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Social Media and Goals: What are you trying to achieve?
SEO pays the bills, plain and simple. But like many, I have a serious soft spot for social media and its best practices, and I try to help clients, friends, family members – even strangers – how to best utilize social media every single day. Certainly, there are tactics within social media that can benefit sites from an SEO standpoint
So when I saw the Search Engine World headline “Invest Time in Twitter Now for Long-Term Rewards” I immediately cringed. While many attempts at utilizing SEO within Twitter are harmless (and even effective), some are also spammy and shortsighted. Thankfully, author Eric Enge spoke nothing of the sort, but the initial cringe got me thinking.
While many marketers have been playing with Twitter for the better part of two or even three years, 69 percent of US consumers don’t know enough about Twitter to form an opinion on its effectiveness as a marketing tool. That means we still have plenty of sponges out there ready to suck up everything we tell them. Way too often, our blog posts focus on the specific tactics or lists that are one-size-fits-all approaches to specific social media sites.
If you happen to read this post before you write your next Twitter-related linkbait list, please do me favor: mention that none of these tactics will be deemed successful without first defining your goals and your audience. Think of it as a standard disclaimer or boilerplate.
When a client, friend or random drifter asks you what type of goals one can set for social media, specifically ask them what they are trying to achieve. Some of most common responses I get include:
- Branding
- Link building
- Traffic generation
- Lead generation
- Customer service
- Publicity
- Time wasting (especially drifters)
We also need to be reminded that these goals change depending on the type of audience. Tactics that work for customer service-related social media usually don’t work if you are trying to get a journalists’ attention. So, after we determine what we want to achieve with social media, we need to figure out who we’re trying to reach. Specifically, are we trying to reach clients/customers, prospects, journalists or our friends?
Before I post on Twitter update or new blog post, I usually ask myself who I am trying to reach. While my updates often go unnoticed into the cloud, I’ve learned that there are certain buzzwords or topics that will usually pique the interest of a specific audience.
For those that aren’t marketers and stumble upon this post somehow, remember: don’t do social media (or specifically Twitter) because it’s the next big thing or because the SEO field told you so. While I certainly agree with Eric that there is an amazing amount of opportunity with social media, do us all a favor and define what that opportunity is before you start.
To be clear, there is no wrong way to use social media. I certainly don’t make the rules on how anyone should use a specific medium. However, if you want to view results at some point, you need to define what you are trying to achieve.
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Comments
1 Comment so farOne Response to “Social Media and Goals: What are you trying to achieve?”
Interesting ideas, I certainly think that a lot more thought needs to be put into what people post on sites like twitter.