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Welcome to the final edition of our six part series How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy.

If you've been following this series, we hope you have gained a better understanding of how to research, plan and execute a Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategy.

If you've missed out, you can catch up on previous articles here:

Part One - How to Perform a Social Media Audit

Part Two - How to Set Goals and Objectives

Part Three - How to Identify Key Target Audiences

Part Four - How to Plan Social Media Marketing Tactics

Part Five - How to Execute a SMM Strategy

Our final article will focus on how to review and evaluate SMM performance in order to understand which activities drive return on investment (ROI).

Part Six - How to Evaluate SMM Performance

Developing a Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategy can require significant planning, research, organisation and tools. It can be a short exercise or a detailed and lengthy process, depending on your goals and what you aim to achieve.

If a budget has been allocated towards SMM advertising, it's vital that the activities are driving profitable growth.

So you've crafted a solid SMM strategy and executed it seamlessly...

• How do you know if the strategy was a success?
• Were the SMM activities effective?
• What metrics should you measure to determine it's success?
  

Analysing SMM performance provides an opportunity to reflect on what worked well and the areas that require revision.

Evaluation can help fine-tune tactics and build a stronger strategy in the long run.

Analysing social media metrics can help understand the type of content your audience is engaging with and why.

Join us as we cover iASP Central's 6 steps to evaluating SMM performance.

Step 1. Create a spreadsheet to record findings

When analysing SMM performance, it's important to record your findings in one place.

We suggest using a spreadsheet or SMM report template.

There are many types of SMM reporting templates available for download from the internet. For your reference, we have provided some links to SMM report template in the resources section of this article.

The data recorded in the spreadsheet will help build the basis of a SMM Report.

Set up your spreadsheet or template before proceeding to Step 2.

Step 2. Review initial strategy

Take some time to review the SMM strategy framework and what was set out to achieve.

This includes strategy goals, objectives and the marketing tactics implemented to deliver the strategy.

• What SMART goals were you aiming to achieve?
• What tactics were implemented to support these goals?
• Did you make changes to marking activities during the execution process?

Create a tab on your spreadsheet and list these down.

If goals or marketing tactics have been altered during the process, list the most recent.

This will help you to compare your findings to the original goals set. It will also formulate the basis of a report.

Step 3. Use Analytics Tools to Measure ROI

Use Social Media Analytics Tools to measure and analyse performance.

This could be considered the most important step when evaluating strategy success!

Social Media Analytics tools track and analyse important data relevant to your social media page or profile. For example: Page Likes, Engagement levels, Sign ups etc.

Analytics tools can help to understand how well posts and ads are performing.

Tracking data is essential in helping you achieve better results with your SMM.

If you've been reviewing content throughout a campaign, you may have better understanding of how SMM activities are tracking.

So what kinds of SMM analytics tools are available?

Analytics Tools

As outlined in Part 5, we suggest using analytics tools relevant to the social media channels.

There are many kinds of analytics tools available.

Such as tools provided by the large social media platforms:

• Facebook Insights
• Instagram Analytics
• Twitter Analytics
• Google Analytics
• LinkedIn Analytics

And tools provided by other websites:

• Buffer Analytics
• Hootsuite Analytics
• Sprout Social Analytics
• Mention

Most social media platforms have some form of free analytics, once you reach over 100 profile Likes or Followers.

Tools such as Buffer or Hootsuite can provide analytics from multiple social media accounts in one place, however these analytics tools often come at an additional cost.

Here at iASP Central, we regularly use Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics and Google Analytics to help track our social media and website performance.

Important Metrics to Track

So what metrics should you focus on?

Measure and record metrics that relate directly to your goals and marketing activities.

Below is a list of some common SMM metrics.

Please Note - the metrics below are not common to all social media

Content Engagement

Likes, Comments and Shares

Engagement is a measurement of how many times people have interacted with your content, posts or profile on social media.

Measuring engagement can help you understand how well content is performing. It can also help provide customer insight on your products or services.

Likes, Comments, Shares and Retweets are all forms of engagement with content.

If your goal is to raise brand awareness or promote a specific product, measuring engagement metrics can help you understand how well your message is received by your target audience.

