Think about a beautiful Saturday morning, the start to a weekend where you have no plans or obligations. There is a perfect weather forecast and you really feel like you have the motivation to accomplish anything. You might even think this weekend will be your chance to accomplish that DIY project, or go to the gym. However, one thing leads to another, and you unable to follow through, never quite making it off the couch. What does this weekend amount to? A hard lesson in opportunity costs.
Take a critical look at your small business’ social media strategy. There is a world of opportunity in the social space, a free weekend where you’re able to accomplish almost anything. But are you the motivated goal-setter that takes advantage of their marketing objectives, or the lazy bum who lounges around, dabbling in many things and accomplishing nothing?
In a Vertical Response study published in Entrepreneur Magazine, 25% of small business owners spend 6 to 10 hours a week on social media.
The sheer vastness of the social space and the amount of choices causes many people to become paralyzed, ultimately adding no value to their business. To avoid wasting time, all small businesses need to take this lesson to heart:
All social media marketing objectives need to be measurable goals
It’s cool for your small business to have a Facebook, Twitter handle, Pinterest, Tumblr blog, Google+ page, Instagram, or a YouTube channel. However, you need to determine the time it will take to monitor these spaces, and the return on your investment. For example, you can actually determine the number of visitors to your website come directly from your Facebook page with Google Analytics. If you’ve found that this is a substantial amount, and your business is based off website sales, then you can translate the upkeep of that Facebook page into real dollars.
Here are three quick tips to get you started on transforming your marketing objectives:
Find a metric that is important (leads, followers, website hits, sales) and experiment with different methods to get there. Rank your social media activity by effectiveness at achieving success within that metric. Drop the low performing activities and capitalize on your strengths
Find out how to will measure performance of social media strategy over time (using Google Analytics, making reports from data) and limit the amount of time you spend on measurement. It’s easy to get caught up in measurement of your marketing objectives and not spend enough time achieving your goals.
With proper planning, the numbers will give you a very real picture of your return on investment. If the numbers show that you could use your time in other ways than by using social media strategy, stop doing it. Budget future investment based on past performance and periodically reevaluate.
