5 Social Media Milestones for On-Target Strategy

| 2060 Digital

Implementing social media into your business’s marketing strategy can often feel like you’re putting all this time and energy in, but seeing very little reward. But the thing with social media is that it’s more about building relationships with qualified leads than it is about blasting a message to anyone and everyone who can see, hear or read. The leads you receive in the long run from social media are more likely to become repeat customers and even recommend you!

That’s great. But it still doesn’t alleviate the uncertainty that what you’re doing now with social media is having any impact on the bottom line…making more money. So here’s a list of social media milestones you can look out for to know that your strategy is on target to bring in customers again and again.

You’ll see that all of the following milestones aren’t concrete numbers, but are rather focused on an increase. There’s no magic formula with social media that says that when you reach 5,000 followers you will see a spike in your ROI. Rather, each business takes its own path to ROI, and these milestones are meant to guide you there.

An increase in followers

Kind of a no-brainer, but there is something to be said for gaining more followers. It means that you are offering up something via social media that people like and find worthy of clicking the follow or like button. It could be that you held a contest, or that your posts are witty or funny, or that people are looking to your company to keep them updated on industry changes or news. Whatever it is that’s getting people to follow, keep doing it. Because the more followers you have, the wider reach your message has.

An increase in participation (likes, comments, retweets, etc.)

Now, if those followers like what they see coming through in your social media posts, they’ll be more apt to share, like, comment, re-tweet or re-post your content so that all of their followers can see it. Thus, your brand message is reaching people who aren’t in your network. The more your followers participate, the more it means that you’re posting meaningful content that resonates with them and will resonate with their followers, too.

An increase in company-wide interaction

This milestone is possibly less obvious. Above even your most devoted customers, your employees should be your number one brand advocates. After all, your business’s success is their business’s success. Encourage the members of your company to share your content on their timelines, walls, feeds and profiles, because chances are, your employees are connected with others in the industry. Interacting and posting the company’s valuable and meaningful content shows brand unity and also positions each of them as a thought leader to their followers and industry peers.

An increase in traffic to your website or blog

Your social media strategy should include at every turn a link back to your website, blog or wherever you want people to go to to get more information, to fill out a form or subscribe to an email, RSS feed, etc. Because of this, you should be able to see an increase in page views, site visits and subscriptions that you wouldn’t otherwise have.

An increase in customer satisfaction

This milestone may be difficult to realize, because unless you’re outright asking (or unless someone is kind enough to leave a positive review on your timeline or profile), customer satisfaction is hard to measure. But why not outright ask? With social media, your business has a platform to interact with customers unlike any other of your marketing efforts. Create a survey and post the link. Go ahead and ask during the purchase process if social media played a role in helping them make the decision to go with your product or service. If you’re seeing customer satisfaction go up, you’re using social media the right way.