Susan Friesen November 16, 2021 
Create the Most Effective Social Media Marketing Plan
There’s a vast sea of social media information out there. Experts are everywhere, and there are just so many opinions on best practices and tactics.
Not only that, but the platforms themselves are constantly changing, whether it’s adding new features, increasing character limits or otherwise changing the rules.
That’s why I’ve created this guide to help you understand how to set social media goals for 2022. This article will be especially if you’ve never taken stock of your marketing campaigns or created objectives.
Throughout this process, it’s really important to be honest about your successes and failures. It’s been a tough few years for all of us, and the more you’re able to look at the big picture, the more success you’ll have.
Here’s my 3-step process to set social media goals for 2022:
1. Check Your Reports
Keeping reports is a must if you want to properly assess the efficacy and efficiency of what you’ve already spent time sharing online. There are many ways to configure a report, but if you need direction and inspiration, Smartsheet has a free social media report template to get you started.
You need to learn to look past the number of impressions and understand how your content is really performing. Are people liking it, sharing it, commenting on it? What type of content gets the most attention from your audience?
Pay close attention to metrics like engagement—this valuable info is like your potential leads all telling you what they liked or didn’t. So take that into account when planning out 2022’s content.
How much engagement did you really get from your social media this year?
From Twitter to Facebook, each platform offers free analytics on the profile’s performance, so use it!
This free reporting helps you see what you’ve shared that’s worked well and what’s fallen flat. Look for topics that visitors and followers have been consistently interested in, and share more of that content going forward.
If you’re up to the challenge, you can also do some paid promotion for your business.
We’re constantly on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram. And, we stay on top of the latest trends and tips and love analyzing reports and stats (so you don’t have to!).
2. Study Your Analytics
Yes, you want to look ahead, but it’s necessary to look back as well. You can share content left and right, but unless it’s leading visitors to your website, it’s not serving its purpose. Ultimately your end goal is to drive people to your website, where they’ll hopefully engage further and buy a product or service from you.
Google Analytics is a free tool provided by Google that is key to planning your social media in 2022. It shows you how your actions on social drive traffic to your business, broken down into lots of relevant stats.
Find your ‘network referrals’ to see how much traffic your website receives from your social media efforts.
To see these results, navigate to your ‘Acquisition’ section in Google Analytics (see above), then click ‘Social’ and then ‘Network Referrals.’ You can select the previous year as the date range.
From there, you can see how many people have clicked on your posts and subsequently landed on your website. Pretty invaluable stuff.
3. Set Your Goals
The first two steps should give you an understanding of where you are in your social media efforts. Now it’s time to create your plan. You’ve got a great idea of what type of content works, which platforms your target audience is hanging out on and where you should focus your efforts in the upcoming year.
Here are some more tips to help you reach your goals:
- Track your month-to-month follower growth. If you’re not gaining new followers throughout the year, you need to take a look at why that is.
- Keep an eye on which seasons your content is most popular on a particular platform. For example, Pinterest trends show increased usage in the summer and around Christmas, with spring and fall seeing big dips.
- Only share content that has value. You want to sell without driving people away. You also want to give people non-salesy resources like blogs, inspirational quotes, events—whatever makes sense for your brand and audience.
The biggest mistake you can make is to allow your marketing campaigns to become a chore, rather than a positive part of your business. When you’re enjoying yourself, you’ll find you share more engaging and interactive content.
When you set your goals to conquer social media in 2022, keep in mind that you may not attain all of them. But that’s not failure! As long as you’re prepared with a solid social media marketing plan and what you’re sharing is authentic and honest, then you’re doing a great job!
And remember that it’s also fine to set a different type of goal, one where you start delegating more, so you can focus on what you do best for your business.
Originally published here.
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