There are a lot of social media sites out there.
For businesses – both large and small – it seems like too much too handle.
Unless you’re planning on staying up late each night keeping up with every social media platform out there you’re going to have to prioritize. There is just no way you can effectively give yourself to every social media site out there.
Some have tried and it seems to provide little return on the effort.
If you’re struggling with figuring out your social media prioritization we’ve put together 10 ways to figure it out.
1. Follow The Results
There is some truth to the notion that you can’t track all the effects social media has on your business, but there are ways to follow the results to see if your efforts are working to bring actual profit to your company.
That’s what it’s all about after all. You can’t take likes and follows to the bank. You can take dollars.
For GBW, the best social networks have been Twitter and LinkedIn with LinkedIn pulling out slightly ahead. You can track the people that follow you can connect with you.
You can also ask your new clients if they follow you on social media. Follow the steps backward and see if your social media work has had any influence on your new clients.
If a particular channel has then put that site on higher priority.
2. Keep Track Of The Vanity Metrics
Sometimes those vanity metrics like follows and likes do work out in your favor. It’s a good indication that people are paying attention to your business and to what you’re doing.
It might not always lead to profit, but when it comes to trying to figure out inbound marketing it’s at least a good sign that you’re making something happen.
After all, if you’re going to invest a lot of time into social media you might as well do it where you’re getting traction and interest.
This goes back to the idea we’ve talked about before that the best place for you to spend your time on social media is on the sites where your target customer is spending time and willing to interact.
3. Benefits For Other Channels
Sometimes social media will directly impact another channel that can lead to success.
The biggest and most obvious one is Google+ and its impact on search.
For GBW, search is a big source of new business. Our clients find our blog posts and other landing pages on our site and get introduced to our brand. They’re looking for things, we provide the answer and they contact us to become clients.
Google+ has benefits for those that want to improve search. You can get Author Markup, which can improve your SEO traffic. Your number of followers will be added to the search results, which can improve click throughs.
Google owns search and they own Google+. If you want traffic from search you have to do what Google says and that includes putting some effort into Google+.
4. Focus On Your Own Content
There is something about social media that can suck you into investing your time and content into a social media channel. This means creating a bunch of original content for Facebook or even for Google+.
It seems like a best practice and you might get some good response if you do that, but you’re giving your content away for little or nothing in return.
The best way to go about social media is to first invest in yourself. Create content on your own website like with your blog.
Answer a common question that your customers are having with a post. It could be a 10 point list for example. Publish that and then take each tip and turn those into tweets, posts on Google+ and things to share on Facebook.
5. Think Long-Term
Think as long-term as you can with social media.
History has kind of showed us that social media sites can come and go. Look at the ones that seem to have the best long-term plan.
Google seems pretty committed to Google+ and there are some real benefits, but Google has closed a lot of products over the last few years. I’m being cautious with Google+ for this reason.
Facebook seems pretty stable. They’ve doing well in mobile now.
Think long-term with social media when investing your time in social media. Think about the companies that have the best model going forward and invest time there.
For us it’s Twitter and LinkedIn.
For you it might be different.