Reach

Reach refers to the average number of people a post or ad can be shown too on social media.

It's your potential audience size.

Please note - The volume of reach is an estimate measure of potential number of people who may see the post or ad. It doesn't represent an exact number of people that view or interact with a post or ad.

A large number for reach means content is more likely to be viewed by a larger audience.

A smaller reach, can mean your content visibility is limited to a smaller audience.

If you're aiming to increase brand awareness and send a message to a broad audience, measuring reach is an important metric.

Impressions

Impressions are the number of times your content is displayed on social media news feeds.

There are two types of impressions:

- Organic Impressions
- Paid Impressions (used in paid advertising)

If you're aiming to increase brand awareness, measuring impressions will help you to understand how many newsfeed impressions your content is receiving.

Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

A Click-Through-Rate (CRT) refers to the number of people who click on a post or link that is then directed to a webpage.

CTR is relevant to Facebook and Instagram advertising, Google Analytics and Email Marketing.

If you're running a paid advertising campaign and set up Google Analytics tracking, measuring the CTR will help you understand how many exact clicks you've received directly from an ad or post.

Conversion Rate

A Conversion or conversion rate is a measurement given when a specific action or goal is achieved.

Conversions are only applicable if conversion goals have been set out.

For example, conversion rates are common to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising on Facebook and AdWords. Conversion rates can help you to understand how paid advertising converts directly into sales.

If you're running paid ads with Google Analytics tracking, measuring the conversion rate will help you understand exactly how many set goals or conversions have been achieved.

Reviews

Reviews can be placed by customers on social media or other online platforms.

Reviews can provide feedback and insight from your customer perspective.

Analysing reviews can give you important information about products, services and overall brand perception.

It's important to monitor and track your reviews before, during and after strategy execution.

If your goal is to build rapport with customers and improve brand credibility via social media, recording review data can help with this.

IASP Central Tip: We suggest monitoring the total number of positive and negative reviews, common subjects and patterns in reviews.

Mentions

Mentions are when a company or brand is 'mentioned' or referenced online.

Mentions can be found on social media, Google and other community forums.

If your goal is to build brand awareness, strategic partnerships, sponsorships or influencer marketing, then reviewing online mentions can help you understand what people are saying about your brand online.

iASP Central Tip: We suggest using Mention, a free tool to help monitor online mentions.

Visits

Visits refers to the number of visitors on a profile or page.

Video Views

Video views refers to the number of people who have viewed your video for 5 seconds or more.

Once you've identified the most important and relevant metrics to record, list them down on your spreadsheet or template.

Below is an example of an iASP Central SMM goal and the metrics relevant to the goal.

iASP Central Example:

Strategy Goal: To increase website traffic and sales to ecommerce website through SMM campaign.

Objective: To run a targeted Facebook Ad promoting a product that includes a direct link to a product page on the website.

Action steps taken:

• Facebook Pixel tracking set up - This will help to monitor how many clicks received directly from the Facebook Ad to the website. In order to create set up Facebook Pixel, we must convert to a Business Manager Page. 
• Facebook Custom Audience set up - to display remarking ads to the visitors who clicked on the product website page and didn't purchase the product. The remarketing ad will act as a subtle reminder. 
• Facebook Remarketing Ad Set up - design a custom ad and select the customer audience created in the previous step. 

Metrics to measure:

• Click-Through-Rate - The CTR will help us establish how many clicks the ads received.
• Conversion Tracking - this is an accurate way to measure website traffic and sales directly linked from the Facebook Ads. We can see how many sales were converted from the ad.
• Facebook Ads Manager Analytics - to track Ad results including Click-through-rate (CTR), Engagement and Reach. Measuring the number of Likes, Comments and Shares can provide insight on key target audiences and how they interact with the Ad.

Using these metrics we can establish how many sales, clicks or actions were taken as a direct result from the Facebook Ad.

For more information on Facebook Fixel please refer to the resources section of this article.

Step 4. Prepare a SMM Report

Now it's time to analyse and report on the data collected.

Evaluate your findings and create a summary.

