So you’ve vowed never to eat cake again (well, perhaps just one piece) and promised to quit smoking (tomorrow). New Year’s Resolutions are great aren’t they! What about your digital marketing resolutions? Here are my five 2016 New Year’s Resolutions For Social Media Managers that you can actually keep!
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Start Tracking Links
If you’re not tracking your social media links then you have been missing out. Brands are still frequently posting untracked links taking visitors to landing pages without any form of tracking. This means that they don’t really know what’s bringing in the money and what isn’t. Use Google Analytics’ URL Builder to create unique urls and identify the source of each link.
Resolution– Make a spreadsheet and add all your campaign links so you can easily check them, analyse your results and produce awesome reports.
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Start Creating Professional Images
Brands that create shoddy images with haphazard logos spliced onto them just look cheap. Additionally, photos should be correctly sized for the network they are posted to. In 2016 start respecting your brand and conveying professional images that are of a high quality. Remember that visual content marketing is already huge. In fact, posts and tweets with photos get a whopping 87% of all interactions. Images matter.
Resolution– Use a program like Canva combined with licensed and professional photos to create awesome memes and posts. Check out my blog post for some great free sites!
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Remember the 80/20 Rule
Remember we talked about the 80/20 rule? Successful social networking needs to be 80% listening, learning and interacting and just 20% promoting. In 2016 ease off with the promos and study trends, listen to your audience, engage them in conversation and understand their needs.
Resolution- Use a social monitoring tool like the ones mentioned at Brandwatch to help keep your finger on the pulse. Start using feedback and mentions to guide your future campaigns.
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Experiment With New Ad Techniques
Sometimes we can get stuck in our ways when it comes to advertising. Perhaps you love to boost posts or run page post link adverts. Did you experiment with multi product carousels on Facebook or try out Twitter polls or cards? How about promoted pins on Pinterest?
Resolution- Dedicate a small portion of your budget to new ad techniques. Perhaps you can only spare $50… it’s ok. Learn some new techniques and try them out for yourself. An added bonus of using tracked links is that you can split test your ad messages.
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Connect Content & Social Media
Yes, yes content strategy is important and you know that but in 2016 your brand’s content strategy and social media strategy need to be better connected. Social media needs content marketing because without it there really is nothing of value to share. Social media also needs to be factored into your campaign text through the use of hashtags and trending topic keywords. In 2016 think storytelling content which is amplified through social media advertising.
Resolution– Start planning campaigns together with your content manager and graphic designer… think landing page, banners, social media, emails, gifs and videos for a coordinated approach.
What are your 2016 New Year’s Resolutions ? Tweet me @Charli_Says and let me know.