When it comes to social media, success doesn’t always mean huge impression numbers. The key to effectively executing a social media campaign is to clearly define your goals, and also define the appropriate metrics to drive success.

If a client wants to increase web traffic, it would be silly to use YouTube views as a metric of success. Likewise, if a client wants overall awareness, it would be silly to show them a micro-targeted community that we reached.

Social media is not always a popularity game
Often, people are fooled to believe that the more Facebook friends or Twitter followers you have, the more valuable you are. Really, the focus should be on quality over quantity. While having a large following could mean more people are exposed to your message, that doesn’t necessarily mean they care about what you say. What is important is engagement and interaction. If you invest all your social media energy on counting followers and fans, you don’t have time to connect with the audience that actually wants to receive your message.

Be Authentic and Provide Value
While we all want someone to vent to after bad day, your followers and fans are not the people. Choosing to do this has been detrimental to brands in the past. Rather than using Twitter as a personal-venting medium, it’s better to focus attention on connecting with your followers. And when goals are outlined, it’s easy to focus on reaching out to these people and providing them with information that they want to receive.  Having a personality that is authentic is also an important part of the social media planning and implementation process.

Don’t Get Lost
Social media expectations need goals. If there aren’t goals established, how do you know if you are getting a return on your investment?!? Tip: a “good” goal is not to “be everywhere” – if you try and reach everybody, you will connect with nobody.

Maybe LinkedIn is the most appropriate option, or maybe you find out your audience is active on Facebook. Do some research and find out where they are! It’s better to have a strong presence in one or two locations than a meager presence in several locations.

Keep the “Social” in Social Media
At The Cyphers Agency, we know the value of word of mouth marketing, and we understand the value of online interaction with customers. The key is to not get caught-up in numbers, but instead focus on communication between a brand and it’s customers.