• Which SMM activities received the highest level of engagement?
• What is the best performing type of content ? Video, Images, Links?
• What goals did you achieve? E.g. Product Sales, Brand Awareness, Website Traffic
• How would you improve your efforts for next time? What would you do differently?
• Which activities provide the highest return? Which drive profitable growth?
• How would you rate your SMM strategy in terms of success?
• Did the activities provide return on investment?

When creating a summary, you may want to present the data in a report. Use the spreadsheet or report template outlined in Step 1 or there are various SMM reporting templates available online for download. Please see templates in the resources section of this article.

Calculate Return on Investment (ROI)

Social Media ROI is the return generated for the time, money, resources and energy invested into this exercise.

To calculate ROI, follow this formula:

Return - Investment

Where Return is what you received from the exercise, and Investment is what you invested into the exercise (this can be money, time, efforts etc.)

iASP Central Example ROI:

• iASP Central's Facebook Ads directly sold 50 x products worth the value of $50 each. Total value of $2500.
• We set a budget of $2 per day for 30 days, running targeted Facebook product ads. Total cost of advertising was $60. Plus approx 4hrs of employee time, to create and set up Facebook Ads and monitoring. Total cost of employee time was approx $120. The total investment cost to iASP Central is $180.
• ROI = $2500 - $180 = $1020 profit. Therefore this exercise is considered very profitable with high ROI.

Once you have calculated Social Media ROI and finalised your report, it can be then be presented to a team and management.

This report can also be used as a reference for future SMM planning.

Step 5. Set up Touch Points to Communicate with Customers

The next step is to focus on your target audience and what you learnt from this experience.

• What did you learn about your customer?
• What feedback did customers provide?
• How did your customer like to communicate? (E.g. Facebook Messenger, Chatbot, Website Enquiry Form, Phone Call)
• What social platforms do they use most? (E.g. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat)

It's important to maintain and harness customer relationships established during and after strategy execution.

We recommend setting up touch points to help you reconnect with your customers.

Below are some ways to continue communicating with your customer:

• Regular Social Media posts
• Blog Articles
• Email Marketing or Digital Newsletters
• Facebook Re-marketing Advertising
• Phone Calls
• Split Testing
• Customer Surveys
• Paid Advertising

Step 6. Forward Planning

Reporting on findings help improve future SMM efforts.

Refer to the report when revising and making changes to a SMM strategy, campaign or advertising.

When revising a SMM strategy, be sure to focus and grow exercises that generated ROI. This will help build a well performing, solid strategy second time round.

When planning future Facebook marketing, be mindful of the planned algorithm changes that will focus and "prioritise posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people" as announced by Mark Zuckerberg recently. Incorporate changes like this into future strategy planning. As the social media landscape is constantly changing, it's important to dedicate regular time to reading and researching social media updates, changes and new tools. This will ensure you get the most out of your marketing activities and keep you ahead of the game.

iASP Central recommends the following resources for social media news, articles and updates:

• Social Media Examiner
• Buffer Blog
• Hootsuite Blog
• Sprout Social
• iASP Central Blog

We've reached the end of our journey...

Thanks for following the iASP Central How to Create a SMM Strategy series.

We hope this series has helped to grow and fine-tune SMM skills in strategy development, content planning and marketing execution.

Building a targeted SMM plan can help reach the right customers, increase brand awareness, sales and performance. Once an initial strategy has been created and tested, use this a sounding board to improve on.

Have you planned and developed a social media marketing strategy before?

What SMM activities did you use?

Let us know on the iASP Central Facebook Page or Get in Touch.

References:

• Using Facebook Page Insights
• 5 Ways to Analyze Your Social Media Marketing Performance
• 5 Essential & Easy Social Media Metrics You Should Be Measuring Right Now
• News Feed FYI: Bringing People Closer Together
• The Delightfully Short Guide to Social Media ROI
• 7 Steps in Creating a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy in 2018

Welcome to the iASP Central series How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy.

If you've been following the series, we have now reached Part Five of our Six step journey to developing a Social Media Marketing (SMM) Strategy. 

In case you've missed the previous articles, you can catch up here: 

Part One - How to Perform a Social Media Audit

Part Two - How to Set Goals and Objectives

Part Three - How to Identify Key Target Audiences

Part Four - How to Plan Social Media Marketing Tactics

Next we focus on how to successfully execute a SMM strategy. 

