Ever wonder if you’re really getting the max ROI from your social media marketing agency? Recent studies suggest that the full value of social media is realized over the long term; so you might want to concentrate on more of a big picture approach. MIT Sloan Management Review discussed the value of aspirational customers in its June 7, 2016 article ‘Can Social Media Cultivate Long-Term Loyalty?’ It summarized their significance as: ‘Today’s followers are very likely to be tomorrow’s customers.’ But how do you know if your social media agency is delivering maximum ROI for your marketing spend, so you can build your level of aspirational customers who will learn to trust, then buy? Review your campaigns together with your agency and see if there is room for improvement in these 5 key areas:

Building Trust

Selling products and services is very difficult without first developing trust with your audience. You and your agency can review your social accounts and decide how the content is helping to build trust in your company. The content should be topical, and can range from humor, to links to blog content, to infographics that offer quick data takeaways and more. One of the key points to remember when building is trust is to share others’ content. When you do that you tell your audience that you care about the subject at hand, and you want to provide information from multiple highly trustworthy sources. Your audience will then know that your social accounts are the place to go when they want answers to their questions.

As Trust Builds, So Does Belief in Your Value Proposition

If someone trusts you, they are more likely to believe you when you present them with your value proposition. This is where your agency’s careful editorial calendar planning comes in. Your agency will monitor your audience’s engagement level over time and know when the best time is to present content, and which type of content will boost engagement. So if the agency discovers, for example, that your audience loves the short videos about your company’s hamster toys, then they will pair this content with the best time to reach them. If the data shows that Sunday evening after 9 pm Eastern is when your consumers are having lively discussions about their pets on Twitter, then the agency will launch a new hamster video then, and watch the engagement skyrocket!

Social Media is More Like SEO Than Most Will Admit

Thousands of examples exist of videos and images that have ‘gone viral’ – but the day-in, day-out, stay-the-course social media campaign actually reminds one more of a carefully planned SEO campaign. That’s not surprising as the walls between SEO and social media have blurred in recent years. Many marketers understand the long-term value of an organic SEO campaign; and those that do have the patience to allow it to mature over 9-12 months and longer. Social media campaigns can do more than act as vehicles for some fast buzz; they have the ability to become pillars in a marketer’s well-structured online strategy.

So How Can We Use Social Media With a Long-Term Focus?

Posting consistently to your social accounts is paramount. Some companies have their agencies handle all social posting. Others mix in some agency posts with their existing social workflow. Both of these approaches can work for long-term success. One of the most important things to remember is to measure all the small successes along the way. If the goal is to sell 500 hamster toys by Christmas, then it’s also important to measure social’s contribution not only to sales, but in every step in the process leading up to sales. These smaller steps can be downloads of hamster toy PDF fact sheets, requests for coupons, or views of hamster toy demonstration videos. When you and your agency work together to analyze all the data – not just the final sales numbers, that’s when you’ll discover the value of social media and you can use that information to learn more about your customers.

Ready to get the most out of your social media campaign for the long term? Organically is an award-winning social media agency that builds exciting and results-oriented campaigns for Gatlinburg, Sevierville, Knoxville, TN and national clients. Talk to us today about your social media goals.