some suggested goals for your social media marketing strategy

Here’s some suggested goals for your social  media marketing strategy for 2012 to get you started out in the right direction for the new year.

First take a look at your results from your 2011 social media efforts to see what’s working and what’s not (make a list of what worked well to incorporate in your 2012 plan)

Take a look at all of the social media networks you are currently using and update your profile’s look based on any changes to the layout (recent changes were made to Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook’s layouts so make sure your pages look updated and represent your brand in a professional way).

Evaluate which social media networks are best for you to focus your time on this year based on last years results and where your target market is spending time the most now (no use spending time on LinkedIn if your target market is not there right?!) It is good to evaluate this every few months to stay up to date with what’s going on in your industry at any given time.

Do some research to see if there are any new social networks that have popped up recently that may work well for your social media strategy (new social media networks get started all of the time, focusing on an “industry targeted” social network is also important to consider)

Create and develop an ongoing social media strategy to follow to keep you consistent and targeted with your efforts. (Creating a weekly or monthly schedule to follow for your postings can be helpful ~ including planning your content strategy and how often you will be posting on each social network)

Create measurable goals and plan a strategy to meet them.  If your goal is to increase your fan base ~ create a plan on how to achieve this.  If your goal is to drive traffic to your site ~ plan out your content so that you include posts that have a link to your site and also where else on your page you can include your website links to help with this goal.  If you want to build a list of email subscribers plan out your strategy on driving traffic to your option box to convert your visitors to subscribers.

Set-up systems for tracking and measuring your results.  There are many ways you can track your efforts and results including setting up google analytics, and using a systems like Hootesuite or Sendible.

Get your team and support system in place to help you achieve your goals.  If you are just starting out you may have to do most of the tasks yourself but once you get things rolling with your business you will