Let's dive in… 

Part Five -  How to Execute a SMM Strategy 

Once a SMM strategy has been researched, planned and developed.. it's time to put the plan into action!

Execution is the process of delivering a SMM strategy and bringing it to life. 

Have you ever heard of the phrase 'Execution is Everything?'

Well, the execution phase of a SMM strategy is considered very important. 

The delivery process can be critical to the overall success of the campaign. 

Even the most highly crafted, well thought out strategies can fail, if a plan is not executed effectively. 

The execution phase of a SMM strategy can be a challenging process. It can require a significant amount of organisation, project management, leadership skills and team communication. 

When there are multiple marketing activities coordinated at the same time, there can also be more room for error.

If possible, formulating a team to take on various roles and responsibilities can help with the delivery process.

So how can you help ensure a smooth-sailing and well executed strategy?

Follow iASP Central's 3 step process: 

Step 1. Update Social Media Accounts 

The first step is to update all social media accounts. 

All business information and branding should be current and consistent across all social media platforms. 

It's important that social media branding reflects business values, goals and marketing messages. 

Ensure all images and written content is engaging and appeals to your primary target audiences. 

iASP Central Example: If your Facebook Business page features a high-quality business logo for the profile image, make sure this is visually consistent across Instagram, Google+ and LinkedIn. Or if your business has a marketing tag-line, be sure to include it in the description on all social profiles. 

Part 1 - How to Perform a Social Media Audit, provides steps on how to analyse key competitors social media accounts including their strengths, weaknesses and potential opportunities.  

A social media audit can help identify outdated information, improve visual branding and establish potential branding opportunities. Identifying branding opportunities can help set you aside from competitors social media.

When updating social media profiles, consider the following: 

• Logos, Profile and Cover Images - Use high quality, professional, visually appealing images or video
• Page Content - Update Profile Descriptions or 'About Us' sections to include current contact details, keywords, links and tag-lines that reflect strategy goals
• Call-to-action - Include a CTA that strategically encourages customers to act. This could be 'Call Now' 'Message Now' or 'Visit Website'. A CTA can help with conversion rate and achieve sales goals. 
• Update Profile Settings - Ensure your profile is fully optimised, that your Profile is visible to the Public and that your account is Verified. 
• Consistent Branding - Make sure branding is visually appealing and consistent across all platforms. Use the same colour palette or filter for all images. Try using images that are bold, eye catching and effective.
• Research and compare competitors social media profiles, what's working and not working for your competitors. Also research and find inspiration from other outside sources on social media. 

iASP Central Example: You have conducted a social media audit and analysed your three top competitors social media profiles. From the analysis, you can see that all of your competitors are using still-format images for their Facebook cover image. 

After researching video content, you understand that video is the highest engaging form of content on Facebook. 

You perceive a potential opportunity and decide to use a short-video feature for the Facebook cover image. This creates a point of difference from your competitors SM profiles and helps grab the attention of your fans when viewing your Page. 

Step 2. Execute SMM Activities

Running multiple integrated SMM activities requires high-level organisation and management skills. 

Organisation is the key to executing a solid strategy.

Part Four - How to Plan Social Media Marketing Tactics, can help you plan and develop a SMM strategy further, including: 

• The SMM Activities to be carried out, including a template to help monitor activities throughout the process
• A projected budget and template to help monitor spend during the execution stage  
• A plan of the content to be released on social media, including an Editorial Content Calendar 
• Delegated roles and responsibilities

Prior to the execution phase commencing, it' important to have a clear plan of the activities carried out and who is responsible. 

If you have a team helping to execute the strategy,  ensure they understand their individual roles and responsibilities during the process.

This will help keep SMM activities on track and running smoothly.

Nominating a project manager can also help to lead a team, monitor marketing activities and meet set goals.    

Good communication is vital when executing a strategy. 

Effective communication can help a team understand the challenges of the project, what's working well and how to best provide support if required. 

If you've selected a project manager, they can track and report on performance, help deliver completion of SMM tasks and  identify any potential problems.

