A decade or two back the greatest sign of progress was becoming a part of the dotcom boom. Announcing that you had a website was a big deal and a website automatically guaranteed increased visibility and sale. Unfortunately, it makes no difference to anyone today whether you have a website or not.
The question people really ask is – are you on social media networks? Yes, social media has become one of the most potent tools for business marketing. Online marketing quite literally starts and ends with effective social media presence. The importance of social media has been felt for quite some time and most companies have created their accounts on Twitter and Facebook. But is that enough? You would know the answer by now. Social media marketing is a serious business and you need to be a professional or hire a professional to make your mark.
If you have already hired a social media agency to take care of your accounts and use them in a manner useful to your business, you have done a good job. But before you get complacent, be aware of how the agency is working on your accounts. Keeping a check on what the agency is doing and ensuring that they are not botching up your brand take note of the following 5 things.
Page Growth
The very idea of creating a social media account is to let more consumers know about you. Thus the importance of page growth. There was a time when getting huge number of likes on Facebook and large number of followers on Twitter wasn’t a big deal. Today it is a big deal simply because the competition has increased and consumers have become choosy. If you notice that the page growth has remained stagnant, ask the agency the reason behind it. Remember to ask them whether they have used unique content, paid post boosting in News Feed, managed to capture the target audience etc.
Engagement Levels
Having a large number of followers isn’t enough. The users have to be involved in every step. The very idea behind social media is to create direct contact with the target consumers and this can happen successfully when you attend to users individually, irrespective of the number. The social media agency should be directly interacting with the people and increasing the engagement levels.
Repetitive Content
You would have planned a marketing strategy and shared the same with the social media agency. The agency should be working to fulfill the objectives of the strategy. It is quite useless to keep telling the user that you are a great brand and you have great offers. The agency shouldn’t be using such repetitive content. Period. Unique posts, tweets attract the users. It is very important to work closely with the agency in this matter.
Marketing Target
As already mentioned, the social media agency should be working on new strategies from time to time. The marketing strategies would be based on the demand on your business. Accordingly the agency should outline a plan to reach the target audience. Very often the agencies prefer to remain non-committal on the matter but do not rest unless they give you data on the target. Your marketing strategy will be planned on various levels and there would be different targets, the data should be outlining them.
Appraising On The Work Done
The agency should make it a point to regularly update you on the progress of the work given to them. They should be submitting reports with facts and figures. If reporting is not done properly and honestly, you should immediately have a talk with the agency and figure out the problem.