Are You Assessing Your Social Media Environment?

Caitlin Culbert

Everyone should conduct a social media assessment for their business. The importance of a social media assessment is that before you build a social media strategy that aligns to your business, you need to evaluate:

• Where you are. What is your current social environment like?
  
• What to do next. Understand what you want the plan to be based on data. Don’t guess.
  
• Define your KPIs. How will you measure your plan? How do you know if social initiatives are working?

According to the 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 84% of marketers saw increased traffic with just six hours a week invested in social media and 85% of B2B buyers believe companies should present information via social networks. (Iconsive). Marketers will spend $ 8.3 billion on social media advertising in 2015 (NewsCred) and 78% of companies now say they have dedicated social media teams, up from 67% in 2012. (i-SCOOP).

Ask yourself:

• Do you know what platforms are working for you?
  
• Do you know what presence you have in the social sphere?
  
• How does your social activity align with the rest of your marketing plan? Best practices?

Typically, companies think they don’t need to pay attention to Social Media, and responses to the most common objections:

Argument: “Our audience is on not on social media”

Response: Don’t be fooled, according to the 2013 Forrester Report,”The Social Behaviors of Your B2B Customer”, everyone is on social media.

Argument: “Social Media is only used for help, not sales”

Response: Social media lead conversion rates are 13% higher than the average lead conversion rate (Source: HubSpot) and approximately 46% of online users count on social media when making a purchase decision

Argument: Social does not seem to show my ROI (HubSpot)

Response: In 2013, 52% of all marketers had found a customer via Facebook, 43% of all marketers had found a customer via LinkedIn, and 36% of all marketers had found a customer via Twitter.

The bottom line is that there really is no argument. Make a plan, assess your social media and. engage your prospects where they are.

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