NSA Communications

Keep your pages accountable to business objectives and impress the leadership team while you’re at it.

Your Linked In page has just reached 20,000 followers! This is such an great achievement.

But for some reason it doesn’t really translate for your key stakeholders. The leadership team wants to know what social media actually does

Hang on, don’t the stats speak for themselves?

As a social media marketer, you know that the key metrics expected of you include:

• Reach: how many people saw your posts
• Engagement: how many liked, shared and commented on your content
• Follower growth: your subscribers
• Website traffic: visitors to your site via social media
• Leads: the amount of customers you’ve brought in; whether its potential sales or registrations for an event.

As impressive as the metrics can look to your marketing team, numbers and targets included, it may not really translate to the other business functions.

Think about it from their perspectives:

• Sales leader: I have a sales target of x amount this month. I rely on marketing leads to convert leads into profits. How many quality leads are being provided to my team, so they can convert it into $$?
• Finance leader: Marketing has asked for some social media budget to increase reach and brand awareness. Sure, these two things sound good on paper, but how can marketing justify its budget spend for the books?
• Customer experience leader: How is marketing helping customers have a seamless experience to purchase? Is the journey from ad to sale a smooth one?

It’s clear marketing and communication leaders need more ammo to take to those deep dive meetings with senior leadership.

I like to think of social media accountability as a storytelling activity, backed with data which delivers tangible results for the business.

How can you make your social media pages accountable and impress at the next leadership meeting?

Incorporate the business pain point into your strategy: This sounds obvious but you will need to speak with the relevant business leader (e.g. sales) and identify their pain points. Then, you should connect that information with your strategy or plan. This way, your social strategy has clear outcomes relevant that particular objective (e.g. deliver 50 quality leads or registrations for an event). This way your reporting doesn’t just look like marketing stats, but are connected to business objectives.

“don’t be sloppy…users shouldn’t have to take multiple steps to learn more or purchase.”

All posts should be deliberate and have clear purpose: what exactly has a particular post been created for? Whether for brand awareness, consideration or action stages, make sure the post is deliberate and ticks all the boxes. Ensure there is a call to action, and if users are taken to a website page, don’t be sloppy. Ensure the experience is smooth from start to finish. Users shouldn’t have to take multiple steps to learn more or purchase.

Ensure all content drives audience growth: not all posts are about bringing in sales-ready leads. Even brand awareness and engagement posts should serve to at least grow your audience. Keep this in mind when creating the content, and track follower growth monthly (at a minimum).

“agile marketing is the name of the game.”

Audience targeting should be refined often: if you have some budget at your disposal, that is fantastic! Make sure you are chopping and changing those parameters based on performance. If an audience you selected for a particular campaign didn’t perform as expected, make small but important edits to maximise your performance in the long run. Agile marketing is the name of the game.

Reporting needs to go beyond the social media channel: It’s great to report on how many people saw or liked your post, but in order to make your pages accountable, monitor how your posts are performing within the channel but also report on how this looks in your website traffic. Does it link to a blog or landing page? Can you then report on how many people clicked on your call to action? Can your CRM system confirm which leads came from your website via social media? This is a report your leadership team is bound to be wowed with.

Do you need some targeted support on aligning your social media strategy to your business objectives? Or developing a reporting model that helps you tell that story?

Find out how NSA Communications can help you get social media runs on the board.

E: noha@nsacomms.com M: 0405 383 190