On a daily basis, it is easy to let small things slide by. But, when you let them slip one day, then the next, then the next, pretty soon, you are forgetting about it altogether. The most common situation I see is in social media strategy marketing – blog, twitter, facebook & linkedin. People start with a strategy, a plan and analyze what is working and what isn’t. But pretty quickly, the monitoring slips to the wayside and all they do is participate and there is no method to the madness. Then, the results don’t show up, so they stop participating at all. It’s a slippery slope that leads to disaster (and a failed social media marketing strategy).
How can you prevent this from happening to your social media strategy? By scheduling daily monitoring into your calendar, just like you schedule meetings, exercise and events.
Each of the 4 I mentioned – blog, twitter, facebook and linkedin – have specific items that should be monitored on a daily basis. This isn’t participation, this is analysis, research, and strategy planning time. This is where the ROI happens, where you see the number of true connections that you have made, what you are turning into business, and what is not working and needs to be modified. While everyone will monitor them differently, and may have some different items that are monitored, here are the top 4 I recommend monitoring for each strategy
Blog
- Statistics – I use google analytics because it gives the most detailed results on where people are coming to your site from, what pages are most popular, and what keywords are being used to find your site. Many people only do this weekly, but I find doing it every day gives me better insight into the traffic faster, and changes can happen overnight.
- Subscribers – Are they up? Are they down? Is your feed healthy (meaning it is being delivered on time to everyone)? Feedburner is a great tool to make sure that everything is working properly.
- Content of the site – Make sure that everything is current, right, and important. If it doesn’t need to be on your sidebar, remove it. If it needs more details, add them.
- Development – Every day, in addition to posts (participation), you need to plan out the future posts. This can include which categories need more content, which tags are left unused and can be deleted or comments that need responding.
- Followers – Make sure that you have followed people back that you want to be following. Add a couple new people you find interesting, remove followers that you have lost interest in talking to. Twitter is not about numbers, but there is nothing wrong with searching for new people to connect with and talk to.
- Direct Messages – Are there any you missed/forgot to respond to from the day before? What about new ones from today? Is there one person you can target today with a message and a link to your blog post to help you get it promoted?
- Which tweets are the most popular? You can tell a lot about your content by who retweet’s it and how often it gets passed around. If people like a link, you may want to write more that cover a similar topic, expand upon it or find more like it. The better the content you share, the more people will pay attention.
- Replies – These can get lost in the stream, if you get a lot in one day. Make sure that you catch them all and have responded to those that need responding to. While this may sound like participation not strategy – ignoring people is bad strategy so paying attention would be good strategy, right?
Facebook has a number of uses – this is for people who have both a personal page and a fan page. If you do not have a fan page, then you can skip ahead (or, you can get a fan page started!)
- Fans – Are all of your friends also fans? Why not? If there are friends who have not become fans, send them a personal (individual) invite to become a fan and why you would like them to become one.
- Birthdays – Any friends having birthdays? Rather than responding in Facebook (unless that is the only place you are connected), send them an email. It is more personal and lets them know that you were thinking of them. If they are an even closer contact, and you have the ability to, send them a text or call them instead…
- Pictures – If you are using Facebook for business, it is important to monitor the pictures that others have tagged you in to make sure that they are appropriate for all viewers.
- Status – While writing your status is participation – planning your status is strategy. Status updates are not meant to be random, useless throughts, they are meant to invite comments and share what you are doing with the group. Make sure each one has a reason behind it.
- Connections – Who are you connected to on Facebook that you aren’t here? You should have just as many contacts on LinkedIn as you do on Facebook (or at least close). Look through and reconcile your connections.
- Questions/Answers – This isn’t the time to answer, this is the time to research: Are there questions you do want to answer or ask? Spend some time thinking about them before you just start writing.
- Recommendations – Is there someone new you have worked with that deserves your thoughts? Or a client that you can ask to refer you? The more (quality) referrals you have, the better your network.
- Status – Because you are connected (or should be) with most of these people through Facebook and/or twitter, try and keep this status different than the others. This is a good place to pose a business question, link to your blog articles etc (remember, planning not participation yet).
What other items do you need to monitor on a daily basis?
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Kirsten
