Social Media Works…Should We Say It Again?
Social Media Works
Social media works. Sure, at PopSpeed®, it’s the lifeblood of our day-to-day, and we’re pretty passionate about it. But we have the receipts to back up our claims that it’s an effective marketing tool when done right.
Something that we run into with past, present, and prospective clients from time to time is skepticism toward the validity of social media and its ability to contribute to significant ROI. If this sounds like you, keep reading while we challenge your thinking.
Social Media Effectiveness Looks Different for Everyone
Before we dive into convincing you that social media works, it’s important to establish what “working” would look like for you. Our clients are each on their own missions – some need more donors, more event attendees, sales, downloads, etc. It’s on us to leverage their socials to achieve this.
But how? Unfortunately in many scenarios, it’s difficult to directly tie social media efforts to increases in these numbers. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t trackable metrics and signals that can allow us to reasonably conclude success, though. There are actually quite a few.
User-generated content (UGC), increased engagement, increased audience size, clicks, leads, and the emergence of community amongst your following are all examples of social media success that should not be overlooked.
Let’s talk about it.
Indirect Success is Still Success
The catch of social media is that you can’t directly connect a Facebook post to how many sales (or donors, or event attendees, or downloads, or sign-ups, etc.) it influences on the website. Do we wish you could? Sure. But we also think that’s the fun of it.
The metrics that we can track present themselves in different ways that force us to do some digging, analyze, and draw conclusions. We wouldn’t make these claims without giving you some fun examples of what we’ve achieved and seen in our social media success with clients.
UGC, Increased Engagement, and Website Traffic Sources
In one example, as the social media team for a local restaurant chain with a substantial following, we approached the engagement knowing how important it would be to earn UGC and engagement, and then leverage them both to our advantage. Crafting our content around this goal was our strategy. Within a matter of months, something pretty amazing happened.
First, we found ourselves swimming in UGC. By using authentic and informal imagery in our content, our audience wanted in on the action. We’d frequently be tagged in photos by patrons in the restaurants with their food, drinks, and friends sharing positive experiences within the four walls. This enabled us to do a couple of important things:
- Use their photography and video on our pages and tag the audience members, creating a deeper connection between us and them
- Acknowledge that our audience - however they may have found us - is engaged with us on social media and responds to what we’re doing
We also found that by prioritizing content with the restaurant’s unique food and drink options, we’d often have our comments sections filled with people tagging friends and planning their next visit. Do we think every single commenter and their friends actually showed up? Probably not. But we can reasonably assume that this organic engagement put our brand in the minds of hundreds of local restaurant-goers in the future when they’re trying to decide where they want to grab brunch.
Finally, while we can’t track direct sales from social media, we can track where the majority of website visitors come from to get to our site. In this engagement, we were able to take note of the fact that month after month our social accounts accounted for a high majority of website traffic. Did every visitor convert? Of course not. But again, it tells us that whether these website visitors stopped by to place online orders, view the menu, or check our hours, whatever the case may be, they’re interested, engaged, and have us on their minds…Which we know leads to sales.
Clicks and Community
Another business that we collaborate with is in the dental industry. For them, one of our most important calls to action on social media is for prospective patients to schedule free consultations on the website. So a lot of our content centers around enticing clicks to get on the team’s calendar. When these posts garner high clicks and click-through rates, we know we’re providing our audience with helpful, useful, and enticing information.
The nature of this client’s work means it’s a pretty sizable investment and a long-lead sale. Patients undergo a journey to achieve their end result – from discovery and believing the treatment is for them, to finding a doctor that they trust. Once they get their new teeth, they are so happy that they want to talk about them with others.
With that in mind, we decided there was an opportunity here to connect happy former patients with each other and with potential new patients through Facebook groups. We’ve created an engaged community of social media users that all have one commonality – our client.
The thing that makes us happiest? Past enthusiastic patients answer questions from people who are still deciding which practice will be best for them. Best testimonial case ever!
Social Media Works, For Realz
Building a social community that’s talking about our client to each other tells us that social media works. Seeing consumers voluntarily tag their friends in comments on posts on a client’s feed tells us that they’re sharing their social media discovery with others. Social media really works. And we’re pretty good at it.
Ready to bring us on your team? We’ve got you.
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