You have a brilliant communications plan. You execute it flawlessly.
It flops.
You have a well thought out, timely and industry-friendly social media plan. You execute it flawlessly.
Crickets.
Naturally, some under-the-breath cussing may take place and a little foot stamping. You’d hoped the next step would be a loud of cheer of happiness.
What do I mean? I expect you to be happy with failure? Frankly, yes.
That means you have some feedback. You have knowledge. Knowledge is power. Numbers and metrics are power.
They take the emotion out of your brilliant and well thought out plan. Whether we mean to or not, our personal biases seep into our communication strategies. It’s human nature. Setting up a system of checks and balances where you are consistently receiving feedback will help you recognize those biases vs what works for your audience.
Here are some tips for adjusting your strategy to move forward more effectively:
1. Acknowledge the response isn’t what you expected. Read the analytics and determine what you’re community needs and habits truly are (taking your personal bias away).
2. Now that you have determined your new plan ,allow yourself a testing period to determine legitimacy. Make minor adjustments along the way and reevaluate.
3. Change your plan according to your community’s desire. Blind marketing is never the answer.
If you’re struggling to have metrics to analyze or you aren’t sure if what you’re measuring is correct I’d suggest heading over to Andrew Eckland’s piece about defining social metrics. Here’s a snippet:
“The key goals of growing communities are as such: identify your very best customers and prospects, break them into categories based upon their needs and desires, deliver the content they want, then attract more people like them through targeted communications and advocacy. Most likely they are already connected largely to one another through their own networks.”
Social metrics are not silos unto themselves. Social media should be consistent with the message across your entire organization from print, to email marketing campaigns, to website content, and public speaking. Are you measuring how your goals intertwine? If not, now is the perfect time to make those changes in your marketing plan. Loyalty 360 wrote a great piece about questions to ask your team to determine your metrics and goals.
One of my favorite questions in marketing is ‘What should I be measuring?’. The answer isn’t a very popular one: It depends. It depends on your responsibilities, your objectives, and your business goals.