Managing and developing a social media strategy is about much more than just measuring ones own traffic growth minute after minute and day after day as Evan James, head of North American Marketing for Socialbakers made clear during a presentation at the College Sports Summit in Atlanta.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t measure in isolation,\u201d he says of a major flaw in how many organizations measure social media success. Instead, he said, make sure you understand how your competition or like-minded organizations are doing in terms of traffic so that you can more accurately understand whether your expectations are accurate.<\/p>\n
\u201cOtherwise when looking at your own performance you will be setting goals for your self but without benchmarks,\u201d he said. \u201cAlso look at what others are doing well and then take those ideas and apply them to your own strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Along with understanding how to better measure an audience is having a better strategy to have fans engage. Gary Paczesny, University of Memphis, Coordinator of Digital Media, said that native integration of video within Twitter performs much better than a link to another platform, like YouTube.<\/p>\n
\u201cNative views are four times as much as just a link to a YouTube video,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
James concurred, adding,\u201cYou really should upload directly to Facebook. A YouTube link on Facebook gets much less engagement than something uploaded directly to Facebook.\u201d<\/p>\n
James also said that it is important to have custom video content for each social network, as a clip that finds success on Twitter might not find success on Facebook or YouTube.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink about the audience you\u2019re trying to reach,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd with autoplay on Facebook you need to have something visually captivating within the first blip of video. You have to quickly hit them hard and keep it entertaining.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also take a look at the metrics for viewership within that video. Look at churn rates and whether or not there is a drop off in viewership after the first 10 seconds.<\/p>\n
In terms of which platform is most important James said that Facebook dominates in interactions and also skews older as most users are between 30 and 50 years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want fan engagement that is like, comment, or share then Facebook is the place for it,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnd only 5% of posts are video but it is important and extremely effective and has the highest amount of reach. And the great think is you have great content to already work with.\u201d<\/p>\n
YouTube, meanwhile, is great as a network for aggregating content.<\/p>\n
\u201cYouTube numbers are still rising and on Twitter if you are doing video then you are already ahead of the game,\u201d said James. \u201cAnd like with Facebook upload directly onto Twitter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paczesny said that it is also important to make sure the video is eye catching and doesn\u2019t come off as a press release.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso you want to make sure that ticketing and communications have a voice but you don\u2019t want to over saturate the marketplace,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
One tool to help in that process is simply using something like Google docs so that all involved can easily see when social media messaging will be hitting the users. For example, if a woman\u2019s basketball game is being played a Google doc allows for the team to make sure a press release concerning the baseball team is sent out at a time that won\u2019t interfere with social media efforts concerning the basketball game. And if an event ends at night and social media posts aren\u2019t done until midnight that is okay as it just means users will see it first thing the next morning.<\/p>\n
James added that in general it is best to understand what time of day social media interactions are the highest and then scheduling important announcements for that time.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to capitalize on when the audience is most active to see the most success with social,\u201d he said. \u201cYou need a concrete business goal like whether you want to increase brand awareness or drive conversions. And the more interactions and engagement on social media the more success you will have on conversion rate. But you also need to make sure you don\u2019t scare them away.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is not surprise that social media platforms are constantly changing and being launched but James cautions that it is important to commit to the platforms that are most important, even if that means ignoring other platforms. Simply put, do it well or don\u2019t do it at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to take into account the resources you have and once you have the capacity then you can add more platforms,\u201d he said. \u201cToo many times I see people launch on a new network and then they don\u2019t respond to fans that are asking questions or they just post once in a while. It hurts them in the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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