Refocus Your Social Media Marketing Game Plan

During 2010, many small businesses have adopted social media marketing into their businesses. We’ve seen many start to jump in and experiment with various campaigns on Twitter, Facebook and geolocation networks, such as Foursquare.

It’s been fun playing but businesses need to get serious because social media of 2011 is all about results.

And if your campaign is not bringing any, you’re done!

Refocus Your Social Media Game Plan in 2011

2011 is the year we need to focus on why we got involved in social media in the first place. What’s your game plan? How are you going to reach your goals?

1. Start your game plan with a solid content strategy. Content marketing received a lot of traction in 2010 and it will continue to drive social media forward. Content development is growing in popularity, and social promotion—when done correctly—is the best way to make content marketing successful. Make your effort count. Quality is still key. The point is to cut through noise and not add to it.
2. Don’t just participate in conversations, stimulate conversations!
3. Just like with any other marketing campaign, measuring results is a must. Otherwise you don’t know what works and what you are wasting resources on. That old saying of “what gets measured get accomplished” is definitely in play. By the way, metrics such as the number of followers/fans are highly irrelevant.
4. Social media makes it easy to turn your happy customers into raving fans.  Use it to your advantage.

Social media marketing is so much more than a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Without delivering a real and measurable result you are getting nowhere.

It only makes sense that, based on 2010 experiments and experiences, businesses will do a better job during 2011 to track their efforts, analyze their activities and pay a little closer to how social media drives the business forward. With a little more strategy in hand, businesses should see measurable results affecting their bottom line.

Share Your Thoughts

What are you focusing on this year? Have you worked out a solid social media marketing strategy or are you still playing the tactics game? Is your campaign bringing in results or are you still testing the waters?