Social media has changed very quickly over the last five years, from being something your teenage kids played on, to becoming a serious marketing tool for business. The ultimate goal is to increase sales, and so to avoid putting hundreds of hours into social media for little or no return, it must be planned and done with targets in mind.

Here are five top tips to help ensure you gain the maximum benefit:

1.) Know why you are doing it

Although social media is primarily a social endeavour, if you’ve gone to the trouble of setting up a business presence, your ultimate aim is to boost sales. You need to agree how many hours you need to dedicate to social media in order to achieve one sale as a direct result. Time is money so put a value on the time you spend on it, but remember, to make a business social media profile worthwhile, you need to be getting out more than you put in.

2.) Set ongoing targets

Your potential customer base grows as the number of people connected to you through social media channels grows. An interim target may be to attract 50 new followers per week, but remember, you want to attract the right sort of followers so quality rather than quantity is important. Another target may be to set up one new business meeting per week as a result of a Twitter or Linkedin connection.

3.) Ensure your goals are right for you

It’s essential that you set goals that are relevant to your business by ensuring that they correspond with your overall business goals. A successful social media campaign for your company will look very different from a successful campaign for someone else. The number of potentially interested followers for a niche business will be far smaller than for a mass produced, popular product. One sale for you could be worth just a few pounds to you but be worth hundreds for another company.

4.) Plan for the long term

Use social media as part of a long term marketing strategy and not like a one-off leafleting campaign. Whilst you may not be sure where you want to be a year down the line, you do need to be thinking several months in advance. Allocate an agreed amount of time to spend on social media each month, and make sure that your targets reflect that time investment.

5.) Measure and measure again

By far the most important part of any marketing strategy, which should include using social media, is to regularly measure the results. There’s no point in setting objectives if you don’t regularly review how you are performing. Analyse your results to understand what has or hasn’t been successful. If something doesn’t work, look at how you could improve it, but ultimately if something just doesn’t work for you, STOP DOING IT.

REMEMBER!!

The business world is changing very quickly, and even if social media has never been on your horizon before, you should consider whether you should make it part of your future marketing strategies. Don’t let you competitors gain an advantage from social media, see if it can help your business develop.