02 Nov 6 Tactics to Help Achieve Your Q4 Social Media Goals
With 2016 rapidly approaching, many brands have already started looking ahead and planning for next year. But before you get too far down that path, have you reached your social media goals for 2015? If not, there is still time. This post provides suggestions on tactics that will help you reach those goals based on popular social media objectives: awareness, engagement, and driving traffic to e-commerce.
Tactics to Increase Awareness
If your impressions are coming in below your goals and your media budget is running low, creating more video content or running an influencer campaign can help bridge the gap.
Video is becoming the buzzword across all social platforms. This content is getting priority in feeds and platforms are launching improvements, what seems like weekly, to editing and formattin
g capabilities. Twitter now allows users to record, edit, and share their own videos natively and Instagram just launched Boomerang, which combines images into a mini-video that can be played forwards and backwards. The good news is that the social platforms themselves and standalone apps now make it easier to record and edit video.
Another tactic to help increase your brand impressions is to work with influencers. Influencers have an existing audience and know how to communicate your brand message in a way that resonates with their readers. Influencers aren’t just bloggers. They span a variety of social channels (Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, etc.) and are experts on creating content for these platforms. When thinking about a program and what channels to focus on, make sure you use influencers and networks that reach a similar target audience as your brand. If you plan on launching a campaign during the holiday season, I would start reaching out to influencers ASAP as it is a busy season for them.
Tactics to Drive Engagement
If your engagements are not where you would like them to be, a Facebook Newsfeed promotion, Tweet-to-Win, or Simple Sweepstakes can propel your metrics forward.
A Facebook Newsfeed promotion or a Tweet-to-Win are really simple ways to engage your audience. All you need to get started is a post with a strong CTA, images, rules, and ideally, some media budget. These sweepstakes are best if run for a couple of days and the more enticing the prize, the better. If you are running a Facebook Newsfeed promotion, ask people to ‘Comment’ instead of ‘Like’. If you are running a Tweet-to-Win, try to incorporate branding into your hashtag, but make sure you are following FTC best practices.
Running a simple sweepstakes is a way to engage your audience on a deeper level and also provides an opportunity to gather more information about them. Sweepstakes come in a variety of forms. Everything from a registration form to a personality quiz. Setting up these types of sweepstakes takes a little longer than some of the other tactics, but they can be worth it. There are many tools out there (Offerpop, Hootsuite, etc.) that provide templated solutions at relatively low costs. Make sure the registration form collects the information important to your business (email address, opt-in information), but be mindful of the number of fields you require because many people will be accessing the program on their mobile device. And lastly, be sure to cross-promote the sweepstakes on your social channels and with some media budget behind it, if possible.
Tactics to Push Traffic to E-Commerce
If your business has an e-commerce presence, there are several social media tactics to increase traffic to your site. Almost every platform now has their own form of a ‘buy-it’ button, and Pinterest Promoted Pins are getting relatively low CPC’s for many categories.
‘Buy-it’ buttons have now become mainstream across social media channels. For most brands, the choice is really Facebook or Twitter. Pinterest Buyable Pins are still limited and Instagram ads are getting mixed reviews on the platform. These ‘buy’ buttons are a good way to increase awareness for new products and/or seasonal items. If this is your first time using ‘Buy-it’ buttons, I would suggest focusing on a few key products and really nail down your targeting.
Another way to drive traffic to your website is through Pinterest Promoted Pins. Users will be spending much more time on the channel during the holiday season as they are looking for recipes, crafts, and gift ideas. This is a great time to beef up your Pinterest presence and Promoted Pins are still relatively low cost for the engagement and clicks they are driving. Again, I would recommend focusing on a few key products and developing organic content to go with the Pin.
How do you plan on achieving your social media goals for remainder of the year?
