Social media is used by businesses to increase brand loyalty, share new products, and even gain new customers. Every company uses social media differently, some more successfully than others. Below are ways to tell if your company is a social media success.
1. Customers Seek You Out
In the early days of creating a social media account, you likely had to try very hard to find new connections and convince them that your brand was worth following. If customers begin finding you without you needing to go through all this extra work, you’re well on your way to social media success.
2. Your Message Gets Across
Even if you have a sizable network, your social media campaigns are worth nothing if your customers don’t hear what you have to say. If customers acknowledge your message, or if you use tools like Facebook analytics to see that many of your connections actually viewed your posts, you’re on the right track towards social media success.
3. You Gain Website Traffic
It’s likely that one of your main social media goals involves getting your followers to a separate website, whether that’s your online store, your company’s site or your blog. Social media can be a great tool to bring visitors to your other sites, if you’re using it effectively.
4. Followers Interact With You
A high follower count alone doesn’t necessarily make you a success if none of your followers respond to your posts. A more accurate sign of success is whether you gain responses, likes, retweets and engaging interactions from your followers.
5. People Talk About You
This is related to the point above. But instead of followers talking directly to you, they are talking to their other connections about you. This could mean they’re recommending that others follow you or try one of your products that they recently purchased.
6. People Share Your Links
Even more specifically, having others share your links to products, blog posts or other online pages can really mean they like what you have to offer.
7. You Gain Insights
Social media is so much more than just a way for you to broadcast your company’s message. You can learn a lot from following others and tracking your company’s mentions. Companies that do this successfully can gain a lot more than higher website traffic.
8. Your Target Audience is Clear
In order to use social media effectively, you have to know who you’re talking to. You should be able to scroll through your followers and see that most of them fit into the audience you’re trying to target.
9. You’ve Found a Good Balance
There are so many social networks and types of posts. You should be able to figure out which networks and which types of posts work best for you and your target audience, instead of just broadcasting new product listings or blog posts across every single social channel.
10. Your Content Has a Clear Focus
You should be able to scroll through your timeline or your twitter feed and see how each post fits together and works towards accomplishing your company’s overall social media goals.
11. You’ve Become an Authority
Your followers trust what you have to say and even others in your industry look to you as an industry authority.
12. People Ask You Questions
Along those same lines, if your followers come to you with their questions, whether it’s just a general question about your industry or more specific question about a particular product, you’re headed towards social media success.
13. Issues Are Brought to Your Attention
Not everything your company does, in social media or otherwise, is going to be perfect. But when there are problems or issues, if your customers on social media bring them to your attention so that you can correct the problem, you’re gaining social media success.
14. You Don’t Need to Advertise
Most social media outlets offer advertising options that can be very useful for companies just starting out. Although these ads can also be helpful for more established companies, you shouldn’t necessarily need them if you’re accomplishing all your social media goals.
15. You Keep It Simple
Social media shouldn’t be complicated. You should be able to quickly sum up your social media strategy and see that you are following through with it.
16. Customers Appreciate You
Not only should customers interact with you, but you should also be able to tell that they are happy with what you have to say. If they thank you for responses or recommend you to their own networks, you know they appreciate you and you’re heading towards social media success.
17. You Find Useful Trends
Aside from just using social media to gain insights about your own brand, you should use it to gain insights about your industry and/or network as a whole.
18. You’ve Tested Different Strategies
You can’t know if what you’re doing is right for you unless you’ve tried other things. You should have tested out different strategies at some point and know that your current one gets the best results.
19. You Keep Your Campaigns Organized
If you’re a seasoned social media vet, you should have a pretty good system for organizing your social media campaigns and initiatives.
20. You’ve Found a Way to Measure Impact
Whether it’s through services like Google Analytics or the built-in tools on many social media sites, you should have a way to quantify results so that you know you’re on the right track towards social media success.
21. You Don’t Spend All Day on Social Media
It might be tempting to use social media non-stop, especially if you’re constantly talking to customers. But you should be able to accomplish your goals without spending all day monitoring tweets or Facebook mentions.
22. You Maintain Relationships
More than just responding to individual messages, you should be using social media to actually keep in constant contact with your connections. And they should do the same with you.
23. You Create Brand Advocates
If you do successfully maintain relationships on social media, you have probably created some brand advocates - those who continually share your links and recommend your company to friends.  If this is the case, you’re inching closer towards social media success.
24. You Have a Plan
You shouldn’t go into social media without knowing what it is you want to accomplish, though many companies do. If, by now, you have a clear-cut plan, you’re that much closer to social media success.
25. You Accomplish Your Goals
Once you have a plan, you should see that you’re accomplishing what you set out to do, whether that’s increasing brand awareness, gaining website traffic or gaining valuable insights.
26. You Receive Suggestions
If your customers or others in your network come to you with ideas for new products or website features, it means they want to see you succeed and they think of you specifically when they have ideas related to your industry.
27. Your Network is Constantly Growing
Social media can turn into a numbers game for some companies. But there is no magic number of followers or interactions that means your brand has become a social media success. A better gauge is whether your network, both in terms of followers and interactions, grows steadily.
28. Customers Treat You Like a Real Person
Social media users don’t want to follow companies. They want to follow people. If your followers treat your company like a friend, you’re likely running your account like that of a person, rather than a brand.
29. You Gain Customers
Even if gaining new customers isn’t one of your main social media goals, at some point new people will come across your profiles and, hopefully, support your business.
30. You Listen
Social media is not a one-way communication street. The sooner your company stops treating it as one, the sooner you can realize social media success.
Of course, there are different levels of social media success, but if you’ve achieved at least some of the items mentioned above, you’re well on your way.
Thirty Photo via Shutterstock
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