With over 3.6 billion users on different platforms, social media is where the magic is happening for many, especially new business owners. Startups can leverage social media to reach many customers at high speed. They can advertise their company and its products and services to spread the word and increase sales and revenue.
While using social media is essential, it is more important to use it correctly. To be able to reap the benefits, startups need to create a robust social media strategy. This should include goals and milestones, depending on the overall vision and mission of the brand. Once the goals are set, they need to be tracked to assess success and ROI.
Sounds confusing? It certainly isn’t. If you are a business owner looking to scale your startup using social media, here are our top trackable social media goals that are bound to get you success.
Brand Awareness
What is the next step once you come up with a profitable business idea and set it up? Spreading the word to the desired target audience. Creating brand awareness is one of the most common reasons most companies turn to social media. And this makes complete sense because, on average, users spend around 145 minutes using social media. The frequency of use is the exact reason why it’s the best medium to market your upcoming venture and acquire potential customers.
So, the first goal to set is increased brand awareness. When it comes to it, there are some essential metrics to track such as follower count. As a startup, you need to focus on developing a rich base of followers. This can be done organically or through online tools. You need to do your research and use efficient partners such as PathSocial and avoid services like Social Meep that are now outdated and unreliable. If your follower count increases every week or month, it means that your account is performing well and that your strategy is effective.
User Engagement
Once you have a good follower count, you need to also focus on engagement. This means that an audience is in place but are they responding to the content you are putting about your brand’s messaging and product? An engaged audience is indicative that people are interested in your startup, which is excellent news as this will reflect in your overall sales and revenue. Once you set increased engagement as a goal, you should track your accounts to see the outcome.
Engagement is typically seen via likes, comments, retweets, tags, and replies, depending on the platform you are viewing. Each platform also comes with its tools for analytics that you can use to gauge the data. If more and more people engage with the content you publish, it will also get bumped up according to algorithms of Facebook and Instagram, for example. This way, more users will get exposed to your page, which will increase your reach and potential customers. If your posts are getting a high reach but a low engagement rate, the material needs to be more interesting. A high reach and high engagement rate means that your content is viral. Such checks and balances are essential if you want to stay on top of your social media game.
Traffic and Conversion
One of the most significant social media goals to set is increased traffic and conversion rate for your business, as this directly impacts your bottom line. Most companies turn to social media to increase their sales and revenues, so tracking how much of it is coming from these platforms is vital. Track your website to gauge the incoming users and identify how much traffic is coming from social media. If, after a specific campaign, your website experiences a boom in click-throughs, it means that it was successful in generating the right amount of traffic.
You also need to understand how many leads were generated and how many users converted into customers. By tracking the number of people who visited your website and went all the way to make a purchase, you will be able to find out how many came through from your social media posts. Tracking these two goals will help you also understand how each platform is performing and what improvements can be made to increase traffic and conversion rates.
Conclusion
As a startup, there is a lot to be done and achieved, but between the daily firefighting, you need to build a solid social media presence. The starting point for this is a strategy that comprises clear-cut goals that you can monitor. As you begin creating content and running campaigns, tracking these goals will help you analyze success and highlight crucial improvement areas for a successful startup.