When executing SMM activities, it's important to:

• Refer to the strategy and goals to stay on target 
• Analyse SMM activities and report on them weekly. If necessary, adjust SMM activities that are not performing
• Monitor budget and marketing spend throughout execution
• Stay active on social media - Post regular content, engage with audience and be timely in your responses 
• Use templates and worksheet to help stay organised - Editorial Content Calendars,  Budget Spreadsheets, Runsheets etc. 
• Monitor and report on KPIs
• Communicate effectively with team members

iASP Central Tip:  Using an Editorial Content Calendar can help keep you organised during the execution stage. We have provided some example templates in the resources section of this article below. 

Step 3. Measure and Report on Performance

Analysing SMM activity performance throughout the execution process can help save efforts, costs and time. 

Examining data can allow you to make educated changes to SMM activities.

It's important to know which activities are generating return on investment (ROI) and which aren't. 

From here, non-performing activities can be changed or replaced by better performing SMM activities. 

So what types of analytics are available and relevant to SMM performance? 

• Facebook Analytics
• Instagram Insights
• Twitter Analytics 
• Google Analytics 
• LinkedIn Analytics 
• Buffer Analytics / Hootsuite Analytics / Sprout Social Analytics 

iASP Central Example: 'Skin Beauty' is an online e-store specialising in skin care products. The marketing team are planning to run a Facebook Ad to help increase sales for their skin care product. They decide to create an image ad aimed at a broad audience of women from 15 - 55 years old with interests in skin care. They set the ad budget to a maximum of $50 per day to help improve the visibility of the Ad.  

Two weeks into the ad campaign, the team review Facebook Insights and the ad performance. Upon reviewing Insights, they can see that the majority of clicks and interactions with the Ad are from women aged 18-25yrs old. While they are reaching the max budget spend every day, they are unsure if these clicks are converting into sales. 

Therefore the team decide to adjust the Ad target audience age group to 18-25yrs old and lower the daily spend to $25per day. 

This will increase the likelihood of Ads being displayed to a more narrow and defined target audience. They then focus on using the extra $25 to set up a Facebook Re-marking Campaign for visitors who visit the website and view this product. 

Using Google Analytics they can then track and monitor the conversion rate of customers who purchase directly rom the Facebook Ad. 

Facebook Insights and Google Analytics have helped the team monitor their SMM performance and generate the best ROI.

Team KPIs 

Holding a weekly catch up with your SMM team can help keep your team and SMM activities on track. 

It provides an opportunity to review and report on SMM activity performance, team contributions and concerns. 

Using a Social Media Report can help track performance and important data. We have provided a SMM Report Template in the References section of this article. 

When meeting with your team for a Work in Progress (WIP) update, report on the following: 

• SMM Activity performance and analytics 
• Goal and Objective tracking 
• Team KPIs
• Potential obstacles and ETAs

Collect Important Customer Data 

When reviewing social media analytics and reporting weekly,  it's important to collect information about your customers. 

Collecting and analysing data about your target audience will help future campaign success. 

Collect information from your customers including Email Address, Location, Interests etc.  

Using a Facebook Lead Form or Facebook Poll can help you gain insight into your customers and your services. 

Compile customer data to form data bases. Segment your lists into new customers and existing customers. This information can be utilised to create email marketing campaigns in the future. 

Report on the customer data collected during your team catch ups. 

Now it's time to put your plan into action…

Deliver your strategy with precision and accuracy. 

Remember the key components of a strong execution are: 

• Organisation
• Team communication
• Detailed plan of SMM activities 
• Understanding team roles and responsibilities 
• Measuring and reporting on performance  
• Adjust and make changes where relevant 

Analyse and make changes to your plan and activities as you go, to ensure the best ROI. 

Have you executed a SMM strategy before? How did you execute your plan effectively?

Let us know on the iASP Central Facebook Page or Get in Touch.

References:

How to Create an Extraordinary Social Media Strategy for 2018

Implement a Marketing Plan

6 Steps to Successfully Execute a Strategy 

6 Essential Steps for Executing Your Social Media Strategy

7 Steps in Creating a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy in 2018

Templates: 

Social Media Analytics Report Template 

Create a Social Media Content Calendar