a wide audience on every major network! Continue to stay up-to-date on social trends including emerging platforms and apps to see where more of your fan base may flock to next.

 

2) Reevaluate past (and present) social campaigns.

What’s working and not working in your social campaigns? Eckerling notes that when tracking campaigns, you should pay attention to the amount of time spent and the cost in addition to factors like the dates the campaign ran, images, and copy. From there, you can review and calculate the ROI to determine if you met your goals.

If you were more successful with this campaign than a previous one held at the same time of the year, what changed? If the response this time around is “meh” at best, consider what made your last campaign stand out.

Adjust your strategy as needed after reviewing, but also be mindful that campaigns are short-lived and true to their time frame. Even if you recreate every aspect of a successful campaign, it won’t have the same effect the second time around because of changing data and algorithms. However, if a campaign you’re currently running isn’t doing so well, you can apply elements from successful campaigns to your strategy.

 

3) Reexamine where your budget is going.

Plenty of listicles tell you to pay strict attention to your social media budget to avoid wasting it on anything ineffective to your business. However, as I mentioned earlier, algorithms are continually changing. The areas you pull back from, and stay pulled back, might actually be the ones you need to focus on.

Take a look at your budget again and determine what areas it would be effective to put more money towards and other areas already within the budget that can be scaled back. You might even want to set aside a budget to do A/B testing with your content —posting two identical pieces of content with different images and copy and targeting them to the same audience at the same price to see which one is interacted with the most.

 

4) Utilize free analytics on social platforms in addition to paid ones.

We love paid analytics tools, but don’t discredit the free ones built into social platforms! Here are some of the most popular ones to give a second look at working with:

  • Facebook Insights — This tool can be found on the brand’s Facebook page. Insights monitors what is and isn’t working for your page along with providing information on the page’s actions, views, reach, engagements, and likes within a specific time frame. If you’ve paid to promote your posts, it will show you the amount spent along with the post’s reach and engagement.
  • Twitter Analytics — This page showcases the activity of your tweets during a specific time frame. It provides in-depth information on your brand’s top tweets, along with their impressions, engagement, and engagement rate. You can also find out how often your links earn clicks and how often you’re replied to or retweeted each day.
  • Tumblr Activity — Again, like the above two tools, Activity tracks how well your posts perform over a specific period of time. It allows you to view the peak hours of the day that your content attracts the most notes and to see which users are your biggest fans.

 

Conclusion

Don’t get me wrong — creating social media resolutions is a great idea. However, even with resolutions, social is constantly evolving.

Regular check-ins allow you to find any ROI gaps that need addressing and readjust your strategy accordingly. Take yourself off of autopilot by circling back with your existing channels, past campaigns, and budget and see how much it effects your bottom line!

 


deborah_sweeney_headshot

Deborah Sweeney is the CEO of MyCorporation.com which provides online legal filing services for entrepreneurs and businesses, startup bundles that include corporation and LLC formation, registered agent services, DBAs, and trademark and copyright filing services. You can find MyCorporation on Twitter at @MyCorporation and Deborah at @deborahsweeney.